Woohoo!

So I had three tests (back to back to back) last Wednesday morning. I got a 92 on my first one (Theory), a 93 on my second one (Spanish), and I'm pretty sure I aced the last one (Music in Culture). Hopefully I get the last one back Wednesday.

Well, I think I aced it. I know I aced the test portion (it was all just memorizing and regurgitating the facts back. I finished in ten minutes. And that's including double checking my work, and waiting for my teacher to play the song excerpts a second time.) but the essay portion I'm pretty SURE I did okay. But the GA is grading them. And she seems like a ... you know what. Haha. So we'll see what happens.

I have three (possible four) quizzes tomorrow. A keyboard quiz, where we have to play a I IV I V I chord progression (in different inversions in the right hand) and any key she gives us. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezey. Then I possibly have a singing quiz in that same class. I don't know, because we each have to sing one at a time, and she only does two people a day. So, yeah. It sucks. Then I have a spanish vocab quiz. I know about half of the words. I'll probably make flash cards after this. And then I have a "patterns quiz." The teacher will sing TWO notes (not even kidding! two!) and we have to sing them back. Man I love being a music major! Hahah

I wish I wrote deeper, more philosophical blogs. But I can't.

Maybe one of these days I'll write a blog in spanish! That would be fun! I attempted to write a letter to Jon in spanish once. I gave up after "Dear Jon. Right now I'm in my room and I'm very bored. Right now you are at (wherever he was.. I don't remember). I love you. I don't know what to say" or something like that. Then I reverted back to my natural language.

I really love spanish though. If I wasn't trying to graduate early, I would maybe consider minoring in it. It's just so interesting!

Early!

This weekend was a blast! Zachary came up with my Mom and Jenny & Tyler played an AWESOME concert and Amy's boyfriend Taylor came up! And Valentine's Day was GREAT. Jon sure does know how to be romantic! And I'll explain more about all of this later (probably after Wednesday - I have THREE tests Wednesday morning! One at 8:30, one at 9:30, one at 10:30. SUCKS!) but I just wanted to keep the three people who read this updated with my current decisions and whatnot.

Friday afternoon I had a meeting with the temporary head of the Music Education department (the normal guy is on sebbatacle) and talked about the possibility of graduating early. By early, I mean one semester early. Which will mean I'll be graduating in four years instead of four and a half. So technically, I'm graduating on time. But for music majors, it's WAY early! Graduating early is pretty much unheard of! But I'm going to do it! I'll have to take two summers of summer school, and that's basically it! I mean, I'll have to take the classes that are originally in my Senior Spring Semester in my Junior Spring Semester, but since I came into college with so many Gen Ed's, that's a piece of cake. AND I'll never have to take more than 18 hours a semester! I HAVE to take extra classes in order to be a full time student my senior year and keep my scholarships. So if I wanted to, I could just take 14-16 hours each semester, and I won't have to find some random just-for-fun class my senior year. But I might want to do that anyways. ;)

So that's my new goal.
I WILL be graduated in May of 2013, not December.
I WILL be one of the few Music Ed majors to graduate EARLY/ON TIME!

I am so excited about this!

Oh, and I also have a friend who is like me (came in with a lot of credits) and we're going to do all of this together! We'll be each other's support!

Did I mention how excited I was?

Emotions.

My emotions have gone haywire. It's wearing me down.

This has been a rough weekend/week. I am so stressed out. I have so much to do! And I don't have any time because I keep committing myself to new things! Yes, they're small commitments, but still. Last semester my days were pretty much the same routine. This semester it's crazy. Weird breaks in between classes, I've started tutoring middle schoolers on Tuesday, I'm taking Group Fitness classes, I think I'm going to start going to Antioch's LifeGroups.

I feel like I just don't have time, anymore. I guess I'm going to have to start getting used to going to bed past 11 and getting less than 8 hours of sleep. This semester's tough.

Behind.

I feel really behind in school already. Maybe that's because I missed a day of classes for my grandma's funeral and then we had two snow days in a row. Or maybe it's because my classes are A LOT harder than last semester and I'm just used to breezing through things. Or maybe I studied more last semester and I've been spending more time goofing off and not studying or doing my homework. Whatever it is, I'm behind. And I don't like it. I feel like I can never catch up. Like I'm just drowning in behind-ness. I don't know.

Stress

Today has been so stressful.

Since I'm not going to be at school Wednesday, I've had to do all the homework that's due Tomorrow, Wednesday, AND Thursday tonight. That's a lot of stuff to do! And it doesn't help that I have no idea if I'm doing the theory homework correctly (my brain just can't wrap itself around the concept of Sevenths. I don't really understand how to get a half-diminished seventh and stuff. But I guess that's why I'm at college.), I had to do some dictation homework (for those of you who are non-musicians or don't know what that means, it means listening to a melody, a complex rhythm, or a series of regular and inverted chords, and figuring out what it is without looking at anything and writing it down. I've never been good at learning things by ear) and one of the chords just doesn't make sense. I think it's a Five Seventh (I have no idea how to write that out without the roman numerals and subcriptions - and there we are with the Sevenths again!), but it sounds like there's only two notes in it. Ugh! And, nobody ever does their homework before the night before it's due, so I have nobody to compare with! I hate our generation of procrastinators! I also have a Spanish quiz tomorrow. My brain is so filled with everything else I have to remember for the next few days that I can't remember all the dumb words. And it's all food! It should be easy! But no. UGHHH I AM SO STRESSED.

MORE!

I would just like to point out that within a few weeks, I've posted more blogs than I did in a full year.

The first week of school is done! I had two quizzes today. I think I made a 100 on my theory one, and I got 43.5/44 on my Spanish one. But, I'm going to get a 0 next week on a theory quiz because I'm flying home and I'll miss it. But luckily we have like 50 or so quizzes in that class (3 a week) so it shouldn't hurt me too much.

I'm flying home next Tuesday night for my grandma's funeral next Wednesday. And then I'm flying back to Norman Wednesday night. I can't remember if I already said that in another post. It's been a long day.

Jon's out of town this weekend, and all of my friends are busy. This is going to be super boring.

And finally, I love Disney.

ZUMBA

Since I wasn't in the mood to really update about how my first day of classes went yesterday, I'll update about it today.

I have 8:30am/8:00am classes again this semester. And I will have them for the next two semesters as well. Remind me why I picked Music Ed? 

Anyways, TR I have Aural Skills II, then Spanish Cont., then Teaching Techniques.

I'm nervous about Aural Skills because even though the grading scale is now 90-100 is an "A" (as opposed to last semester when 93-100 was an "A"), it's going to get a lot harder. And the only reason I made an A last semester was because I got two extra credit points on my final grade because I didn't miss any class. We'll see how that goes. I'll just have to practice a lot? I'm really bad at Sight Singing and Dictation. Ugh.

Spanish will be okay. My teacher's name is Lourdes Yen. Confused about her ethnicity? Her first name is Spanish because she was born somewhere in Latin America and lived there her whole life. Her last name is Taiwanese because she's Taiwanese. So she has the (pardon my stereotyping) high pitched, nasal-y voice of asian women. And her accent when she tries to speak english is so strange. It's hard to understand her spanish AND her english. But I think it's just something I have to get accustomed to. I actually enjoy spanish though. I wish I could be fluent in it, but after this semester, I have no more room to take more classes since it's a 5 hour course.

Teaching Techniques is going to be a blast. I love being in Music Ed because the same group of people are in the same classes semester to semester. Teaching Tech. is the same group of kids as my Intro to Music Ed class. So we already have our relationships formed and know each other well enough to goof around. Example: We had to go around the circle and say our name, what we play, and what we think our strongest teacher feature is. When it got to me, I said "I'm Taylor, I play bassoon, and I think my strongest point is my flexibility..." and before I could continue on with my sentence, everybody started laughing because that could be taken the wrong way. And I'm pretty sure my face got red. But I'm not worried about it because we're a great group of kids. It's going to be a great class. Oh, and what I meant by flexibility is my ability to teach in different styles and alter the methods I use to teach kids that learn differently. I eventually got that out after the giggles died down.

Now I'll update you about my classes today. (But first, I want to let you know that having the first day of classes on a Tuesday really is throwing me off. AND it doesn't help that last semester, Aural Skills was MWF, and now it's TR. And last semester Theory was TR and now it's MWF.) MWF I have Theory, Spanish, and Music in Cultures back to back to back with no break. Gross. Then, depending on which band I make, I'll either go straight Wind Ensemble, or have a two hour break and go to Symphony Band.  And W will be the worst because I'll have my piano lesson AND bassoon studio.

Theory: I like last semester's professor a lot better. But I guess I'm not really giving this new one a chance. But I'm excited about learning more theory. I really enjoyed that class, and I did really well. The only thing that makes me nervous is that we have a quiz EVERY DAY. Yikes. 

Spanish: See a few paragraphs above this.

Music in Cultures: Oh. My. Gosh. I don't even know where to start. I THINK this class is about music of the native americans/indigenous people all over the world. But I can't be sure because the teacher is on Speed or something. She's somewhat old, talks really fast, and goes off on random tangents about everything. She'll stop mid-sentence and be like "Oh and don't even get me started on blah blah blah" and talks about that forever until something else comes up. It's just really hard to follow her. But I've heard the class is really easy so hopefully I'll be okay.

I'm also going to sign up for some Group Fitness Classes. This week, the classes are free. So I went to the "easy" Zumba class after my band auditions (I was really nervous about the auditions, but it ended up being really relaxed. And I think I did really well considering I didn't get to practice much since I had my teeth extracted). I got there about ten minutes late because the auditions were running late, so I went to the back with Ashley (future roommate), her sister Sarah, and her hallmate Catherine (or is it with a "K"? I can't remember). Amy (my current roommate) and her BFF Alanna were in the front. Basically, I LOVE ZUMBA. I felt really awkward because my coordination has drastically gotten worse since I quit dance seven years ago. But it was a lot of fun. It really got my heart pumping. I'm so out of shape. I'm hoping this will help me get in shape. So I'm going to take a Zumba class Monday nights, and Amy and I are going to take a Beginning Yoga class Wednesday nights. I'm so excited!

So, that's what school looks like for me. I haven't decided what I think of it, yet.

Taylor? Who's she?

I doubt anyone will read this considering I haven't updated my blog in forever. But in case you've been wondering where I've disappeared to, I'm here to tell you.

So I'll just give you a recap of my semester.

• I made a 4.0! Straight A's! Woohoo! (And more specifically, I had a 99.something in Spanish.) I'm so relieved. Hopefully I can keep it up?
• Being in the Pride of Oklahoma was absolutely awesome. I met some really great people and I had a lot of fun. I can't wait until next year.
• I regret drifting away from my friends back home, but this semester was so hectic and crazy that I didn't really have time to think about anything but band and school. (And I have the 4.0 to prove it! Haha)
• I really wish I could get a minor in Special Education, but that's not possible. So I'm currently playing with the idea of getting a Masters in it.
• I haven't found a church to plug into and honestly, I wasn't trying too hard to do that. Saturdays were always the longest day of the week with football games and all and I was often out past midnight doing stuff with the band. So I used that as an excuse not to go to church on Sunday. Also, the Pride practices fell at the same time as Bible studies and such, so I didn't do that too often either. I really regret that. It's really hurting me how much I've stumbled.
• I feel like I haven't met that many people. I mean, I've met a lot of people, but I don't have any really close friends. I realized that when trying to plan my birthday dinner. But maybe it's better to only be close to a few people?
• I'm really excited about moving into an apartment with my two new, great friends Ashley and Laney. I don't see them enough, but they're my closest girl friends up at school.
• I just got back from El Paso. I went there for the Sun Bowl game OU was in. We won. It was amazing. I could literally see Mexico from the highway.
• While in El Paso, my mom called me and told me Grandma is in the hospital. She had a massive heart attack. She's been sedated for a few days now. I can't gather enough strength to go visit her because I know as soon as I walk into the room I'll break down and won't be able to stay. I feel like a horrible granddaughter. I cry just thinking about it.
• I started up piano lessons at school. I'm really glad I'm in lessons again. I missed it so much. It gives me a reason to go and practice piano and I end up staying there for much longer than I intended.

That's about all I can think of right now.

YAY ROOMMATE!

I KNOW WHO MY ROOMMATE IS!!!

And I'm really excited. I found out her name a few weeks ago, and I sent her this freakishly long email about myself. Well she didn't respond until yesterday or so. So for a few weeks, I was getting really anxious thinking she didn't exist. But she finally emailed me back with information about herself and I am so excited to live with her!

Her name is Amy, she lives in the Dallas area. She's a Christian, she's wanted to go to OU pretty much her whole life, she's organized but not always tidy, her grandparents live really close to campus and we can eat there if we want, she's athletic and likes to work out to a program called "Turbo Jams." I think we're going to get along really well! She seems extremely nice. I'm so excited!!! OH and she's an Industrial Engineering major.

And she might be coming down to Kingwood at some point, so we might be able to meet then! Otherwise, I guess we'll wait until she moves in! (I move in three days before her).

I'm so excited. I'm not expecting to become bestest of friends with her, but I hope we at least get along. Which I think we will.

I'm so excited! I know I've said that a billion times already, but I am!!

Just so those of you who are still checking my blog in hopes of an update know, yesterday I typed up this really long update on my vacation that I've been on (Nevada and California) on my MacBook. I wasn't even done yet. And then the internet went out. But luckily, I copied and pasted it to a Word (actually it was TextEdit) document and saved it. But UNluckily, I'm on a different computer right now. So I don't have it. And there is no way I'm typing it all up again. So you're in for a treat until I decide to get on my laptop: A list of little updates!

• I graduated Summa Cum Laude on June 6, 2009!
• I've had three "Graduation Celebrations." I feel spoiled : One with friends, one with family (and those I consider family) in Houston, and one with family in Nevada. Lots of cake, lots of fun, and best of all, lots of money ;) Haha just kidding. Not really
• I started my nanny job. Best paying job I've ever had. And very relaxing. I read three somewhat thick books in a week : My Sister's Keepers, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and Thr3e. All very good.
• I'm still cow-ing at Chick-Fil-A. I'll miss that job when I move. And since I'm on vacation until Saturday, I'm missing "Cow Appreciation Day" !!! I'm so sad :(
• Jon's living in Minden, Louisiana for the summer. So although I thought the long distance part of the relationship would come to a close come summer, we're still a good 4 to 5 hours apart. But that's okay. He's come home about five weekends since he got out of school.
• I found out my roommate for college next year! Her name is Amy Leonard. And I know nothing about her except for her name and her ou.edu email address. I sent her a very long email about a week ago, and she still hasn't responded. I wonder if she's even going to OU. Jon had a roommate and everything at A&M even after he told them multiple times he's not attending A&M. I bet I have a roommate at LSU, because they keep sending me junk saying "We're so excited you're going to be a Tiger!" And I've told them MULTIPLE times I'm not attending there. Oh well. Maybe I'll have a room to myself?
• About two weeks ago I left for vacation with my family to Reno, Nevada. I have family here. We hung out for the first week, and the second week we went camping in Graeagle, California. It was amazing. I'll give more details on that when I get on my MacBook, since it's already typed up and all.
• Tomorrow we leave for San Francisco for three days. I'm excited!
• I registered to "audition" for the Pride of Oklahoma (the marching band) on Synthesizer. I'm getting pretty nervous about being the synth player. I feel like I'm going to let everyone down and I'm starting to feel the weight of the burden that's been placed on my shoulders. I hope I don't break down.
• I got a Twitter account. twitter.com/taylorconcialdi I'm not sure how often I'll use it. It's seems pretty stupid. But I'm sure I though facebook was stupid at first, too. Send a request to follow me :) (The only reason I put it on private was within a few days some creepos started following me and I had to block them. I figured I'd just put it on private.)

I think that's about all.
You're Welcome. :)

God Is So Good

WARNING: this post might seem like I'm trying to show off or "toot my own horn" (bahahahha that phrase always cracks me up!), but it is not.

As many of you know, one of the top things I've been praying about is scholarships for school at OU next year. It's basically been part of my prayer requests since well.. the beginning of this school year. And I just want to keep ya'll updated on how God has been answering my prayers.

• When I got accepted to OU, I received an automatic $14,000 scholarship that's divided among four years. So that's $3,500 a year, or $1,750 a semester.
  
• In the middle of March, I received $28,000 from the School of Music to be divided among four years. $7,000 a year, or $3,500 a semester.
• Earlier this week (I think it was Tuesday?) I received  from Alpha State, Mu Phi Chapter Delta Kappa Gamma Society International (what a name, right?)  a one-time $750 scholarship for next fall. 
• And today, I was notified that I will be receiving $16,000 divided over four years from Houston Endowment Inc. for the Jesse Jones scholarship. So that's $4,000 a year, or $2,000 a semester.

So, next semester, as of now, I will NOT have to pay $8,000 of the total! :D

Or, if you want to look at per year, I will have $15,250 in scholarship money!

God is so good.

An Important Announcement

As of March 25, 2009 at 10:31 pm

I am officially going to the University of Oklahoma!!!

My parents have told me that we can afford OU (as long as I keep getting scholarships) and that I can now consider myself a Sooner!!! I'm so excited!!

Norman, Oklahoma here I come!!

Alright, so in case you can't tell, I'm trying to keep up with my blog a little bit more often.  I just still haven't decided if I really want to update about my life or what on here. I wish I was the type of person that could post deep, philosophical epiphanies or something, but I'm not. I honestly don't think I'm that deep of a person and I haven't figured out if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Probably a little bit of both. So for now, I'll just update about the last few days of my life. This is going to end up being kind of long so I'll paraphrase each paragraph now, and you can choose what you want to read.

Exciting: Summer job

Funny: Sleep conversations

Exciting: LSU auditions

In the last post I mentioned a possible summer job. I didn't want to go into too much detail until it was final because I tend to spread the news of things too early and I end up disappointing myself even more when it doesn't happen. But I'll go into detail now :) Last week I started REALLY praying about a summer job opportunity. And I definitely was NOT expecting finding a job this early. But I did. At ABS, I was just sitting there talking to Lauren and Kristina and I heard Mrs. Angie say "Is anybody looking for a summer job?" and I immediately said "I am!" So long story short, Mr. Dave's boss is looking for kind of a "nanny" to look after two sixth grade boys this summer from 7:30-4:30. This is exactly the kind of job I had in mind! Well, not EXACTLY. I was envisioning an office just filing things, but this is better. Because now I can get pretty nice pay during the day, and also do the cow in the evening! I was waiting for Mr. Dave to email me with her information, but Mrs. Angie said that he already talked to his boss about it and she's really excited about me! I can't wait! It'll be nice to have some extra money this summer. Most of it will probably go into savings/thing I'll need for college. I think I'm going to start building the list of things I'll need now. Especially clothes. I borrow a lot of clothes from Mom and Morgan. Oh, btw, today is Morgan's birthday! She's 16! Scary! I knit her a scarf for her gift, but I lost one of my knitting needles and now I can't finish. :( I hope I find it soon. I was planning on knitting a lot on the way to Oklahoma. Maybe I'll go and buy a different size and toy around with those for a little while. We'll see. This ended up being a random train of thought. Oh well.

Friday night I left for Louisiana with my mom and we stopped at our really close family friend's house and stayed with her. Her and my mom are the very best of friends, so it's always awesome to just sit and listen to them talk like old friends. It makes me happy that Mom's happy when she's with her friends like Mindy and Kim. Anyways, so I went to bed at about 10:30. So I called Jon before I fell asleep, but he was in a movie and so he said he'd call me back. So I fell asleep. Around 3:00am I woke up again on my own because Jon hadn't called me back yet (or so I thought). I also have a rough night's sleep when Jon says he'll call and he doesn't. I worry that something happened to him. Anyways, so I grabbed my phone to see if maybe I had slept through it ringing (I had put it next to my pillow so I could feel it vibrate rather than putting it on the table next to me so I could hear it vibrate). But no missed call. So I was starting to get upset and I thought about calling him to make sure everything was okay. But I decided to check my Call Log before I called him at 3 in the morning and woke him up. Good thing I did, because he HAD called me at midnight. But I didn't sleep through the ring, I slept through the conversation!!! We had a 2 minute long conversation and I was sleep-talking the whole time. I didn't remember even waking up and answering the phone. I was kind of confused at 3am, but when I woke up six hours later, I realized I had been talking in my sleep. I've never done that before. Well, talking on the phone in my sleep. I've woken myself up from talking in my sleep. Hahahahah. I thought it was hilarious though.

Anyways, so the reason I was going up to Louisiana was for my School of Music audition. Basically, it went really really well. The bassoon professor REALLY liked me and he basically told me that I would get a full ride if I went there. Even though that's REALLY exciting, it makes me nervous and freak out kind of. I REALLY REALLY don't want to go to LSU. I mean, it wouldn't be that bad considering I wouldn't have to pay, but I just don't feel like that's where I belong. I just wouldn't be comfortable there. Yesterday on my way home from work I started crying and freaking out thinking about going to LSU. And everytime I think about it, I can feel my stress level rising and it's so hard to handle. So just pray that my OU audition will go that well. And for my nerves. sigh.

Everytime I work, there's always at least one little kid that's either a little bit afraid of me or one that absolutely loves me. And they're accompanied by his/her mother. And it always makes me really excited about being a mom someday. The love she shows to her child is just overwhelmingly amazing. I wish I could explain the way this one mother talks to her son. It's the cutest, sweetest thing I've ever seen. You can tell she's a good mom. And they come at least twice a month. I want to be just like her someday. I don't know who she is, but she's my role model. I hope I'll be a good, loving, encouraging mother.

Anyways, I think I've overwhelmed you enough for one day.

Today has been a very exciting day! And so much has gone on this week. It's crazy. I can go into more detail about everything later, but here's a brief overview.

My LSU auditions are this Saturday. And my OU auditions are Monday the 16th. I'm really nervous. But I've been emailing people at the OU School of Music a ton asking questions and stuff to get my name in the system. Hopefully that means I'll be more recognizable and get more money? We'll see.

OU loves me. Love = Money. At least that's how it should go down in my book. Because I really need scholarships.

I went to Calculus tutoring today and I finally understand what we've been learning this week. It is such a great feeling. I love it.

POSSIBLE summer job! It's perfect. I really hope it all works out. I'm definitely going to go into more detail about this later. I just don't want to act like I got it in the bag and then woops! no more job. :(

I've gotten a lot of knitting done this week. I'm excited.

Jon and I kind of had a rough last few days. Mostly yesterday. Miscommunication, misinterpretation. All that jazz that happens when you live a billion miles apart. BUT we talked it out and everything is up to snuff! I really hate it when we aren't on the same page. But luckily, we're both patient enough and understanding enough to let the little things go and work through the big things. I'm so lucky to have in my life.

And on a bigger note, I've begun to realize how my past has shaped me into the person I am today. And I'm finally starting embrace it and accept that it's a part of me.

I feel great.

God is good.

My letter jacket tail is true. "GOD PROVIDES"