College

Not suicide related, just about life.

I applied for college 2 weeks before the first school day. I was surprised they had let me in considering the small notice I had given them. I’ve never really considered college before. I didn’t want to go, didn’t care for a degree, especially in a field like music where one is rarely cared about. But it was my violin teacher who suggested it. The way she talked about college made me consider into more and more over the weeks. So I just went for it. And now I’ve just gotten home from my first day of college… maybe I’ll post updates?

Day 1: first days sure are boring.. going over the syllabus, going over the syllabus.. in every class. But there were lots of things that were definite hilights. My first class is a music history class. Although nothing of interest happened in it, once the class ended, a student walked up to me. I didn’t recognize him, but he said, “don’t I know you from somewhere?” Once my mind familiarized itself with his face, I grew instant recognition. It was someone I knew from highschool, who I’ve talked to rarely, but enough to remember his name. I said “you’re Omar Laz- something right?” He laughed and said “yeah man. (He says man a lot) you’re devin right?” Since we both had a free period, we walked over to the cafateria together and ate breakfast. We talked the entire time, for an hour which is rare for me to do. But he was easy to talk to. And it felt rather natural as he is very non judgmental and kind of carefree. I wonder if maybe we could be friends in the future. We’ll have to see. He did invite me to a church youth group but it would feel weird for me going since I’m no longer a Christian.

My next class was piano. After looking through the syllabus and seeing the topics we’d be covering in the class, I walked up to the teacher once the hour was over and asked if it would be possible to test into piano 2. It was the easiest test I’ve ever taken as she asked me 3 questions. “Do you know chords? Do you know major and minor keys? Do you know arpeggios?” She said arpeggios with a concerned face, which I thought was strange but I said “yes” to all 3 of these questions. And with that she walked to one of the offices, filled out a permission paper for piano 2, and handed it to me. I thought it was quite funny that she didn’t have me actually do anything to prove I knew those things, she just had me say yes 3 times.

Third class was jazz improv. This was by far my favorite class and teacher. When he actually talked about music, he didn’t talk to us like we’ve never touched an instrument before (even though I’m sure some of us haven’t), he went straight into talking about playing by ear, the circle of 5th/4ths, transposition, key identification, modulation, ect. I’m so excited to be in this class, i has purposely arranged my schedule just so I could be in this class and I feel it was a great choice. At one point in the class he asked us to say a song we might be interested in playing by ear, a simple one. Most people said happy birthday and ode to joy and simple ones like that. When he got to me, I thought, this is a jazz improv class, so I had said “autumn leaves”. “Ohh a jazz standard, very nice.” He then asked someone to give him a key, in which he played perfectly on his sax. Which, I’m sure he’s played it a hundred times. He walked up to me at the end of class and asked, since I didn’t bring an instrument (i didn’t know we were supposed to) what I played. And I said piano, guitar, and violin. I told him I mostly play piano and he said he’d try to bring one in for me. And I said if not, I’ll bring one of my other ones. Hopefully he can though, for my knowledge on jazz scales are highly lacking on guitar and violin xc

my last class was music theory. At the end of the class, he handed out a pretest to see where we all are I guess. I scored a hundred percent on it. I asked if skipping to music theory 2 was possible and he said I’d have to talk to the supervisor guy, who wasn’t in his office at the time. We’ll see if I can. If not, it’s fine because I don’t think I get credit for any classes that I permission to skip..

thats college I guess. It seems like all positive things I guess, but there is a strong negative factor to this as well that I’m very much worried about. In order to have gone to college, I had to quit my job. My classes are Monday Wednesday Friday from 8am to 1pm and in the 2 weeks I’ve been applying to over 12 jobs, none of them have gotten in touch with me. This is my first day being unemployed in 3 years. My dad doesn’t really want to talk to me, he’s actually avoiding me quite a lot since it was his job I quit. He might even threaten to kick me out if I don’t find a job soon. Tomorrow I shall print my reseme and start going business to business applying to various job positions in person in hopes one will accept me. I guess I’ll just hope one will.

Thats all for now. My mom was watching this cute animal show when I got home and it had baby rhinos in it! 😮 it was the best thing ever! .. Imma go now.