Hi there.
Today I am going to be talking about one of the most stressful things in my life, Expressions. I go to an arts school and to emphasize different types of arts they make it mandatory that we do something. My art is singing. There are several different categories of arts, including, but not limited to; music, visual, drama and creative writing.
Expressions is like a big talent show where the whole school, of almost 300 students, participates in a couple months of work. We showcase our talents and present them to the school. If we are good enough, we make it into Best of Expressions.
I chose to sing because that is my “talent” and something I am very passionate about. I also write but I can write papers any time during school, but I take the opportunity to show what others look over.
We have these things called Project Days, where we work on the project for the trimester. (Yes we have trimesters, it helps us earn more college credits.) Prior to this we chose our “group” that we were going to be conveying this year’s theme, Justice, Just Us. During the first project day, the music group was split into 3 mini groups. There were about 90 of us and we all needed to find where we belonged. The groups were Digital music, acoustic and amps.
I chose acoustic. Two reasons; one because I like to sing live, might as well go big and do it in front of everyone, and two because my favorite teacher was in it. It worked out well, I’ve been messing with him ever since the beginning of the year and now it’s just funny.
The second project day we wrote out our “proposal”, which was basically a paper having us explain what we were doing, who we were doing it with, what we needed, and how it explained the theme.
I chose “With Ears To See and Eyes To Hear” by Sleeping With Sirens. I’ve been obsessed with that song, and band, since forever and I already knew all the lyrics. I helped it fit into the theme as Justice because it kind of explains fake friends and stuff, and it says, “Liar you’ll pay for your sins.”, so it means what you give is what you get…which I think is justice.
I am doing the acoustic version of the song and the track basically is guitar playing, so I tried to find someone to play. Luckily, I had a friend who was already performing solo and guitar who was willing to play for me. He adapts well to songs, learns them in minutes, and he’s a great person.
We started to practice the second project day and I printed out some sheet music to go along with the lyrics. He started to play it wrong and I’m not the type of person to confront him about it, so I just told him to listen to the song more closely. He still didn’t get it and told me to sing it so he could get it better. I am pretty shy when it comes to my voice so I just told him to wait. When we did practice it he kind of got it.
Now he follows me around with a guitar, paying the cords trying to get me to sing, saying “We need to practice.”. I will practice but not around so many people and during class I already know all the lyrics he just needs to learn how to play the guitar to me while I sing. The problem with it, is he thinks you play all the cords together but in actuality it’s a cord for each line.
I’m stressed out about this, not only because of the fact he doesn’t have the guitar playing down, and Expressions is in like late February. But also, my grades aren’t the greatest, I have to do 40 hours of community service for court and some people don’t offer it because of court, and drama with new people is arising.
I’m trying to fake a little happiness and find some place that will let me do community service because my next court date is March 18th and if I have that together, it looks good. So does paying my $25 dollar restitution fine and doing good on Home supervision, which is crazy.
I will find a way to raise my grades, hopefully by my next court date, because my judge loves good attendance and good grades I need good grades and community service for college anyways so that’s good too.
If you could comment any suggestions on ways to help lower my stress, or community service hours, or a good way to communicate with the guy it is much appreciated.
Thanks a lot, D.