Posts Tagged ‘music’
I opened it and the result is….
I didn’t get in.
I waited until Ben got home at about 2:30 in the afternoon before I opened the letter. We both sat in the lounge room and decided that it would probably be better for my sanity if I opened the letter right away than spend the next five days wondering what is inside, especially as more and more notices were appearing on facebook of people in my course who had been accepted in the Bachelor of Music.
I opened it and read the first line. The tone wasn’t right. It wasn’t uplifting or exciting. I knew right away what I was holding, it was a rejection letter. A cold, emotionless rejection letter. There was no reason for me not being offered a place, no explanation of why they hadn’t said yes, just a paragraph and a half thanking me for my audition and the line “we are not able to offer you a place in this program at the current time”. I looked at the letter. I looked at Ben. I looked at the letter again and then burst into tears. I was crushed.
I couldn’t understand it. I had worked hard all year. I had done extra performances. I had practiced more than any other person in the course. How could I not get in? It didn’t seem fair or right. I couldn’t comprehend it and all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and disappear from the world. I felt like such a failure.
It wasn’t until that moment that I realised how much I had wanted that life. I wanted to sing every day and I wanted to learn. It didn’t seem fair that a letter could change the direction of my entire life.
I went through the next few days broken hearted. I felt empty inside and it was hard to stay focused on the exam. I went through swinging emotions of “I don’t give a shit about this damn exam. They’ve already made up their mind that I’m not good enough.” to “I’m going to show them what they missed out on. I am going to practise so hard they are going to beg me to be in the course.” I did practise and I did work incredibly hard on my exam pieces. I also spent long periods of time crying in bed, eating marshmallows and watching crappy television.
The day before my exam I found out that we would be singing in the Music Auditorium for the exams. This is without a doubt my favourite place to sing. With this idea in mind, a sort of farewell to university, I went to that exam more prepared than ever. I wore my favourite dress and shoes, I had my hair and make-up done nicely and I went in there thinking about nothing other than singing my best and performing for an auditorium full of no-one, but imagined it was full of my friends. I felt amazing and it was the best singing I had ever produced in my lifetime. The best part was I had done it for me and not some audition panel. This was my moment to say goodbye and move on.
Image by castorgirl (Flickr)
Okay so I guess I have to explain the last post a little bit because my current state of being has obviously been affecting Ben, more than I originally intended or thought. I have been going a little bit nuts lately. I had to make a decision at the start of the year to either go back to university and study music or continue on working as a school teacher and leading the life that the majority of people choose because it is “easier”. I chose to go back to university and it honestly has been the best decision I have ever made. I love every day of it!
Over the last few weeks I have had to make another decision and that was whether to continue in my studies. The course I am currently enrolled in finishes at the end of this year. If I want to continue I would have to audition for the Bachelor of Music course. Last week I made the decision and sent off my application pack, so far so good…or so I thought.
I have been surrounded by babies lately. Two friends have new borns, my sister has just announced she is pregnant again, another two friends are pregnant and then I worked at the baby expo where every second person was pregnant. It is overloading my small circuitry! I really really really want to have a baby but I have made this commitment to study. Some days it is just harder than other to convince myself that I have made the right decision.
Add on top of that this constant feeling that I have left the whole university thing too late. The average age for people in the course is 19 / 20. I am 27. Now I know that isn’t old but when you think it in terms of most people would be finishing their masters by my age and going out there to get their first big job, I am well behind the 8 ball. I also have trouble keeping up in my theory classes due mostly to the fact that I haven’t been studying music since I was a kid. It is a bit much some days.
To try to combat this a little I have been over commiting myself to work also. I spent the majority of the past week working and have had very little time to spend with Ben. On one hand I think I need the money to get by but really I don’t and spending time with Ben is much more important. I just feel slightly responsible for getting myself back in the black financially after all it was my idea to go to Europe.
So there it is. Blah! My thought patterns on a page at the moment. I guess I need to lay off Ben for a little while. Accept my decisions and learn to live with them because I honestly believe I have made the right choice and the future is going to be brilliant!
I found out yesterday that Universal Studios Singapore is holding their audition tour again in a month. I auditioned last year, quite successfully I thought seeing as I was onboarded but then missed out on a job. It was a really hard thing for me to do and i got a lot furthur than I ever expected I would. I was lacking in confidence when I went and did it more due to my circumstances last year than any undying passion to work at a theme park. This year though I’m not sure it is worth me going through it again.
Last year I was in a place where I didn’t want to be. I was in a large amount of financial debt, I was working at a school I didn’t particularly like, dealing with people and situations which were putting too much stress on my already stressed out mind, I was constantly getting sick and I was dealing with my own personal demons of thinking my life was heading nowhere. In twelve months a lot has turned around.
This year I am in a place I mostly want to be. I have cleared up most of my debts including my huge personal loan, I work for three different companies performing jobs that I have a lot of fun in, I have new friends at WAAPA who I enjoy spending time with and learning new things with, I haven’t been sick in a long time and I finally feel like I am headed in the right direction with my performing. I am learning a lot about who I am and I get to spend my days doing things like singing and learning French, which makes me incredibly happy.
Even though Universal is still there and will continue to be there I’m not going to audition this year. It would be an amazing job and a great opportunity but I am in a different place now. I have chosen a path which is going to lead me in a different direction to the one I thought I was headed for last year.
I am still disappointed that the job didn’t work out last year and I didn’t get to spend a year working and singing in Singapore, but I am happy that it took that moment to get me to reexamine my life and make decisions like going to WAAPA and quitting my teaching job, decisions which were very difficult but have proven to be good for me. I am much happier than I was and with a little hard work maybe one day I will get a contract as good as the one I missed out on last year.
Image taken by Ben of a very happy Emma, a huge change from the dark and stormy 2010 version.
I know it has been a while since my last post but I’ve been very busy being a “student”! Ahh that magical state of being where you constantly find yourself broke, eating crappy food often of the two minute noodle variety and suddenly finding yourself at 4am sitting in a computer lab wondering why you didn’t start your assignment earlier.
It hasn’t been all that bad, yet. For starters I haven’t had any assignments due and I have a husband who won’t let me eat badly despite my best efforts. I have found though that I am battling a different variety of, well not really “problems”, but they aren’t pleasant.
First of all I feel really old. I am the second oldest in my course, the oldest is a Chinese exchange student who let’s face it still looks pretty young, (what is it about Asians and their ability to look fifteen until they hit their mid-forties?). There are five singers in the course, one is 16 (she is a high school student who does the course part-time), two are 17, one is 18 and then there is me sitting pretty at 27. I don’t look all that much older but it is difficult to strike up a conversation with kids whose biggest achievement to date is graduating highschool and who never seem to want to talk about anything other than their school ball or the TEE.
Second thing on the list is discipline to get down to work and study. I have made a rather elaborate timetable with break times, class time and study times all scheduled in. I even have breakfast, morning walks and showering scheduled. Think of Hermione from Harry Potter and you start to get an idea of how anal I am about schedules. It is a fantastic piece of work and would work brilliantly if I didn’t keep sabotaging myself into not doing my work. I make excuses, have naps, complain about being hungry, pretty much anything can be a distraction. I’m getting better and I do like the sense of satisfaction when I do sit down and stick to the schedule it is just still getting there for me at the moment.
At the beginning of the year I had trouble getting work that would pay regularly. I worked but some of those jobs are yet to pay me (yes I know this is ridiculous). As a result I spent most of January living off credit. I am now paying off my credit cards as well as paying the new bills and as a result I now have very little money to do anything else. Work is starting to pick up now but it is that lag which is killing me. I especially hate this because I try to use my credit cards as little as possible.
It is also weird getting used to catching public transport every day. I purposely did not buy a parking permit for university so I would have further encouragement to not use my car this year. For one thing a parking permit costs $75 which I don’t have at the moment, and if I was to drive to uni without one I would either have to pay for parking by the hour or get there at 7am to get one of the free parking bays which usually fill up by 7:30am. When I was working at the school last year I tried to catch public transport as much as possible but there were days when I just couldn’t be bothered so I would sleep in and drive to school. Now I don’t have that option, if I want to drive to uni and have it not coast me a fortune I have to get up even earlier.
All in all though this whole student thing is pretty good. I am enjoying the course more than I thought I was going to. I have started to talk to people and hopefully make some new friends even if they are seventeen and can’t come to the pub with me yet. If I can just get over these tiny little “un-problems” I am having at the moment then everything will be even sweeter. It is going to be an amazing year.
Image by FightHIVinDC (flickr)
After some unhappiness this past year and after examining a lot of the things I want to be doing with my life but I currently seem to be putting them on the back burner, I have decided to change the way I do things. I am starting to realise that the only time I have is now and if I don’t do the things I want to do now then chances are I will never get around to doing them.
One of the things I have wanted to do for some time is to study music in a little more detail. I have been studying singing for about seven years now on and off with singing teachers and I attended WAAPA for a little while but I always doubted any talent that I had and never took myself seriously. I want to be serious now. I have been feeling like something is missing and noticing how happy I am when I sing is all the evidence I need to know that I am doing the right thing.
I have applied to study Classical Music (Voice Studies) at WAAPA next year. I have an audition in two weeks as well as a Music Theory test. This is what I am terrified about. I think I am good enough to get into the course but I am panicking about the theory test. I have very limited ability in music theory due to a lack of exposure to the subject. I did learn it for a little while, and enjoyed it, but my learning has been very slow. I don’t want to miss out on this course. I know I am good enough to do really well in it and with my age I am starting to run out of chances to go back to uni and study. I feel like this is my last chance.
I am studying for the test but am still worried that my age, lack of theory and the fact that I don’t have a singing teacher at the moment and haven’t had one for over a year is not going to go in my favour. I want to do this. I need to do this.
Image by (phil h) (flickr)
