TWO WEEK WARNING

Yessirree. Two weeks to go until we face the final finals for Academic year 2003-2004. Students are approaching their last two weeks of lessons in various ways. The few who have had their recitals are either choosing to not come in at all, or come in and yak, or come in and sing whatever they feel like for awhile and then leave. More power to 'em, I say. They worked hard, sang their gig, and now they are reaping the rewards. Plus I get two seconds to hop online, which isn't all bad, either.



Other students are coming in with caveats ablazin'. They try to bombard me with the "good news" part before they hit me with the bad news. Unfortunately for them, the good news generally isn't good enough for me (once again, there is no such thing as "almost memorized" -- it's an either/or proposition), and the bad news is worse than they'd led me to believe. With time running short, the best I can do is show them measure-for-measure the errors of their way, and tell them that I'm here to fix and polish, but they need to bring me some semblance of a song TO fix and polish.



Others still are in decent shape, making adequate weekly progress to make me happy. These students have learned that you can't "cram" music like you cram for a test, because if you do, the song drips out the ears, leaving the unfortunate performer with LURCH written all over their face.



My opera/musical theatre class only has seven days to go until performance. Today was the first chance to run it start to finish. Things were as I expected them to be: a little on the rough side. OK. A lot on the rough side. I told them that if they wanted to follow the philosophy of Bad dress, good performance, that was one thing...but unfortunately they hadn't yet reached the level of "bad dress". We're rehearsing again tonight. If I leave the college by 9:00pm, I'll consider myself lucky.

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