Under Pressure: Downfalls and Triumphs

It's been a fascinating week.

After an exceedingly bad ensemble placement audition and an exceedingly good chair placement audition, I found myself at a musical impasse - I wasn't exactly proud of myself, but I wasn't completely disappointed, either. As always in the music world, the next opportunity to make myself proud (and prove my worth to any and all skeptics in the studio) came earlier today. Every week, the brass studio gets together and sight reads music. Sight reading is something I've always enjoyed, since I'm relatively good at it and I like the challenge, and today was no exception. I got a little nervous when the conductor looked at me and said, "Whoever's playing first trumpet... It's important." [That's band director language for don't screw it up.] I looked at the piece, and sure enough, it was high and technical, but after a short, silent pep talk, I took a deep breath and calmed down. The sight reading went fantastic, and even though the part turned out to be a little more exposed than I'd expected, it went really well and I even got a "nice job!" from my trumpet professor. Mission accomplished!

Anyway, I'm usually pretty good in unfamiliar situations - I understand the whole "grace under pressure" thing. However, in the last couple of weeks I've uncovered my downfall: Frisbee. [Really not kidding.] To put it bluntly, I'm not good at it, and whenever I threw the thing it would either go wildly astray or end up short of the person I was passing to. My friends here like the game, so I usually just stand with them and watch as they try new things (and always seem to make it to the person they're aiming for). Last night, it ended up being just me and two of the guys, and somehow I ended up throwing pretty often. [I'm not sure if they planned that or if it just happened organically.] The first few (okay, the first ton) were complete crap, but toward the end I got more confident and actually started throwing catchable passes. Shoutout to those two guys - they know who they are - who were patient the entire time.

Besides auditions (which I think I'm FINALLY finished with) and just-for-fun stuff, life's pretty normal. I'm loving everything here, and now I know I have the support I need to be my best.
Love you all,
Megan