Sunday
Hell of a week!
So here's how my week played out.
Saturday night I stayed up until 2 in the morning waiting for Holly and her family to come pick me up for the drive to Gainesville. I had woken up at 11:00 that morning so I didn't have any chance of getting to sleep before she came. And then I couldn't even sleep in the car. I maybe got an hour or so of sleep before we got there. And that was really the first all nighter I've had...
Sunday we moved in. We had auditions (I made first horn in the upper band) and then rehearsal for three hours, where I found out that I had a bunch of solos in the music. We ate at the Gator Dining Hall (which is where we had breakfast and dinner basically every day) and then went to the auditorium (which, for the record, is absolutely gorgeous. It's a brick building with a wood interior. however for all of its physical beauty it's a very boomy hall and is pretty bad as far as echoes goes) for a faculty performance. I fell asleep during the performance. I don't really know how I made it through that entire day on an hour of sleep, to be honest.
Our first friends were a couple of saxophone players that Holly met. They were rooming together. Later in the week one of them basically ditched us (but that's alright because we thought she was a bit butch and didn't really like her anyway).
Monday started with a two hour rehearsal and then we had our Drum Major elective for the first time. Later in the day there was a "master class" for each section, which was kind of a waste of time for horns (we played cards for the last half hour). Our evening activity for that night was like.. sports. Holly, the butch girl, and I went off and played basketball with a bunch of guys. A couple of these guys were from St. Thomas, and they were all absurdly ripped.. very nice kids though. And they have the best accents I've ever heard. I don't really play basketball, but I'm agressive when I play sports and managed to score an AMAZING point that made me crack up (I kinda threw it straight up in the air from far away and it swished right into the net). This was the point where we stopped liking aforementioned butch girl because she started being nasty and competitive. I don't mind competition, but she was just a bitch about it.
Tuesday was rehearsal again and Drum Major course again. The pieces we were playing were First Suite in E flat (Holst), Song for Lindsay (HUGE HUGE HUGE horn solo), Ngoma za Kenya (didn't like it at all, oversimplified and Disney-like), and His Honor (march with a great trumpet feature). I really liked the music, except the third song. Evening activity was a movie. The choices were lame so I ended up sleeping through 10,000 BC. This was the day when Holly and I started sitting with a really fun group of people; one kid went to Dreyfoos, one to Jupiter High, one to St. Thomas Aquinas (the school that's knocked our football team out of the playoffs several years in a row), and then rest to some random high school an hour outside of Orlando. There was another kid who followed us around a lot (he was really crushing on Holly, methinks) but I don't really know anything about him.
Wednesday.. more rehearsal, more drum major. Evening activity was bowling/arcadegames (but we mostly bowled). Thursday was more rehearsal and drum major, but during the drum major thing we had a "competition" where we had to present a salute and conduct the majors for this dumb song called "air for band" or conduct to a recording. Holly and I went together and conducted UF's fanfare/fight song, and I failed a bunch of times. :-/ I have bad recovery time. The evening activity was a dance (which was fun, just because I like dancing even though I inevitably make a fool out of myself).
Friday we rehearsed a bit, then went back to dorms to pack up, then performed. They didn't warm us up NEARLY enough so I sounded bad. Cracked a note or two in a solo here and there, which sucked. But evidently other people thought it sounded okay. Right before the last song they gave out awards for best brass, woodwind, and percussion players as well as best campers (male/female). I didn't know the best female camper because she was in the Blue Band (which we renamed "poopoo band" because they mostly sucked, but the best male camper was this great guy named Alan from Arkansas. He was such a sweet guy, and you could tell he was one of those happy people. This amazing E flat clarinet player (cutest clarinet you've ever seen, very small) won best woodwind, some girl from Buchholz won percussion (Buchhoooolz!!!! *shakes fist at math club kids*), and guess who won brass? Yeah, uhhuh. Me. Honestly, I don't think I deserved it... I mean, there was this euphonium player with the most INCREDIBLE tone. She made me want to cry when she played. There were some kickass trumpet players (double-tongued like CRAZY in His Honor). But they chose me (probably just because I was featured so much in the program... more by accident than anything else, because the solos were for first horn and that's the part they put me on..). So now I have ins with all of the band directors at UF and so I'm pretty sure if I want to go there, I'll have no problem getting in for music.
All in all, camp was the most fun I've had in a long time. Met so many great people, funny people, and/or amazingly nice people, and hopefully I'll see them again if and when we go up to UF for a marching band game sometime this winter to play in the stands. And most importantly, I realized that I need music in my life. When I'm playing with a decent group (like this past week) with a director who knows what he/she's doing, it's so much fun, and in general musicians are the coolest, friendliest, and most agreeable types of people. I've compared my interactions this week with band kids with the times that we've gone to math competitions and talked to people there, and math kids or any other random group of kids can just be mean or rude as hell. Or antisocial and bland. But real musicians always seem to share these good traits. And really, my best friends have been in band ever since we started band in middle school.
So I finally got my AP scores today. They've been at mom's house for a while, but I didn't want to call her and ask her or even tell her that they came in because I wanted to open the envelope myself and sulk to myself about how bad they would be. As it turns out, my scores were:
AP US History: 5
AP Calculus: 5
AP English: 5
AP Physics: 4
AP SPANISH: 5
So damn. I wasn't expecting four five's. ESPECIALLY IN FREAKING SPANISH OMG native speakers and TEACHERS don't pull off 5's. US history was a pleasant surprise because I had Byers, who created a poor and superficial learning environment. English I'm happy about too, just because I would've been disappointed with anything less. Calculus I'm actually pretty surprised about because I know I got a bunch of the questions on limits wrong, but still managed to pull that 5! And physics... while it would've been frickin baller to get straight 5's, it doesn't matter that much because 1. physics is just NOT my thing, 2. i think i skipped like 20-30 questions on the m/c and got one question of the FR about magnetism TOTALLY wrong. At any rate, I'm officially an AP Scholar with Distinction and I've gotten more 5's than 4's on all of my AP exams. six 5's and four 4's.
So here's how my week played out.
Saturday night I stayed up until 2 in the morning waiting for Holly and her family to come pick me up for the drive to Gainesville. I had woken up at 11:00 that morning so I didn't have any chance of getting to sleep before she came. And then I couldn't even sleep in the car. I maybe got an hour or so of sleep before we got there. And that was really the first all nighter I've had...
Sunday we moved in. We had auditions (I made first horn in the upper band) and then rehearsal for three hours, where I found out that I had a bunch of solos in the music. We ate at the Gator Dining Hall (which is where we had breakfast and dinner basically every day) and then went to the auditorium (which, for the record, is absolutely gorgeous. It's a brick building with a wood interior. however for all of its physical beauty it's a very boomy hall and is pretty bad as far as echoes goes) for a faculty performance. I fell asleep during the performance. I don't really know how I made it through that entire day on an hour of sleep, to be honest.
Our first friends were a couple of saxophone players that Holly met. They were rooming together. Later in the week one of them basically ditched us (but that's alright because we thought she was a bit butch and didn't really like her anyway).
Monday started with a two hour rehearsal and then we had our Drum Major elective for the first time. Later in the day there was a "master class" for each section, which was kind of a waste of time for horns (we played cards for the last half hour). Our evening activity for that night was like.. sports. Holly, the butch girl, and I went off and played basketball with a bunch of guys. A couple of these guys were from St. Thomas, and they were all absurdly ripped.. very nice kids though. And they have the best accents I've ever heard. I don't really play basketball, but I'm agressive when I play sports and managed to score an AMAZING point that made me crack up (I kinda threw it straight up in the air from far away and it swished right into the net). This was the point where we stopped liking aforementioned butch girl because she started being nasty and competitive. I don't mind competition, but she was just a bitch about it.
Tuesday was rehearsal again and Drum Major course again. The pieces we were playing were First Suite in E flat (Holst), Song for Lindsay (HUGE HUGE HUGE horn solo), Ngoma za Kenya (didn't like it at all, oversimplified and Disney-like), and His Honor (march with a great trumpet feature). I really liked the music, except the third song. Evening activity was a movie. The choices were lame so I ended up sleeping through 10,000 BC. This was the day when Holly and I started sitting with a really fun group of people; one kid went to Dreyfoos, one to Jupiter High, one to St. Thomas Aquinas (the school that's knocked our football team out of the playoffs several years in a row), and then rest to some random high school an hour outside of Orlando. There was another kid who followed us around a lot (he was really crushing on Holly, methinks) but I don't really know anything about him.
Wednesday.. more rehearsal, more drum major. Evening activity was bowling/arcadegames (but we mostly bowled). Thursday was more rehearsal and drum major, but during the drum major thing we had a "competition" where we had to present a salute and conduct the majors for this dumb song called "air for band" or conduct to a recording. Holly and I went together and conducted UF's fanfare/fight song, and I failed a bunch of times. :-/ I have bad recovery time. The evening activity was a dance (which was fun, just because I like dancing even though I inevitably make a fool out of myself).
Friday we rehearsed a bit, then went back to dorms to pack up, then performed. They didn't warm us up NEARLY enough so I sounded bad. Cracked a note or two in a solo here and there, which sucked. But evidently other people thought it sounded okay. Right before the last song they gave out awards for best brass, woodwind, and percussion players as well as best campers (male/female). I didn't know the best female camper because she was in the Blue Band (which we renamed "poopoo band" because they mostly sucked, but the best male camper was this great guy named Alan from Arkansas. He was such a sweet guy, and you could tell he was one of those happy people. This amazing E flat clarinet player (cutest clarinet you've ever seen, very small) won best woodwind, some girl from Buchholz won percussion (Buchhoooolz!!!! *shakes fist at math club kids*), and guess who won brass? Yeah, uhhuh. Me. Honestly, I don't think I deserved it... I mean, there was this euphonium player with the most INCREDIBLE tone. She made me want to cry when she played. There were some kickass trumpet players (double-tongued like CRAZY in His Honor). But they chose me (probably just because I was featured so much in the program... more by accident than anything else, because the solos were for first horn and that's the part they put me on..). So now I have ins with all of the band directors at UF and so I'm pretty sure if I want to go there, I'll have no problem getting in for music.
All in all, camp was the most fun I've had in a long time. Met so many great people, funny people, and/or amazingly nice people, and hopefully I'll see them again if and when we go up to UF for a marching band game sometime this winter to play in the stands. And most importantly, I realized that I need music in my life. When I'm playing with a decent group (like this past week) with a director who knows what he/she's doing, it's so much fun, and in general musicians are the coolest, friendliest, and most agreeable types of people. I've compared my interactions this week with band kids with the times that we've gone to math competitions and talked to people there, and math kids or any other random group of kids can just be mean or rude as hell. Or antisocial and bland. But real musicians always seem to share these good traits. And really, my best friends have been in band ever since we started band in middle school.
So I finally got my AP scores today. They've been at mom's house for a while, but I didn't want to call her and ask her or even tell her that they came in because I wanted to open the envelope myself and sulk to myself about how bad they would be. As it turns out, my scores were:
AP US History: 5
AP Calculus: 5
AP English: 5
AP Physics: 4
AP SPANISH: 5
So damn. I wasn't expecting four five's. ESPECIALLY IN FREAKING SPANISH OMG native speakers and TEACHERS don't pull off 5's. US history was a pleasant surprise because I had Byers, who created a poor and superficial learning environment. English I'm happy about too, just because I would've been disappointed with anything less. Calculus I'm actually pretty surprised about because I know I got a bunch of the questions on limits wrong, but still managed to pull that 5! And physics... while it would've been frickin baller to get straight 5's, it doesn't matter that much because 1. physics is just NOT my thing, 2. i think i skipped like 20-30 questions on the m/c and got one question of the FR about magnetism TOTALLY wrong. At any rate, I'm officially an AP Scholar with Distinction and I've gotten more 5's than 4's on all of my AP exams. six 5's and four 4's.