Salmon.
Basically I don't know how to word what I want to say, so it may come across as arrogant.
I got my first first for composition. I know a first is hard to get (10% of students, etc), but sometimes it can mean SO much more than a mark.
I've had a handful of firsts (not enough!) and this year I've had one for a presentation and one for an essay. But never for composition, it's always been a high 2:1, in fact it's always been 67 or 68. The department in which I compose is a very cliquey, avant-garde place due to it's reputation, so often I feel penalised for writing music that doesn't quite fit 'their' mould, So for my final assignment of this year, which was a free choice, I decided to do exactly what I wanted to do. Write a dramatic setting of Seamus Heaney's Storm on the Island. I've been thinking about this for a long time, and although my original conception was a lot more grand, the outcome was still an achievement I'm really proud of.
I'm not going to waffle on tons, but I was slightly ridiculed by three seperate lecturers/composers by being too 'ambituous' and 'arrogant' for assuming I could set such powerful words convincingly and for such a strong force (string quartet, percussion and bass-baritone). And even in the final recording criticisms were being thrown at my work - I really thought they would just flunk me.
But no. It was a good piece of music which I wanted to write, and not conform to their avant-garde crap, whilst composing in an idiom I'm not embarrased of.
Anyway. Incoherent rant over.