I have a plan
After spending a stupidly long time putting off making any kind of final decision, I finally have a plan for next year.
The bad part: I won't be in Toronto next year. See, as much as I love the city, and as much as transferring to yet another school for undergrad could hypothetically work, I think that going back to CCSU is my best option at this point. I mean, I currently have credits from, what, 5 universities? University of Connecticut, Ithaca College, University of Hartford, Central Connecticut State University, University of Toronto. It's stupid that I don't have my undergrad degree yet. And as much as I hate the thought of leaving the city and all my friends here, I do think that it's the smartest and best option I have at this point.
The good part: If what I'm thinking about checks out with the registrar and my advisor and everyone, I should have my undergraduate degree in one year, without even having to kill myself taking a stupid number of classes each semester. See, CCSU has these fairly newly-created Bachelor of Arts in music programs, and I checked the credits and I'm surprisingly close to having everything I need for either a BA in Music History or a BA in Music Theory and Composition. These are fairly useless degrees in the grand scheme of things, and I don't expect to ever use them in the real world. BUT, they are actual, complete undergrad degrees, which gives me a whole bunch of new, wonderful freedoms:
1. It opens up a whole host of less-shitty jobs to me, so I can work for a while and support myself.
2. It means that I can apply to programs specifically for teaching certification, and get that in one big chunk whenever I want.
3. I will actually be in a set academic program that makes sense again!
4. It means that after one year in Connecticut, I can move wherever I want to get that certification-- including back here to Toronto (Hell, from what I understand, certification up here is only one year, so if I did get accepted it would be even faster than in CT).
5. It means that instead of 2+ years of absolutely hellish workloads and tendinitis relapses, I'll have 2 semesters of difficult but reasonable and probably very interesting work to look forward to. After looking at the BA requirements, I got excited about school and learning for the first time in the past 2 years.
I like this plan. I'm resigned to next year sucking, but with the new plan the period of sucking is shorter. I've been dreading going back to the music ed program again too-- I put off a lot of courses that I couldn't do in the middle of tendinitis relapses, so if I stayed in the program I would have had to immediately start taking them at the same time as the extremely time-consuming education courses. The thought of trying to learn all the brass and percussion instruments at the same time while also doing a ridiculous number of observations at schools all over the state made me want to give up and drop out altogether, not to mention that my tendinitis still isn't under very good control so another miserable relapse is practically a given. Now I'm actually happy to think about how much having that extra knowledge of theory or history will help me as a teacher in the future, and planning out my hypothetical second-semester independent study. (Warning- music geek shit) I wonder if I could do it on Hindemith... I always thought he was a little under-appreciated as a composer, and doing an in-depth analysis of his Symphony in Bb for Band would probably be really interesting, plus I've already performed his Clarinet Sonata so I have a bit of background understanding of his work. So many strange intervals, so few actual standard theory chords-- it would probably be hellishly difficult.(end music geek shit) Sorry about that to all my non-musician friends.
So having a plan is very, very good. For, now though, I mostly want to enjoy my last two months in Toronto as much as humanly possible.
The bad part: I won't be in Toronto next year. See, as much as I love the city, and as much as transferring to yet another school for undergrad could hypothetically work, I think that going back to CCSU is my best option at this point. I mean, I currently have credits from, what, 5 universities? University of Connecticut, Ithaca College, University of Hartford, Central Connecticut State University, University of Toronto. It's stupid that I don't have my undergrad degree yet. And as much as I hate the thought of leaving the city and all my friends here, I do think that it's the smartest and best option I have at this point.
The good part: If what I'm thinking about checks out with the registrar and my advisor and everyone, I should have my undergraduate degree in one year, without even having to kill myself taking a stupid number of classes each semester. See, CCSU has these fairly newly-created Bachelor of Arts in music programs, and I checked the credits and I'm surprisingly close to having everything I need for either a BA in Music History or a BA in Music Theory and Composition. These are fairly useless degrees in the grand scheme of things, and I don't expect to ever use them in the real world. BUT, they are actual, complete undergrad degrees, which gives me a whole bunch of new, wonderful freedoms:
1. It opens up a whole host of less-shitty jobs to me, so I can work for a while and support myself.
2. It means that I can apply to programs specifically for teaching certification, and get that in one big chunk whenever I want.
3. I will actually be in a set academic program that makes sense again!
4. It means that after one year in Connecticut, I can move wherever I want to get that certification-- including back here to Toronto (Hell, from what I understand, certification up here is only one year, so if I did get accepted it would be even faster than in CT).
5. It means that instead of 2+ years of absolutely hellish workloads and tendinitis relapses, I'll have 2 semesters of difficult but reasonable and probably very interesting work to look forward to. After looking at the BA requirements, I got excited about school and learning for the first time in the past 2 years.
I like this plan. I'm resigned to next year sucking, but with the new plan the period of sucking is shorter. I've been dreading going back to the music ed program again too-- I put off a lot of courses that I couldn't do in the middle of tendinitis relapses, so if I stayed in the program I would have had to immediately start taking them at the same time as the extremely time-consuming education courses. The thought of trying to learn all the brass and percussion instruments at the same time while also doing a ridiculous number of observations at schools all over the state made me want to give up and drop out altogether, not to mention that my tendinitis still isn't under very good control so another miserable relapse is practically a given. Now I'm actually happy to think about how much having that extra knowledge of theory or history will help me as a teacher in the future, and planning out my hypothetical second-semester independent study. (Warning- music geek shit) I wonder if I could do it on Hindemith... I always thought he was a little under-appreciated as a composer, and doing an in-depth analysis of his Symphony in Bb for Band would probably be really interesting, plus I've already performed his Clarinet Sonata so I have a bit of background understanding of his work. So many strange intervals, so few actual standard theory chords-- it would probably be hellishly difficult.(end music geek shit) Sorry about that to all my non-musician friends.
So having a plan is very, very good. For, now though, I mostly want to enjoy my last two months in Toronto as much as humanly possible.