Summer of Art

I have been working on Part 2 of my social justice series, but today I'm going to take a break from it and talk about my summer of art.

Before I do that, I want to backtrack and talk a little bit about my grandmother.  See, her mother died when she was only a week old, so my grandmother didn't really know her mom.  Into her 80's, she could be heard saying "My mother never taught me...".

Now... I love my grandmother, and I am sorry that she lost her mom.  But I figure, that's something that dominated the first 20, perhaps 30 years of her life.  I'd accept that excuse from a youngster.

Eventually?  Somewhere in the 20s or 30s, I would hope, I figure that I am responsible for my own life.  Whatever happened in my childhood that held me back then... well, now I'm a grownup, and responsible for my own learning.  If I want to learn something, I'm going to set out to do it.  Even old-school, I could always go to the library and find books with ideas, read the newspaper for classes and seminars, check the phone book for schools.  New-school, it can start with Google.

In the past, I have written about the hangups and holdups that I had with my music and art.  As an undergrad, while I did participate in the bands, I focused my non-class activities on engineering homework and other things, rather than music practice.

First cut

The summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I had the recurring nightmare that I would be cut from the marching band.  I hadn't marched a show on the field my entire first season, and I wasn't sure which would be worse - knowing I wouldn't be performing all season, or failing the Challenges for every show.

I practiced playing, and tried to work on marching, but I didn't know anybody in South Bend who could help me.  I felt like I was on my own.  Brian was encouraging.  Dear Brother #1 was... not.

Supporting each other

In the last post, I wrote a little bit about our falling in love.  It's frustrating, that so many of the fairy tales and stories that we read, hear, see on television, etc..., so many stories just stop and handwave "happily ever after."  Because I know that the story continues.  That happiness may continue, but it's not a constant.  Nothing is.  Just because you've found someone, does not mean that everything else will suddenly go right.

Finding Brian was the *start*of something right.  But that didn't mean things were perfect, or that all troubles had ended.  I was only in my first semester of engineering school, at one of the top schools in the country.  I'd like to move on to the second semester for next post... but I don't want to sugar-coat college life.  I struggled with a lot of things, things that I think are not unique to me.

I was living in South Bend when the movie Rudy came out.  Everybody loves a happy ending.  But it is an unfortunate fact of life, that everyone has to choose what is most important to them.  In the things that mattered the most to me, engineering and a career that lived my dream, graduating from college was a triumphant success.

In other things that mattered to me... choosing engineering, and those academic pursuits, had a price.

Teenager in love

I was 18 when I started college.  The first week of classes, I noticed that the calculus assignments were work I had done before.  I checked the syllabus, and realized I knew 3/4ths of the material already.  So I went to the Freshman Engineering office, and asked about what I could do.

The advisers their told me that I could test out of that calculus course.  So we scheduled an exam.  I stuck with the class, took the test... and did not pass.  A different adviser gave me the results, and when I explained my concern that I would not do so well in a class where I wasn't challenged, he revealed that I had only missed passing by 5 points, about 1 question.

Astronauts at Purdue

This weekend was very hectic.  Worried about storms, trying to write, catching "8" on YouTube (not live).  

I'm working on the Annual Budget Drive at my church, and we're doing testimonials each Sunday.  The people we were trying to reach for yesterday's service weren't going to be ready in time, so I gave my testimonial.  Writing a 1-minute speech about what my church means to me and why I contribute to it... was difficult.  That sort of "from-the-heart" discussion is one that I usually prefer to improvise, since that seems to work for me.  But I need to provide the transcripts for the newsletter, and I can't do that with an improvised speech.  So I had to write it.

Anyway.  I promised to tell the story of performing for Neil Armstrong.  One of our first performances in the marching band happened on a Thursday afternoon, when we would normally be at rehearsal.  Purdue had just finished a capital campaign, called Vision 21.  The co-chairs of that effort were Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, the first and last men to have walked on the moon.  Both were supposed to be at this outdoor event on campus.  Later that evening / weekend there would be a big fancy dinner with the jazz band, but the $75 tickets were well beyond my student means.

Band camp, continued...

One of the evenings in band camp, possibly Tuesday, Roy Johnson (the Voice of the All-American Marching Band) spoke to the group.  He asked all the freshmen to stand up and look around the room.  After we had done so, he said that the chances were good we had just seen the person we would marry.  He also gave some good advice on time management, how to fit the 10-20 hours a week of rehearsals plus performances in with sleep, meals, studying, and classes.

Another evening, perhaps Wednesday, we started practice at the drill field and parade-marched back to Elliott Hall of Music.  Something like this, except it was evening: