OK, not really. I am a Music History teacher, after all. But I am looking forward to hearing a bit more about Converse History from Dr. Jeff Willis, as he takes us on our historical tour of the campus. Hopefully, by now you've all checked your email and discovered that, thanks to Hurricane Ida, we won't be meeting today. The rain will soon be gone, though, and thus we've moved our class meeting time to this Thursday, November 11, at 1:00. We'll still be meeting on the front porch of Wilson. If you need to be a few minutes late, look for us there or on front campus, which Dr. Willis says will be our first stop.
Our blog topic for this week will allow you to stretch your imagination a bit, Converse-style. Converse is an institution that really loves her traditions, both long-standing and relatively new. Thus, for your blog this week I'd like you to invent and describe a new tradition or revamp an old one for Converse College or any of her many parts (Petrie School, Athletics, First-year class, etc.) And yes, I realize that the phrase "new tradition" is somewhat oxymoronic. C'est la vie.
As usual, blogposts are due by 11:00 pm on Friday night. You might actually want to wait until after our tour to type up your blog, though--the tour might give you some good ideas.
So I'll see you on Thursday in front of Wilson. Dr. Willis tells me that we'll also be visiting Twichell, Dexter, and the cemetery...
Hello folks. I hope you all enjoyed our panelists today and that they gave you some food for thought.
Our topic for next week's class is going to be "Diversity." Your Blog topic for this week will be in preparation for that class:
Blog about something you have learned from another student who comes from a different racial, ethnic, or cultural background. And you may interpret "cultural background" in whatever way seems fit.
FYI, we had last year's class do this same blog topic, and we got some really interesting responses. I did a blog on the same topic along with them, and you might find it a bit entertaining, so here it is for you folks:
I had a stroke of wonderful luck when I was in college--I got to spend two summers touring Europe with the American Wind Symphony. We traveled all over Europe by bus--went through Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. We stayed with host families wherever we went, and our performances were on the Point Counterpoint II--a barge that our conductor navigated from port to port for our concerts. (He was actually a much better captain than a conductor, but oh well....). I learned so much from those trips that, even years later, it's hard for me to appreciate just how the eight months I spent with the AWS changed my outlook on life and my understanding of others and myself.
In trying to decide what to blog about here I unearthed the journal that I kept in fits and starts throughout the trips. One of the most eye-opening stops of the journey was our week in Leningrad, the year before the Berlin Wall fell. The USSR was still the biggest Communist country in the world, and life there was very different from life in Waco, Texas, where I was in college. Here's an excerpt from my journal--it kind of makes me smile and laugh at myself a little.
"July 29, 1989; Leningrad
"My, my--what a day. First thing this morning I used the communal bathtub--to brush my teeth in! I still haven't found the sink. It took an hour for my host Olga and I to get to the October Hall for rehearsal. We rehearsed for several hours with a Russian army band. These bilingual rehearsals are incredible. The big story of my day was one of the Russian oboists, Ilya. After rehearsal, of course, all of us oboists had to compare reeds, oboes, etc. I stayed and talked with Ilya for awhile about oboes, music, Russia, life, and everything. For a present he gave me a little bag with some WW II bullets and a piece of wood from a Russian ship in it. And I think I may have a date with him Wednesday night. Wow--I have a date with a Russian soldier! He keeps talking about "promenade"--I'll have to ask Olga about that in the morning.
"After rehearsal we had lunch time. The organized restaurant lunch was 4 rubles, so quite a few of us just bummed it. I found a large bread-bagel thing for .07 rubles, so that was lunch. A few of us walked around for awhile, and then we all had a bus tour of the city. We saw tons of monuments, and one of the other guys had a good comment: 'Yeah, the monuments are great, but what good are they when the people are all dirt poor?' And another thing--we saw lots of cathedrals, but all but one of them had been turned into museums. The Russian people we see seem to live in such poverty, and yet they are all wonderful, wonderful people--kind and generous and thoughtful.
Some random thought. Olga says her religion is "music." I have no idea what I ate tonight for supper--some kind of meat. One of our flutists has learned that there are such things as bedbugs. Russian oboists buy their reeds, as they can't get supplies to make their own. There doesn't seem to be any toilet paper in Russia. I did see "Santa Claus" in the Russian/English dictionary. I figure I'll get sleep after we leave Russia and move onto Finland--too much to take in here."
You can check out the American Wind Symphony here, should you be interested. You can't actually make me out, but I'm there, just to the conductors left.
I hope you enjoyed the time off from class today, as well as your feathers.
If you remember, last week we had intended to talk about just what the Liberal Arts are, what a liberal arts education might entail, how a professional degree is a bit different from a liberal arts degree, and how the liberal arts and a professional music degree might intersect. Happily, your ME projects were so entertaining that we ran out of time…
Well, in the true spirit of both the liberal arts and the figure-it-out-yourself skills needed by a professional musician, I’m going to send you out to find this all out for yourselves and report back. Head over to Wikipedia and peruse the articles on “liberal arts,” “bachelor of music,” and any other topics that seem relevant to the cause. Then think about the following: You all attend what is most decidedly a liberal arts college. As Dexter himself said, while you are here you are expected to learn how to “see clearly, decide wisely, and act justly.” You are all also pursuing a professional degree of some sort—an education that values skill and talent as much as thought and reason. If you don’t apply yourself to the practice room while you’re here, you won’t be very employable once you leave (and that includes the education and therapy majors just as much as the performance ones.)
For your blog this week, we’d like you to discuss these issues. What did you learn from the Wikipedia entries that might seem interesting or relevant to your current situation? How might you marry the concepts of a liberal arts education with your professional pursuits? What could a professional musician possibly get out of taking a class on, say, Botany? Or the French Revolution? Or Ancient Greek Philosophy? Or any of the other Liberal Arts Courses that we offer here? (You might want to peruse the current Converse Academic Catalogue for ideas.You can link to it from the Converse homepage.) And, finally, did you take anything away from Convocation today that might resound off of these themes?
Incidentally, we do offer a liberal art-based, non-professional music degree here—the Bachelor of Arts in Music. If anyone ever wants to come talk to me about it, just give me a holler.
Oh, and Lainie, I know, I know. Just adapt the blog assignment to your own pursuits, and don’t forget that a BFA is sort of a liberal arts/professional hybrid.
As always, the blog is due by 11:00 pm on Friday night (September 18). I’d like to add a little something, though. Sometime between Friday night and next Tuesday’s SSS class (September 22), please go check out some of your classmates’ class blogs (last week's or this week's), and leave comments on at least four of them. Your comments should be both substantial (not just “Hey girl! Great blog! Bye!”) and polite. No heckling. Unless, of course, you want to add the sound of a million marbles rolling towards the stage and a few alarm clocks…
And, for those of you who already feel like you’re drowning in a sea of impossible schedules, we’ll be discussing Time Management in all of its glory next week. Whee!
"Dear, Dear! How queer everything is today! And yesterday everything happened just as usual: I wonder if I was changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I think I remember feeling rather different. But if I'm not the same, who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!"
Are we all feeling a bit like Alice yet, having fallen down the rabbit hole but not having yet reached the bottom? Wishing for a bit of cake to make us larger, or a sip of, well, something to make us a bit smaller? Well, welcome to Student Success Seminar!
We're going to spend the semester talking about issues that crop up as you all make the transition from one environment to another--social issues, personal issues, academic issues, etc. And many of our thoughts on these topics will make their way onto our class blogs. You'll be able to read some ideas from me and Jason on our blogs, and you'll also have access to your classmates' blogs--let's face it, some of the best ideas you'll be exposed to will come from your own peers.
You'll be blogging on topics as posted by me and Jason every other week, and your posts will always be due by Friday night at 11:00 pm (honestly, do you really want me to read anything you write after 11:00 pm on Friday?) Each entry should be at least 200 words and must be in grammatically correct Standard English--capitalize you "I"s and spell out Y-O-U. There's a spellcheck that comes along with your blog--please make use of it. As you type, please remember that Blogs are available for everyone to see--your classmates, your professors, your Grandmother, your preacher, potential dates, and potential employers--and you should conduct your typing accordingly.
And so....
"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax-- Of cabbages--and kings-- And why the sea is boiling hot-- And whether pigs have wings."
Here's our first Blog topic, i.e Blog Topic #1: Please tell us all three things: 1.) Why did you decide to go to college? 2.) Why did you decide to come specifically to Converse? and 3.) What could possibly be possessing you to make you decide to study music? Oh, and let's throw in a fourth question, just for kicks: 4.) If you woke up tomorrow and couldn't do any kind of music anymore, what would you do instead? All due on your respective blogs by 11:00 pm this coming Friday, September 4.
