be gone, ignorance!

My parents call me a "greenhouse plant" - ie. not one that has roughed the winds/waters/bugs/blazing sun/etc. of the wild, but one that has grown up safely inside of a man-maintained utopic environment. It's kind of funny at times, but also pretty darn sad. Now that I am about to become a second semester senior in college, heading to grad school and eventually the "real world", I am feeling rather urgent about conquering my ignorance/book-smarts-only self.

After being educated in the ways of literature, art, music, food, even fashion, I find myself very not knowledgeable about the things that actually run the world — politics, economics, oceanography (jk) — and it's like WHOA why am I not a grown-up yet? Has being a Millennial dulled my curiosity (except in the lives of others around me, ie. social media) and made me more ADD (ie. unable to focus on a single task such as reading a lengthy book/article)? Yes, great literature and great art is awesome, makes life worth living, and my brain is just more attuned to those subjects. But...there needs to be something more.

Of course, I feel like I come to this conclusion+sense of urgency every so often, and yet it's so hard to change old habits. How to fix this intellectual crisis of mine? ._.

let break begin...foreals!

I am so excited that my real Christmas break begins TODAY. After writing my last final paper from 6:30 PM till 5 AM between Sunday --> Monday (which apparently my professor liked "a lot" PTLLL) and finishing a rewrite of one of my midterm papers today...I am FREE!

To watch movies!

To read books!

To bake!

To dance around the house like a weirdo maniac!

To wrap presents!

To catch up with people and send very, very belated emails!

And most of all...to spend as much time with Jesus as I want! 

YAY

I am very much looking forward to a period of rest(oration) this break - I feel like I have been "on" non-stop since my junior year first semester and now I finally, finally, FINALLY get to take a breather before plunging back into the world of post-grad plans, senior thesis writing, oceanography winning, FG loving, and 2012 memory-making. 

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord! 

got that Christmas tree action goin' on :)

the d-man and me

It's been a little over four years since I fell in love with Dvorak's Piano Quintet in A Major. I had already fallen in love with Dvorak's music as an eighth grader, having seen my childhood music hero Sarah Chang play the violin concerto in person, but something about this piece...the piano intro, the cello solo, the sudden surge of strings that propels the piece forward from there on — it tugged at my heart, and it was something I wasn't able to shake off for years to come.

Over the last three years at Penn, I kept pushing for this piece, but my sophomore year I got put into an octet, and then a string quartet my junior year, but somehow (praise God!), I threw out the suggestion and our string quartet was able to find a pianist and we dove right in this fall.

I have to admit, in the midst of busy-ness and general stressors this semester, being reunited with this piece wasn't quite as spectacular as I imagined it would be. The first movement alone is pretty long and it's very draining because we're playing at high energy levels throughout most of the piece. But as I was walking to rehearsal (our last for the semester already!) today, I was suddenly hit with a wave of remembrance — what the piece meant to me, how much fun I had that summer in Valdosta, GA, how I had the most ridiculous adolescent crush on the pianist for those brief 6 weeks, how it felt amazing to perform it and have people stop me in the dorm elevator to tell me how much they liked it; I played it the summer preceding my senior year, when I became disillusioned with the music world and left the various orchestras that I had poured my time and energy into over four years with a bittersweet heart (mostly bitter, unfortunately, but if I tried hard enough it became sweet).

And here I am, ready to play it again, trying to remember how much I loved loved loved music and loved the community with whom I shared not only the experiences of performing and practicing, but my heart (cheesy, yes. but stay with me now). I know I have a long week ahead, but I'm excited, and I'm hoping to make the best tribute I can to that time in my life and my favorite composer...everrr :)