Monday night I spent 5 hours on calculus and physics homework because I knew I wouldn't have time to do it on Tuesday night (show choir; once again, Clark ran us into the ground because he can be downright bitchy like that).  And as for the gigantic HW assignment, I think Gibson forgets that we have lives.

Today wasn't much better.  I had two tests, one in Calculus and one in Physics, my two hardest classes in the same day.  I'm pretty sure I managed to ace the calculus test because I can actually do calculus.  Physics on the other hand is nothing short of a royal pain in the ass (and then some).  I think everyone except Yonina Hoffman failed that physics test.  Nina Hoffman always beats the living daylights out of everyone else.  It's unbelievable.  Of course, she's the one that scored 1600 on her SATs.  Why should we be surprised?

This week has forced me think about a lot of things that I really don't care for (e.g.: money, college, leaving home, suicide (literal and figurative), and the like).  I really tried to reshuffle my priorities and organize them into something coherent, but that didn't go over quite as well as I would have liked it to.

Several times I have had to push the thought out of my head to enlist with the 249th National Guard Band (our local battalion).  I could easily make it in.  I am in all-state band, I play saxophone, clarinet, and piano, and I'm easily one among the best musicians of the school.  I wouldn't have to worry about college costs anymore.  I wouldn't have to worry about insurance or a lot of money matters, in fact.  Hell, I wouldn't really have to worry about anything.  Basic training can't be all that bad.  The problem is, once I sign on, I can't back out.  I'm stuck with little chance for advancement unless I work many, many, times harder than I really should be working.

National Guard would be the easy way out financially, but that's not what I really want to go into.  As much as I’d like to go into music performance, there are just too many wannabes to overcome out there.  I would most likely be relegated into teaching music (something I really hate) rather than performing it.  Katie wants to teach at a university, but Katie also wants to be a flute major.  I wouldn’t get anywhere as a saxophone major, and I’m not good enough to be a piano major.

Engineering, on the other hand, seems doable.  Everybody wants more engineers.  The field is expanding exponentially.  The success rate is great (provided you can make a passing grade in the physics segments).  But it requires a lot of work, and while I usually don’t mind productive work, I begin to get irritated when it starts cutting into my personal time and getting in the way of the things I love.  That includes music.  I wouldn’t be able to pull a bachelor of engineering degree and bachelor of music degree at the same time.  Taking on engineering seems pretty suicidal in and of itself (considering how much trouble I have with physics).  But I still can’t abandon my music.

Then there’s always the issue of studying.  I can’t stand studying.  I either get it or I don’t.  I’ve noticed that usually, things come to me all at once, in a burst of insight rather than gradually by careful study.  Any study that I do is simply preparing fro when that insight comes.  Unfortunately, it would be nothing short of foolhardy to rely entirely on insight for all of my learning needs.  It works, but I get really frustrated waiting for something to click, and others even more so.  My mom always needles me about how I need to practice piano more.  She doesn’t understand that in 30 minutes on a good day I could do more than 4 hours a day for a week on a bad week.  This is no way to function.  I can’t go to college like that.  Everything there is scheduled and occurs on regular intervals.  I can’t afford to wait for my answers.  But if I don’t, I have to work many times as hard as everyone else to achieve the same level of productivity.  I don’t learn to do things, they come to me.  I need someone to understand that.

But the question remains: can it be understood?

ALL-STATE RESULTS ARE BACK!!!!! :shock:

But that's okay.  The news isn't all bad because

I MADE IT IN BY GOD!!!

I'm second chair tenor sax in all-state band, but apparently, I got there only by default.  I was ranked 3rd in the state (which isn't that bad I guess, but I still wouldn't have made the cut), but the kid that was ranked #2 elected to go to alto, so I got in on tenor.  I guess this is God's way of keeping me humble; my fate was entrusted to fortune and not my own work.  On alto, I was ranked #7 in the state.  I'm surprised I even placed in the top 10.  I even managed to beat out Colin Martin from UHS by a wide margin.  I think that George Washington HS and Morgantown HS owned the saxophone section this time around.

MHS had representatives from pretty much every section.  Allow me to demonstrate:

MHS All State List
Kallie Jecklin - Flute
Rebekah Moore - Flute
Naushin Ahmed - Eb Clarinet*
Andrea Schlunk - Bb Clarinet (Orchestra)
Kristin Reed - Oboe (Orchestra)
Brendan Coleman - Horn
Donna Moore - Trumpet*
Kate O'Donnell - Trumpet
Matt Goff - Alto Saxophone*
Sam Mazza - Alto Saxophone
James Hsiao - Tenor Saxophone
Ben Lauffer - Percussion*
Dylan Stewart - Percussion
*Principle (First-chair for the musically challenged)

(Watch me leave someone out...)

Yes, it was a good day indeed. 8)

This is my essay for my University of Michigan Application.  I 'd forgotten just how it felt to crash-write something like that, so I'm not sure if it's any good or not.  But oh well, here goes nothing:

PROMPT Some writers suggest that by tradition, science is concerned with truth while art is concerned with beauty.  How might these two endeavors be the same?  How might they be irreconcilably different?

In my past experience, two concepts have always been apparent in all that I have observed: form and essence.  Form by its very nature is concerned with the inner workings of the device: how it is put together, how those parts work together to create a working device.  Science by virtue of its own empiricism is the study of form.  With the pursuit of form comes the pursuit of truth, as buried inside the more complex forms are simpler forms which ultimately contain the most basic forms, which we will take as the elementary truth of that object.

Essence, however, is concerned only with why the object or device is put together.  Every creation, be it by God or Man, possesses a purpose.  The purpose does not concern itself with how, only why.  The “Why” makes for a “How.”  Art, in its very manner of expression is a prime example of this.  The medium for art can change, but the same basic essence will still be there.  Ultimately, the common thread between all works of art is the fact that they were designed with a purpose, expressed in the provided medium, and made beautiful by conscious reference as such.

It appears that the two components, form and essence, are diametrically opposed.  Form has structure but no purpose.  Essence has purpose but no structure.  However, in the real world, the two are inseparable components of all things physical and metaphysical.  Take for example, a computer.  If you take the computer apart and analyze each of the components individually, you will discover that they are organized and presented in a form and arranged in a structure.  They are connected in a certain way and trigger in a certain sequence to get something done.  But if you had no idea why it was supposed to do that, what value would it have been to you?  The computer was designed with a purpose in mind (most can multi-task, but for the sake of brevity I will keep it to one: word processing): to allow you to type, organize, and print a report.  Without the circuitry (the form), the purpose cannot be realized.  But without the purpose (the intelligent design that went into the purpose), the circuitry has no meaning.  It becomes junk, useless to the last.

It is often said that truth is beautiful.  But perhaps it is not so much beautiful as elegant.  Everything fits and everything works but it is dead.  It has no soul.  Dreams have soul.  They show visions of magnificent works and endless possibilities but they have no form.  They cannot be executed without a willing architect.  Thus they are locked away in their own realm to die.  In this, both Truth and Beauty– Form and Essence– coexist to form reality as we know it.  The search for Truth (science) and the search for Beauty (art), is therefore one and the same: the search for Life.

Yesterday was all-state band auditions.  :shock:  When I arrived, I expected it to be crowded and to have lots of insanely good players in the warmup room to intimidate my friends and I.  To my surprise, there was only one killer sax player.  The rest of them were pretty mediocre.  The one was Nick, a guy from Robert C. Byrd HS that I met at honor band.  His technique is awesome, but I can't really say the same for his tone.  I was also notified that apparently entire schools had dropped out of the all-state competition, removing some of the competition pressure.

I believe that this year Morgantown High was the school that supplied the most applicants from any single place.  With any luck, we'll be able to take all-state by storm this year.  The saxophone players from Morgantown High were just waiting to kick some ass this year.  My alto audition went well, my tenor audition almost as well, and my bari sax audition mediocre.  Matt Goff is a freaking prodigy so you won't even have to worry about him.  Sam Mazza has a lot of firepower at his disposal, so I think he can take care of himself.  But mulling over it isn't going to do me much good; the only thing I can do now is entrust my fate to God.

Yeah, well, I'm going to go chill; it's been a long day with show choir and all.  Plus, I have to go back tomorrow for 6 hours.  I need to rest.

Chill out

These are sort of resolutions but not really, just a list of things that I really should get back into the habit of doing:

- Photography
- Essay writing
- Short story writing
- Poetry (extensive reading and writing)
- Landscape and still sketches
- Action sketches
- Concept model design
- Stargazing

*List may or may not be added to/deleted from depending on how lazy I am lol :lol:

I'm really quite surprised that I'm even awake right now, considering I was up until about 3 last night.  No big deal, though; I've got one more day and my written homework load is quite light.

I had a little New Year's Eve party at my place with a group of close friends.  It was very nice.  We started off passing photo albums around because Jenn brought her ENTIRE FREAKING ARCHIVE (but hey, that's okay), then set up the projector to watch "The Day After Tomorrow."  It actually wasn't a bad movie; acting was a bit sketchy at times, but the special effects were amazing.  Having Katie there with me helped :D.  Afterwards, Shane and I started Assault on the Control Room in Halo and somehow managed to get stuck on a landing platform a thousand feet above where we were supposed to be :roll:.

We inadvertently played through midnight, but that's all right; we spent a little more time with the girls before sending them home, then tried the mission one last time.  I swear, that's the longest freakin' mission in the game, so we just gave up and talked until around 3 when we just passed out.

Amazingly, it was the first time that break where I had really been able to get together with my friends like that.  But that didn't really matter.  All that matters was that it was a good night.