Another Project Update

I bit off way more than I could chew for this Collo project, and I have absolutely no regrets.

My last blog post was about some of the research I have done. I was very pokey and did not even post it until about a month after I’d written it; I sent it to Mrs. D’Avella so she could double check my facts, and then I waited a good while before taking half an hour to read and implement her corrections.

I would estimate that I’ve put about 30 total hours into this project by now. Some of those hours should definitely have been spent studying for a Chemistry exam, but this project was far more fun. Most of my work has gone into writing and drawing. I ended up putting off some aspects of the work because the resources were hard to get my hands on.

I did put 30 hours of work in, and since I wasn’t really done, I decided to push my goals way up and turn this into a full-blown summer project.

Things that I have done so far:

-Thoroughly outlined 4 short children’s stories (in a notebook) and revised every plot until I found it satisfactory

-Mostly finished the text of 3 out of 4 stories. Writing a complete draft of a story is not difficult, and the brunt of the work lies in the revision process. I would consider the text of these 3 stories about 90% done. My rewriting and editing is to increase clarity, increase accessibility, and to fit the story into the 6 designated pages. My total wordcount is about 1,200.

-Finished approximately ¼ of the total sketches I want to include. I spent a lot less time drawing than I expected to. The pictures are based around the text and the structure of the story, so naturally, the story ought to be written before too much work is given to the illustrations. This occurred to me as soon as I actually started working on the stories. I am currently drawing in pencil on notebook paper. The sketches each take about 8 minutes. 

This is my Biology notebook

Things that I would like to do in the future:

-Finalize the text of my 4 stories and send them to Mrs. D’Avella for feedback before I publish them

-Scan the pencil-on-notebook-paper illustrations and then re-trace them in a drawing program on my computer or phone, ensuring that the end result looks clean.

-Spend a lot more time on the future website than I originally intended, ensuring that it is extremely accessible and easy to navigate. This is because I kind of want to keep going after these 4 stories are complete.

-Convince my 15-year-old brother, who is very good at reading aloud, to help me make an audio recording of the stories that I can also include on my website.

-Talk to someone who knows about copyrighting (at the request of my mom) and see if there are any legal-related things that it would be responsible to know before publishing free pdfs of original stories

An Academic Convocation and an Apocolypse

To fulfil some community service hours, I volunteered to help at the Academic Excellence Convocation in April. I signed up to help with no idea what to expect, and ended up awed at the ceremony, and finding that I was really enjoying myself.

My job was quite simple. I got to stand outside a door to the upstairs balcony, hand out programs, greet people, and seat people. I worked with a very sweet Midway student. I guessed she was in the honors program because the other volunteers were all in the honors program, but she carried herself very modestly, and I would not have guessed that she was an honors scholar otherwise. I really liked her, and when there weren’t many people around, I asked about what she wanted to do and which college she came from. I think that meeting and working with her was the highlight of the event.

 The program

The programs were very bulky, and there were a lot of people sitting down before the boxes of programs even arrived. But the job was relatively easy. The honor and the incredible formality of the event was entrancing. I only know a couple of this year’s seniors personally, but I could not help being excited and proud of their accomplishment. Everyone in the honors college feels like my family. And one day, I will be in their shoes.

Later in April, to get extra credit for my honors dance class, I went to see Mr. Burns, a play directed by Cara Harker. It was very well done, the actors were incredibly talented, the effects were jaw-dropping, the story was clear, and the whole play was slightly traumatizing, but that was ok. I went and had some ice cream afterwards.

The play is set in during what is, essentially, the apocalypse: the US lost electricity, so the nuclear power plants started blowing up. A group of characters sit around and try to remember a Simpsons episode. The group later becomes a very successful acting troupe, and though people are dying constantly and the country is in anarchy, they tour around and act out this Simpsons episode. The last act is set 75 years later, and shows how the story in this Simpsons episode has evolved.

ETSU has a very high quality theatre department. I was truly amazed at the ability of the performers and of everyone else involved. I don’t think I will go back and watch any more plays though, unless I’ve heard about them before.

Women in Song

I’ve often heard my siblings and I compared to the von Trapp family from the Sound of Music. Is it because there are 7 of us? Is it because we are music-oriented? Is it because I sang “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” the day I got my driver's license, and didn't stop for a solid year?  

Although my mother was never a postulant at an Austrian abbey, I do come from a rather singing-oriented family. My earliest memories are of my mother singing hymns to me as I drifted to sleep. My Sundays spent in church were full of those same hymns, and when my Dad sat beside me, I learned to follow the melody in the hymnal while he sang the bass line. I first joined a real choir in the summer of 2013, when my piano teacher sent me to a singing day camp at a local college, and as soon as I had that taste of a choir, there was no going back.  

For several years, now, my oldest brothers have been in the Highlands Youth Ensemble, a local high-school aged choir. When I was still in high-school, I sang in that choir as well. Every fall, the boys got to participate in Men in Song, a choral festival put together by Milligan College and ETSU, and I got to enjoy the resulting concert.

I was very excited last year when ETSU and Milligan decided to start a Women in Song festival as well. The girls in my choir learned a gorgeous Alice Parker arrangement of Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal, and an elegant arrangement of the Hebrew song L’ador Vador. For a whole weekend, we rehearsed with about 120 other women in the Seeger Chapel at Milligan College: a combination of singers from local women’s choirs and women who signed up for the festival just because they liked to sing. My mom isn’t part of a choir, but she decided to come too. Saturday night, we performed for the community. Each participating choir sang several songs, and at the very end, all the participating women joined together and sang one final set of songs, together. 

This semester, I was not able to be in a choir. The University Honors Scholar program required a class that conflicted with the ETSU women’s choir. I assumed I wouldn’t get a chance to sing in a concert at all this semester, but my mom emailed me in January, and asked if I would like to sing in Women in Song with her again. The decision was an easy one. We both wrote the date on our calendar, and Mom signed us up online.

I am very appreciative of the inclusive way that Women in Song is organized. The single weekend of rehearsal is much easier for a busy college kid and a busy homeschool mom to commit to than a semester of constant rehearsals. Not only that, but Mom and I have a chance sing in a very high-quality ensemble, under a very well qualified director. 

Two happy soprano IIs 

I volunteered to help an ETSU graduate student with the sign-up process before the festival started. Since I wasn’t committed to another performing choir, I could help with the logistics of such an event, and interact much more with the other participating women.

This year’s director was Joan Szymco, a renown composer from California. Since she has written so much for women’s choirs, we sang a lot of her songs. The opportunity to learn a song from the song’s original composer is always something to be jumped at. I am still impressed that the ETSU music program was able to convince her to come to East Tennessee and work with all of us.

The final performance this year was beautiful. I got to hear such a large collection of women’s choirs, and enjoy a very broad repertoire of songs. I cried during at least 3 of them. And when the collective choir walked on stage to sing the final set of songs, I got to stand next to my mom, one of my friends from my high-school choir, and one of the friends I made in the ETSU women’s choir last semester.

I hope that more mothers and daughters decide to do participate in Women in Song together. I think my mom and I were one of the only mother/daughter pairs there, but it feels like the festival was designed for us. We’ve done it twice now, but I guess that means we’ve been to every Women in Song festival ever. It’s our tradition. And this, I’ve decided, is a tradition I love.