Teaching

Sometimes teaching is a wonderful thing

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Teaching violin often feels like a thankless, worthless job. (Like all teachers, I imagine.) Underpaid, often overworked, tired, and feeling like it just doesn’t matter. I mean, who needs violinists anyway? (Answer: we all do, but that’s for another day.)

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As you may know, the school I teach three afternoon/evenings a week is closing at the end of the school year (beginning of June.) We had our last studio recital on Saturday. I’d been working hard, the kids had been working hard, and it’s a stressful thing for some of them—getting up in front of everybody, playing their piece from memory (some, at least). Performing is a tough thing! (and excellent preparation for the future…)

I always get really stressed out. Will people remember to show up? Will they bring their violins? Will they mess up and make me look bad? Will the other teachers judge me for having students with bad posture?

And as always, none of those things mattered or happened. It was a great day. My students did their best, and I was a proud teacher.

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And at the end, one of my students, after finishing a very musical and exciting performance of the third movement of Vivaldi’s Concerto in G minor…after that, she gave a speech about how much the school has meant to her over the past years (she’s been there since she was 4, I believe) and how much she will miss it. And I got teary. And then she gave me flowers and the above note.

Sometimes that’s all that matters, isn’t it? Making a difference to one person. And I think, at least I hope, that I mean that to most if not all of my students.

Underpaid and often undervalued by society, yes. Thankless and worthless, no.

These next few weeks at the school will be bittersweet.

Cat

Catuesday

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Catuesday is the new Caturday, right?

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It’s her favorite cat nip toy. It was a Christmas Present, I believe.

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Though the fatness doesn’t actually celebrate Christmas, she is still happy to have toys other than fake stuffed sardines and stolen ponytail holders.

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I challenge you to look at these pictures and not have the urge to squeeze her around the middle.

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Over the weekend I got some flowers at our studio recital. Here she is trying to eat one.

She did eat a leaf. Am I a bad pet owner for taking this picture rather than moving her? (Don’t answer). This happened on Saturday night though, and she’s absolutely fine, so I think we’re okay. Probably a little salad won’t hurt her.

Product Reviews

How is it Monday already?

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I think it’s important to moan and groan about Monday as much as possible, right? Especially when, as regular readers know, I don’t really have much on Mondays. It’s the official DAY OFF for the symphony, so Chris never has rehearsal on Mondays (unless it’s an extra gig, of course) and so I TRY to keep it clear to be lazy with him. (Then he goes golfing, which means I end up sleeping in and then guiltily and frantically responding to the masses of emails that I let pile up over the weekend…)

But I digress. As usual.

Okay, business first. I received some free stuff that I need to review. It’s from Vitacost.com which is an online discount site from which you can get all kinds of health and beauty stuff from.

I was sent two different drinks to drink. Celsius Sparkling Orange and Celsius Sparkling Wild Berry. They claim to be calorie reducing drinks. I tried them after runs to rehydrate and refresh, and they were both really tasty. (I love a sparkling beverage of any sort.) Do they, as claimed, burn up to 100 calories? I doubt it, because if that was really true, why, the person who created them would be absolutely rich—burn 100 calories by drinking this tasty drink!—everybody would be on board. But who knows. I did lose a few pounds in the past few weeks.

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The drinks were tasty and made me feel better after my runs (I had four samples) so that’s good enough for me.

(I was provided the product free of charge and not obligated to write a positive review.)

My last post got weird and I don’t know what happened. I’m hoping this post publishes correctly or else I’m going to have to really work to figure out what went wrong (I did make a change in the meantime…). Blogging and computers are indeed hard work!

(Reminds me of the Titanic quote “Women and machinery do not mix.”)

Random thoughts

Oatmeal Por Todos again

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How long since I did an oatmeal post? Years, I think.

In the past, I’d been doing overnight oats. You add milk, yogurt or water to a serving of oats and refrigerate it for a minimum of overnight. That was before we lived in a house with a microwave. Since we have a microwave now, I’ve discovered that regular oats only take about a minute and a half to get to the consistency I like. I still do overnight oats occasionally or (and sorry I’m not sorry) I make OOIAJ (overnight oats in a jar) to use up the last bits of “nut butter.” Chris thinks I’m crazy but it’s a nice treat.

Oatmeal. 3/4 cup. Cover with water. Microwave for 1:30 (yes, I don’t care for it too soggy.) Add spoonful of “nut butter”, scoop of “protein powder” and your choice of fruit. And coffee. WIN.

Pictured below: raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. No banana this week: I ate those plain.

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Are you a creature of habit for your morning meal?

Deep Thoughts

Tacos

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Today was one of those days where I had other plans for my lunch hour which involved authors and lunches…and I ended up deciding that the best thing to do would be to play hooky (as it were) and get Taco Stand with my husband.

Now I’m sleepy and I have to teach in a little over an hour. Coffee is in order.

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(that’s an old picture of coffee, but I think you get the idea. also, I like cows.)

This morning at the gym was chest and back. I was totally bench pressing like, 55 pounds. (Honestly, for upper body, I feel pretty hard core just having any weight on the bar, which weights 45 pounds—so I’m psyched.)

Taco Stand didn’t actually fit into my plan of “lose weight so my muscles actually show” but I’m still down 2 pounds since about a week and 1/2 ago, so that kind of rocks. And I am not willing nor mentally able to do a diet that entirely cuts out my favorite things. I am willing to eat a very light dinner and eat well tomorrow to make up for it though.

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(Taco Bell is different than Taco Stand. Both are amazing. Yes, you’ve seen this picture before, but I’m lazy and sleepy.)

And I’m running. Regularly. Crazy. Runkeeper tells me I’ve run 31 miles since I started using it under a month ago. *takes bow*

Tonight: the final St Louis Symphony regular season concert. Well, they have four shows but it’s the final program of the season. There’s a post-concert party for the musicians and their significant others so I’m excited for Beethoven 9 and a party of sorts. Purple pants and red shoes seem to be in order, though that’s more common than rare.

Before that: teaching. My regular Thursday afternoon schedule. Which is a great group of students. I might be collaborating with Sarah Crowder on a video about me and teaching and she asked me to think about what I love about teaching. I’ve been thinking a lot about that, particularly this week as I’m contemplating my teaching future…it’s hard to pinpoint. The main thing I love is: playing the violin. And I want to SHARE that love with as many people as possible.

It’s tough because playing the violin is hard work and takes a lot of commitment, and there are so many things to worry about while you play, and I’m a firm believer in TECHNIQUE FIRST (this is also why I have a trainer at the gym, in addition to the motivation, but because I don’t know enough weight lifting technique to feel comfortable on my own—I do understand violin technique though!)

So you can see, my brain is all over the place. I’ve got a few professional personal things (personally professional..the lines in life are so blurry, aren’t they?) going on offline and it’s been making me take a hard look at myself and what I want from my career. This is a good thing, but an unfamiliar thing. I am not a “five year plan” type of person, but I’m trying to figure out what I want out of my career here in St Louis. Assuming we end up staying here, which we’d love to do…but…

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(Me, contemplating my five year plan)

And that’s a blog post for another day! Or not, really, as that’s not necessarily about me.

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I’ve been wanting to share that picture for awhile. I love it. Today seems appropriate.

Practicing

Thoughts on Practicing

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You can’t write a blog for your readers. Firstly, I don’t have any regular readers except (I believe) my mother. Secondly, whenever I ask a simple question, like, are there enough cat pictures in my blog, I get really different answers. (Ranging from: lady, you are crazy and need to find a new hobby to ALL CAT ALL THE TIME).

But I’ve had some questions over the years about professional things like auditions and practicing the violin, and I thought I’d ramble about practicing a little bit today.

While I was preparing for the Symphony audition the other month, Chris wandered into the room and commented on my practicing style—(this is normal for us—we give advice or comments occasionally)—that it sounded like I was just playing and that I wasn’t really working on something in particular. Really that’s the big issue I have: I am a terrible practicer.

I never really learned how. I’m lucky enough that I pick things up fairly well fairly quickly, and none of my teachers growing up ever taught me how to practice properly (I’m not necessarily blaming them as possibly I simply ignored their advice), and then in college probably none of my teachers realized I didn’t really know HOW to practice. Plus, (and this is the truth) I generally dislike practicing. Like most of my students, I greatly enjoy PLAYING THE VIOLIN and greatly dislike the arduous yet necessary task of PRACTICING THE VIOLIN.

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These are two vastly different things, and I do my best to try to help my students learn the difference. Practicing is something that should not be enjoyable to listen to. I try to teach my students that it’s okay to play through their piece once, but then they need to figure out what went wrong and why (the younger ones I mark this for them). If you’re missing a shift, repeatedly, then you need to isolate the problem, slow it down, break it down, and REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT until you don’t miss that shift. (The famous saying: don’t practice until you get it right, practice until you can’t get it wrong.)

The issue for me comes when I’m approaching the same piece again, for perhaps the 13th year in a row, and I know exactly where the problem areas are…and those problems are always the same problems. Thinking back (on the Nutcracker Overture) I didn’t spend enough time isolating the problems, and really working them, and I learned something really fundamental about arm and elbow motion and angles in the week leading up to the audition…I had never consciously thought about the movement of my left elbow as I shifted, and it was brought to my attention, and I didn’t have enough time to really work it out.

It’s hard, as an adult who is often performing the same pieces again, to approach a piece with new eyes. Often you see the piece with tired eyes, and simply repeat the same mistakes. My students complain that they are tired of a piece after a few weeks or months, and while I often try to respect that feeling, I also try to show them WHY we are still working on the piece, and how they haven’t mastered what they need to master before moving forward. And then if they are a Suzuki student, it’s not as if they won’t be reviewing that piece for a long time anyway!

(I know this isn’t a cohesive post about practicing. I just wanted to give some thoughts about it. )

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The other challenge is making the time for practicing. I tell my students that even ten minutes every day is a better thing that a few hours once a week. Yet when push comes to shove, I will cram my practicing, or skip it entirely, or “warm up” for a rehearsal by playing a scale with a student…completely ignoring all the hopefully good advice I am giving my students. 

I was joking with a friend the other day that I was trying to become more zen-like in my approach to life, and “live in the moment” more and be more conscious, and all that. Now, I was joking…mainly…but it occurred to me just now (in the moment!) that that is probably the best way to practice. I know I say a lot of things and then forget, but I shall try to remember this the next time I am preparing for an audition: to practice consciously and mindfully, and to dedicate as much brain power as possible to my work at the time. 

Thoughts? I hate writing a post and trying to sound like an expert. I’m definitely not. I play well, and I practice badly. I would play better if I practiced better, that’s for sure.

I should follow up writing this blog post with a good violin practice session but I’ll probably just end up wasting time reading stuff until it’s time for work. Oh well.

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.