At My Wit's End

Have you ever felt that once you reached the light at the end of the tunnel your whole world had turned against you in the blink of an eye? That is how it was for me during my first few days here at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. With no extra time to get assignments done, I felt I was on the road to failure. I had only gone through the first couple of days, and already I felt like my only option was to quit attending Metro altogether. It was only when Kirk Vollack, my piano teacher at the Colorado School of Music in Golden, saved the day with his encouragement and sound advice that I felt I was able to give it all another go with an opportune second chance. 

TRITONE - AHH! THE DEVIL'S CHORD!!!
(i.e. severe tension)

Over the summer, I had tested into Music Theory II and Music Theory Lab II, and did not have to take Class Piano I, since I already learned enough piano with Kirk. I even considered it a bonus that my professor for Music Theory I, Chris Keelan, was the husband of my former accompanist at Arvada West. Hence, I thought that I was off to a very good start. However, once I arrived at my Music Theory II class only half awake at eight in the morning, Chris jumped straight into modes and chord progressions as if he expected everyone who tested in to already know all of the material covered in the previous semester. Since in the public school system, I was used to teachers telling me what to do and when to do it, I had assumed it was going to be exactly that way (after all, I was still in school). Instead, Chris did not say when to take out our notebooks or our staff paper, and I found myself scrambling to take notes. Every time I concentrated on what I was writing down, whatever Chris was talking about would seem to blur in and out. It went something like this:  

“The V chord asdfkljasdlfkasdj to the asdfsdakjlkj and the asdfghjklpwerty” and so on. 

He even started to make a lot of the concepts that I looked at as a given in music sound like some mathematical science I could not yet grasp. When the class ended, I asked Chris how I could catch up to where I was supposed to be in Music Theory II. Chris responded with a friendly smile and told me that I only had to review chapters one through eight of the textbook. He even told me that I should have been able breeze right through it. Upon the first few sentences in the textbook, there were already a lot of different concepts I had never covered before. As a result, I found it most helpful to use my bright yellow highlighter as I attempted to analyze a dotted quarter note in the same way I learned about the bones of the skull. This was the constant cycle in which my first couple of days in Music Theory II progressed. 

     EVEN STRONGER TRITONE!
(i.e. even more severe tension)

My next class was Basic Music Technology. In that class, I would eventually learn how to write excerpts of music into two notation softwares called Sibelius and Finale. Towards the end of the class, I also ended up working with GarageBand and Audacity. Once he entered the room (since he usually came in a few minutes later than the rest of the class), the other students and I were presented with our professor, Sam Williams. Sam ended up telling us that we would have to download the music notation software Finale, and that we could get it via the bookstore in the Tivoli for the cheaper student deal. Since I seemed to have a bit of time before I had to sing in Chorale, I headed straight to the Tivoli. Upon entering the two double doors, I had asked one of the attendants standing at the front of the store where I could find Finale. She did not quite know right off the top of her head what Finale was or where to find it, and therefore had to ask another attendant. From there, I was led down a flight of stairs to where they actually had the textbooks and workbooks I would need for all my classes. Once we got to the shelf that Finale was supposed to be on (What a surprise. We walked right towards the F shelf), we ended up coming to the realization that it was nowhere to be found. As a result, I had gone through chaos for a program that was not even at the bookstore in the first place. With disappointment and bewilderment filling my head, I ended up having to hustle to Chorale. 

WORKING TOWARDS A RESOLUTION

I was still struggling to read through the Music Theory book during the week. Therefore, I brought it to my piano lesson with Kirk and showed him all that I had to go over in order to be ready for the class on Monday. With the book talking about whether notes were perfect or imperfect, simple or compound, it was as if I was jumping off the highest diving board on the planet and had fallen into the deep end without learning how to swim beforehand. I told Kirk about how with Music Theory II being this way, I felt like I was automatically being set up for failure and that I was seriously thinking I should quit attending Metro altogether. Kirk ended up telling me that if being in Music Theory II was going to be this much of a nightmare, I should probably go back to Music Theory I in order to acquire the building blocks for Music Theory II. My mom and I had never thought of this before. We were so thankful to Kirk that we spent the weekend enrolling into Music Theory I through the Student Hub over the weekend.  

HALF CADENCE - Any Chord to the V chord
(Waiting for the next few notes to tell the story)

The next week, I came into the Music Theory I and was presented with Cherise Leiter, a funny woman who looked at the dot on a dotted quarter note as the greatest invention in the history of music. The dot was half the value of the note attached to it! As Cherise reviewed material I had already known and threw in a few new concepts to fill in the gaps while also putting a really funny twist on the nuances in music, this already seemed like a class that I was going to thrive in. On top of the Music Theory I class, I was also required to enroll in a Music Theory Lab class where I would learn how to do rhythmic and melodic sight reading and figure out chord progressions and contour lines. For this class, Chris went into the details of what I had been missing in Music Theory Lab II, and all the pieces of the puzzle that I was missing earlier began to fall into place. With both of my Music Theory classes, my path began to look considerably brighter than it had before. The whirlwind of information and music notations had begun to finally settle in my brain.  

RESOLUTION - Oh no wait... EVEN STRONGER TRITONE!!!

(i.e. even more severe tension)

Once I was done with recital attendance, I had a bit of time before I had to go to English. I was looking forward to telling my dad how the performance went. With this certain air of optimism and thinking that everything would be getting better from this moment onward, I pushed open the door to go out towards the Student Success building. 

THWACK!

The sound of metal hitting concrete erupted from behind me. When I turned around, I realized that I had dropped my MacBook Pro. In the rush to get out of the Concert Hall, I had forgotten to zip my backpack up. Right then, I felt devastated that I could not possibly think of everything at the same moment. I felt like regardless of whether or not thought of what the worst likely scenario would be, my world would just fall apart around me anyway. I did not know if the laptop was going to turn on, and when I tried opening the screen, there would be this click as part of the exterior metal scraped against the back. Instead of calling my dad to tell him how great performance class and Chorale had been, I was calling him devastated that I had dropped the laptop. I told him about how the back of the laptop clicked every time I opened it, and how we still had to download Finale for the assignment that was due the next day. My dad told me that he would look at it, and that it might have been time to look for a new laptop already. With that, I sat in the Student Hub right outside the Student Success Building and pressed the power button hoping desperately that the computer would still work. When the opening chord sounded and the gray half-eaten apple icon appeared on the screen, I felt so lucky that I would be able to download finale with my dad and complete the assignment due for the next day. I did not realize that we would be staying up until one in the morning in order to download finale and complete the assignment. Since that one Finale assignment took the entire night to complete, I could not complete my assignment out of the workbook for Music Theory I. Since I was used to using my 504 plan in situations like this, I figured I could do the same once I arrived at Music Theory I the next day. 

WRONG! 

Lo and behold, Cherise told me that she did not see an accommodation for extra time on the sheet that Lisken Hays had set up for me with the Access Center. At that moment, I saw that I was doomed for failure all over again. No extra time? I had absolutely lived off of my extra time while at Arvada West in case I ran out of time to complete an assignment for the next day. Because of this, I ran desperately to the access center, thinking that I was going to be set up for failure all over again. When I met with Lisken Hays to work out my accommodation, she ended up telling me that I could not have the extra time that I was used to having, and I burst into tears.  

Like a wounded battle ship straggling into port, Friday evening found me outside the door to Kirk’s room inside the Colorado School of Music. Again, he offered advice to take it one step at a time, and told me that everything would eventually fall into place. He told me that although high school had been about getting the high grades I did in order to be accepted into college, it was not necessary to get straight A’s and be perfect in the college setting. Kirk proceeded to tell me that employers would not be looking for the highest letter grades I had received in college, but making sure that I had learned the material enough to eventually receive my degree. At this, a weight lifted off of my shoulders and I was able to enjoy the lesson without the fear that whatever grade I received would determine the overall course of my life. This is my account of what happened during my first few weeks here at Metro, and thanks to Kirk, it ended with a perfect authentic cadence (In other words, I did not leave you hanging).