This is the kind of thing that would only happen to me.

I was shredding some old files for our secretary which couldn't just be thrown away because they had social security numbers and other stuff on them. Before I tell you what happened, you have to understand that the shredder here is ancient and hates me. I don't even get through half of the stack when it starts getting mad at me.

The thing starts spitting paper back at me and then sucking it back down, and I'm just sitting there watching it, thinking it'll stop on it's own if I don't press any buttons. Well it continues to spit the paper halfway out and then re-shred the bottom half, then spit it back out again, for like 30 seconds, so I just turn it off, and try to pull the paper out. I get the majority out, but there's a small clump just above the blades and I can't reach it.

I turn the shredder on and off but nothing happens. The paper just sits there out of my reach, just above the blades. Not wanting to sacrifice my hand, I do the next logical thing, grab a pair of scissors to try to grab it. I shimmied the scissors in there, getting one of the blades underneath, and one on top, and pull the scissors together and try to get it out. I pull at it and all of the sudden something snaps and the scissors come loose but I'm missing about an inch and a half off of the bottom blade of the scissors.

So now I have a clump of paper stuck in the shredder with half of my scissor blade underneath. Turning the shredder back on is now completely out of the question, since I don't want metal shards flying up in my face, so I look around, and grab a letter opener.

By this point, half of the people in the office are standing around my desk, watching my little adventure here. I poke at the paper clump with the letter opener for a good ten minutes, pulling out small chunks of paper at a time until i finally get most of it out. However, I see no scissor blade underneath.
This is because it is actually stuck between the blades, so far down that I can't get to it with the letter opener.

My only option left was to grab a magazine and cover the top of the shredder and turn it on, hoping that the scissors would either pop out the top or drop through to the bottom.
I turned it on and it shredded half of a scissor blade.
I thought it would spit it out or something. No, the 10 year old, cranky shredder decided that it would rather shred through metal instead of paper...not that it isn't awesome, but I really wish it would have just shredded the paper I put through it in the first place.

So I'm watching SNL right now and Bon Jovi is playing Who Says you Can't Go Home, and it didn't sound right and it was really bugging me, so I open it up in itunes, and sync it up with the TV...and it's in a different key...the recording is in a higher key than the live version.
I felt all awesome for figuring that out.

I'm such a loser.

This is the car I might be getting!!!
:D


Edit.
Just kidding. Not getting this car. After some research, I've discovered it has a horrendous brake rating. As in you have to replace the breaks almost 2 times a year because they're so bad.
Crap...looking for more cars again.

So work is really boring right now...there's 12 minutes left and then I'll be done.
I have been doing literally NOTHING all day.

Soooo...Lost. That was a crazy ass season finale. I almost peed myself when I saw what the "frozen donkey wheel" was...the island has a fucking steering wheel??? Are you serious? That was kind of hilarious. I know they were trying to be serious and all...but really? A giant wheel? I'm still sticking to the theory of time travel...especially since the guy in the video said they were going to move the bunny in time and that for a moment it will seem to vanish. I bet that's what happened to the island.
Also, the Desmond and Penny reunion at the end actually made me cry. Not much on TV can make me cry, but that did it. ADORABLE.
And, OMG it's Locke in the coffin! Excuse me, I have to go do a little dance because I SO CALLED IT.
So it looks like season 5 will be how they get back to the island.

Work is over! Yay

Wooo, so I have two jobs this summer!

The first is 35 hours a week working at the Career Services Office at Duquesne. I'm actually here in the office now...because there's nothing to do right now. It mainly consists of printing off resumes that students and alumni upload to the site, making copies of job opportunities in the area, filing stuff away in our library, and answering the phone.

The other job, I was just hired for yesterday is with a company called CSC, and I'll be doing security stuff at all events at Heinz Field, Palumbo Center, and Peterson Event Center. This fits in really nice because I can work whenever I want to. I just call in, find out what events are going on that week, and I get to pick what I want to work! It's really awesome.

Sooo that's what I'll be doing this summer.


In other news, last weekend, the Half-Price books had a sale where everything in the store was an extra 20% off...so I went a little nuts, and bought like 10 books, all sci fi crap, but I love that crap, so yay! I'm pretty psyched because I actually have time to read now that it's summer. During the school year it would take me like weeks to finish a little 200 page book...I can pretty much do that in a day now cause I have time! Yayyyyy!

:-D

Well I just got my email today about my placements for student teaching.
One of them is absolutely amazing, and I actually already knew about it prior to getting this email. It's at North Allegheny High School, teaching strings.
My other placement is for elementary general music at Barrett Elementary School, in Homestead. This is a city school, and I've observed there before, and while I admire the teacher for staying with the job for so long, I don't think I would ever want to teach in a city school.

Anyways, I'm very glad that I found out about these placements...it's now starting to sink in that I'm student teaching next semesters. It's amazing how fast the first three years at college went by.

Rest in peace, little hamster.
I'll miss you.
( Pictures of Penelo )

I'M DONE!!! Yeah, bitches.



I made one of these last sememster and it really helped, so I'm making another one.
Woooo.

Instrument Materials Lab
_x_ Warm-Up lesson plans and handouts
_x_ Internet Resource Assignment

Methods V
_x_Bowing Assingment for Corelli
_x_Bowing Assignment for Mozart
_x_Mozart CMP
_x_Teaching double stops
_x_Strings notebook
_x_Strings Observations Journal
_x_Choral Observations Journal

Shaping of the Modern World
_x_Study Guide for Final
_x_Read Course Reader Articles
_x_Prepare answer for Final Exam Essay Question

Musicianship VI
_x_Study for Final
_x_Prepare Answer for Final Exam Essay Question

Ed Psych
_x_Finish readings
_x_ Final Paper (including last LPA)
_x_ Peer edit Megan's paper

Woodwind Tech
_x_ Email in final

Viola
_x_Find Accompianist
_x_Prepare for Jury
_x_Jury - April 25, 4:30

Misc
_x_Autobiography for music ed.

I'm sure I'm missing things, but I'll update this as I figure out what I have left to do.

EDIT: WOOOOOOHOOO! I'M DONE WITH METHODS FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! You have no idea how amazing that feels.

So there is a little less than a month left of school, and of course, everything seems to have been assigned to us now. This is not a good thing since I'm not really motivated to do any work. I really want it to be summer like now!!! Argh. Well, in comparison to that giant list I had last semester, I don't think it's as bad, but it's pretty close. It really helps that we don't have a 40 page paper this semester (although we have the same assignment, it's just way shorter).

Right now I should be writing either my CMP or my history paper, both of which are due on Tuesday, and both of which are barely started. I have a feeling I will not be sleeping at all tomorrow night. Well that sucks.

I keep think about all the stuff I'm going to be able to do when I have free time in the summer, and I'm really excited. I want to go on like a road trip with my friends, go walk around downtown whenever I feel like it, hang out with people and not have to worry about stuff I have due...it's going to be awesome. I turned in an application for Barnes and Noble and I'm waiting to hear back from them, and I also applied to be a desk aid if that doesn't work out. I'm really looking forward to not having junior year anymore. This year reminds me a lot of junior year in high school; I took a bunch of honors courses, had a ton of homework every night, and by the time it was over, I just didn't want to do anything that required thinking for awhile. Then senior year in high school was really nice because I got to take a bunch of elective classes that I liked, and it wasn't as much work. Next year, I get to student teach, and then take a bunch of core classes (that freshman take). Yeah, student teaching will take work, but the core class semester should not be anywhere near as bad as this semester.

Speaking of student teaching, I may have been placed at North Allegheny with Sarah Lavelle, which is kind of awesome since they have a really huge string program there. I don't know for certain yet. I also haven't heard anything about my second placement for general music. Hopefully it's something good! :-D

Ooook, I should really be typing my CMP, so I'm going to stop writing in this.
Summer better come fast.

Soooo I was in my apartment today, and just chilling, watching "Along Came Polly" on TV cause nothing else was on, and my butt hurt so I went and looked outside and there were all these people lined up on the bluff looking out into Pittsburgh. Little weird. Then I remembered that they were supposed to blow up this one building to make room for the new stadium they're building, so I got my camera ready. About fifteen minutes later there was this huge booming noise, like fireworks, and the entire apartment starts shaking. The windows were vibrating, it was insane I taped most of it on my camera, I'll put a link up here as soon as I get it uploaded to youtube.

It was seriously the coolest thing ever. It was like Die Hard, out of my window.
GO EXPLOSIONSSSS!
:-D

VIDEO:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=F4MH4P112lg

So, basically, my job is to babysit the music school. Which means I sit around and do nothing at all.


( Top 15 Random LJ Pictures. )

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years everyone!

Well even though it's well past Christmas and a lot closer to New Years...whatever.
Break has been nice so far...relaxing to say the least. Although after about two days of being back at home I already wanted to leave. It's been a lot more bearable since I've been hanging out with friends from high school and stuff.

Anyways...I'm kind of looking forward to next semester at school. It's the last semester I have before student teaching, and also I'm going to be finding out where I'll be placed for student teaching. Really excited about that. I'm also looking forward to NOT have Dr. Schmalz anymore...yay!

Sometimes around finals I feel like the faculty here at Duquesne isn't giving us finals to make sure we comprehend the information we've learned over the semester.

No, I think they all get together, and plot about how horrible they can make our lives and then laugh as we wallow in misery. Damn you!

Oh my god...They are making a PRINCE OF PERSIA MOVIE.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0473075/

There's the IMDB.

And look at who the producer is. BRUCKHEIMER. Now it has to be good.
2009 is too far away... :-(

Let me explain my enthusiasm. Prince of Persia was the first video game I ever played on our families first old school Apple Computer. It was the original, and to get it to load, you had to restart the computer and you couldn't load anything else but the game because it took up too much memory. We had the original Prince of Persia, Prince of Persia 2 (the first level of that was AWESOME, you were running through a town and had to escape by jumping off the docks and just barely catching on the edge of the ship leaving) and we also had Prince of Persia 3. Of course when I started playing these games I was 5. My mom hated them because when you fell into the spike pits he got all mangled and bloody, or when you went through the slicer things he actually got cut in half and blood got splattered on the blades. It was ridiculously violent for my 5 year old self. Oh I never got that far into the game when I was 5 though, I just watched my dad play it. I don' think I even beat that game until I was like 8 or 9.

Anyways, I love the new Prince of Persia games they have out now, and I especially like the Sands of Time, and apparently that's what the movie will be based off of. Although I wish it would be based off of the original game, the storyline in the original game is rather overdone (Boy meets girl, boy gets thrown in dungeon and has 60 minutes to save girl before she the evil vizar kills her, boy saves girl, they kiss, the end. ok maybe not entirely typical, but it is rather predictable) Sands of time was such an awesome game. I cannot wait to see who they get to play the prince. He better be damn hot and not wearing a shirt most of the time.

Edit: Prospective Movie Poster, apparently: http://host.trivialbeing.org/up/persiamovieposter.jpg
Also,
http://persia.moviechronicles.com/

The next three weeks are what I have been dreading all semester. These are the last three weeks of classes before finals. Except...here's the thing. I actually have very few finals. There's a reason for that. They give us a ridiculous amount of work that needs to be done before then. I am therefore making a list in my Livejournal and I will cross things off as they get done so I feel like I've accomplished something. Even though it won't look like much.

THE LIST...

METHODS IV
_x_String Notebook
_x_Band Notebook
_x_Strings CMP, Grade 3
_x_Lesson Plan & Teaching 8th Grade Orchestra
_x_Observation Journal for Band
_x_Observation Journal for Strings
_x_Demonstrate Musicianship for Dr. Doerksen? wtf is that supposed to even mean?

CFC
_x_Final Paper; The National Standards and How They Are Applied in Choir Rehearsals

MARCHING BAND METHODS
_x_Look up prices on instruments and make a list
_x_Read internet articles
_x_Marching Band Binder
_x_Write a paper on an article
_x_Write one paragraph on each article (total of 14 articles)
_x_Bullshit everything for this class because there is a .0001% chance that she'll actually read it.

WOODWIND TECHNIQUES
_x_Flute playing exam
_x_Take home final
_x_Watch online videos about flutes

ED PSYCH
_x_Diversity Case Project
_x_Long ass Interim report...this needs it's own checklist.
_x_ 0-10 pages
_x_10 pages done
_x_20 pages done
_x_30 pages done
Total of 37 pages.


MUSICIANSHIP V
_X_Go online during class
_x_Study for final, written. Must make sense of that study guide. ETA: Nope. It doesn't make sense. I'm going to fail another test. Meh.

CHOIR MATERIALS LAB
_x_Make a mock choral program
_x_Learn all parts for a song and teach it to class.


OTHER STUFF
_x_Viola Jury - scales, etude, piece. Need to runthrough piece with accompianist again.
_x_Orchestra concert

PEOPLE NEED TO STOP ASSIGNING STUFF. I keep doing stuff and they keep assigning more. THERE'S ONLY A WEEK OF CLASS LEFT. STOP IT.

Sorry for the boring post, this is really more for myself.
When break gets here I plan on doing nothing.
The end.

DONE.

In no particular order...
1.Oblivion, Morrowind
2.Final Fantasy X, XII
3.Guitar Hero series
4.Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic and Knuckles
5.Jak and Daxter series

So I'm currently in musicianship, listening to this old guy babble on about the Baroque period in different countries, and I won't lie, it's pretty damn boring.


However I have some good news. I had thought that my student teaching was going to be pushed back a semester because of my failed piano proficiencies. It turns out, that one of my teachers is trying to make an exception for the string players since he will be gone during the spring semester. This is awesome.
Hooray.

I also found out that Mr. Campion is actually going to be retiring when I graduate. I am so applying for that job. Mr. Buetzow is also retiring, and apparently so are three other music teachers in the district. I am now determined to get Uncle Ron's job. If not, I have some fall back jobs in Bethel. :-)

Annnnyways, I suppose I'll get back to taking notes now...blarrrrgh.

I am SO ready for break. Can it be break yet? I want it to be thanksgiving break.

In other news I am ridiculously excited because I just signed up for Gamefly, and they're like netflix but with video games...this could be bad. Also I have netflix too. Oh god.
Also...Guitar Hero III is amazing...I'm SO CLOSE to beating expert. Gah!

Anyways, it needs to be thanksgiving break so i can play Bioshock, which Gamefly is sending me.

So junior year is ridiculous. There's a lot of work involved, lots of paper writing and observing and studying. It's really time consuming. Technically I should be working on a CMP due in a few days right now.

However, a few things have been bugging me lately. The first is that severla people seem to think that I don't like them because I'm not able to hang out with them every goddamn week. The thing that upsets me the most is that these are people that I thought I was close to, but one little thing happens and they get pissed off, but the thing is at this point school comes first. I cannot financially afford another semester here, so I absolutely have to pass all of my classes. I also can't lose my scholarship, so I need to stay above a 3.5 GPA. That's not easy when you have 10-20 page papers due almost every week. It's also not easy when your music history teacher doesn't teach a damn thing and tests you on content that is not in the book, nor in any of your notes.

I also feel really alone at school. Not to be rude to anyone, but there are a lot of people that I probably wouldn't be "friends" with if we weren'tin the same major in all of the same classes. I can only think of one person here who almost seems like I can relate to, but even then I don't think I would be friends with them without this situation. Anyone reading this who think this might be them, yeah it probably is. It doesn't mean I don't like you, I just don't think you understand who I am, and honestly, I probably won't keep in touch with you after graduation. We'll see.
I guess the one positive thing about the other music majors is that they are some of the only people I can be a complete music dork around and not feel like an idiot.

There's really only a few people that I feel I can trust, and none of them are at Duquesne. I see some of them occasionally, but not enough. The other thing is I can't talk to them about music the way I do with other music majors. It's a really important part of my life, but I don't feel like many people at Duquesne are actually real friends and I don't think any of my real friends will understand what the hell I'm talking about.

I just want somebody to talk about the things that I'm interested in, and have them know what I'm talking about, and they aren't just my friend because they have to be in the same class as me for the next few semesters.

My class just went through our junior piano proficiency. I, along with several others, did not pass the entire proficiency and have to redo some sections. We have one chance to make it up, or else face "dire consequenses" (in the words of Sister Carole.)
Now, the music ed faculty already know all of us pretty well and know what we are capable of. And they know who is capable of passing this, and who is not. What really annoys me is that we have to take two years of piano, and at the end of the second year, take a "mock" proficiency (which technically is everything we do in the proficiency, except it's not in front of everyone). Ok. I did that last year. Not only that, but I got an A on it. I did the same thing for my proficiency (although I will admit that I did mess up the patriotic songs big time this time around), and didn't pass three portions of it. I knew that I wasn't going to get patriotic songs, but when I found out that I missed sight singing (I fumbled ONE chord and got a 2.9...1/10th of a point from passing), and then didn't pass my two songs with modulations and accompianment (don't know how that happened, I thought for sure that I had passed those...once again, 2.9) I have to wonder why I didn't pass them. Especially when I've demonstrated several times in the past that I am capable of doing them. I realize that it's a formal test, and it is good to be challenged, but I do not see any reason as to why I didn't pass 2 of the 3 sections I have to make up. In any case, I'm quite intrigued to see what Sister Carole has to say when I walk in to my new weekly piano lesson and play through everything as she told me to last year...

I'm just so sick of how the staff works here. It's like high school all over again. You've got Dr. Benham and Dr. Doerksen, who are in cahoots, and then good old Betsy Moll and SIster Carole are off cackling over their plan to fail everyone out of the school, and then there's Mrs. Jordanoff floating around in her own little personal bubble. They gossip about students, they choose who they want to pass their classes, and essentially hand pick who makes it through the program. If you aren't one of the people that they handpick, then they will make your life as a music ed major a living hell until you drop out of the program. This is the type of thing you don't hear as a freshman. But I am SO sick of being graded because of who I am and not the work I produce. It's to the point where I feel as if the only class I get a real grade in is my Core class. It happens the most in Benham's class, but it does happen in the other areas too...sort of in this order...Benham, Sister Carole/CJ, Mrs. Moll, and then Doerksen. Doerksen doesn't do this as often, although I wonder sometimes when I get a really good grade on a very poorly written CMP if he does take personality and the wellness of fit in this career path into consideration. Benham is pretty damn blunt about grades. I got a 100% on a project, and other people, who's project I believe to be the same quality as mine got 70%-80%...which in music ed is failing. I honestly think he's trying to get rid of people. Sister Carole is hard to decipher...while she's nice in person, she is SO HARD to work with. She says one thing, but then expects another...and expects you to know this. She certainly grades those who are not piano majors much harder than those who are...
And then there's CJ. If you aren't in choir, you're screwed. I'm not in choir.
I'm so fucked.

Aghhhhh.