I’m not an excuse to procrastinate, I’m a real little post! (Suzanne)

^ In case you didn’t get it, that’s supposed to be a Pinocchio reference. Anyway. Since this is my second night in a row procrastinating instead of doing something productive, I figured you deserved a real post rather than snarky comments on my YouTube misadventures. So here is what is going on in my life right now:

MJIL stuff. Holy crap, assistant editing is so much more work than general member-ing. On the other hand, it’s also more fun work, because you get to boss general members around, play detective with the obscure sources, and communicate with the author of your article to see what he actually thinks about all the rewording you’re doing to his pride and joy (“Hi, famous academic/High Court judge/law firm partner, I’m writing to tell you that you’ve misplaced a comma”). And you get to bond with the other people spending all day in the MJIL office. I’m pretty sure I know why Law Review and MJIL look good on CVs now – if it’s there, the firms know that they’ve got a) someone who can write and do research, and b) someone willing to work long hours.

Truancy. I didn’t go to Constitutional Law today, because at 11 am I got a sudden urge to practice instead. Whoops. I didn’t go to Contracts last week, because I was planning to go to the 4 pm class in order to practice during the day instead, and then I realised I had Sinfonia rehearsal at 4 pm, so I couldn’t go to Contracts. Whoops. Also, I was invited to the all-you-can-eat buffet they gave for the people who raised the most money in each college for the intercollegiate World Vision 40-Hour Famine effort (yes, I thought that was ironic, too) and skipped that as well. I haven’t been tutoring at SAIL much this semester either. So I’m not doing so well on the attendance front.

Music. I’m playing in the Faculty of Music’s Bach competition. Which would be a pretty ordinary endeavour, except since my instrument has no Bach repertoire, I am instead playing a 20th century piece by a Hungarian composer named Kovacs which is a pastiche of Bach’s idiom. It mostly sounds like Bach, except for the odd moment where it sounds like Bach on overly strong stimulants. I’m not expecting to win; in fact, I wasn’t really expecting my repertoire to even be approved. But it’s really bizarre learning how to do things Bach-style, it’s a very different type of musical thinking from the usual 19th and 20th century works that fill 99% of the clarinet repertoire. I’m thinking of learning the other pieces in the Kovacs suite, since each one is a parody of a different composer and I think it would be really beneficial to do them all in one sitting.

Other than that, I haven’t been practicing as much as I should be. Which is probably due to procrastination, and also a bit due to boredom — I should be working on fundamentals, but fundamentals are time-consuming and not really as interesting as real music.

Also, I am in want of a good accompanist. My last one is going to Europe and won’t be able to make it to my exam. Time to get busy and call people.

Moving. I’m not going to be staying at college next year, the cost of living and the extreme unlikelihood of getting a scholarship that will break even with outside renting precludes that. (In my first year, college was cheaper than renting due to a very generous $5,000 scholarship, and the then-lower fees. Not so much my second year, when the fees rose by 5%, and my scholarship shrank to $1500 due to increased competition from the very smart people in my year group. The net effect over the two years has been a break-even, but I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead, since it’s much more likely that I’ll be on a $1500 or less scholarship, or no scholarship at all, than it is that I’ll get a second $5000 one.) So a group of friends and I are going househunting soon, in an attempt to find a nice house in a non-threatening neighbourhood to set up our headquarters.

Free food.The Music Students’ Society bake-off is Thursday. There will be free morning tea there. Attend. Speaking of free food, I saw Justice Kirby of the High Court of Australia speak on Friday. There was very good free food – as in sushi, decent wine, mini sandwiches, quiche, and cakes. I highly recommend attending lots of guest lectures; they provide the best free food on campus, and you might actually learn something.

So that really covers the main bullet points. It’s nearly midnight now, so I think I’ll go to sleep. Bye-bye.