Suzanne’s August, new/social-media style

Hi guys,

My attention span gets smaller as I grow older, so I’ll write like I’m on Twitter:

August 1: MSS Catering to raise funds for Music Ball. Tallis Wing actually looks quite classy when you dim the lights and set up a stall for wine, pastries, and coffee.

August 7: Try and fail to sort chamber group.

August 8: Decided not to go to AYO audition as it would have been a massive waste of time for all parties. Music Ball planning = no practice time.

August 11: Composition Studies assignment due. Handed it in on time, but it needed seeerious editing and reinstrumentation. Got a good mark for it, though. Oh, and I sightread 10 new works this day. Hooray for playing a popular instrument.

August 12: Library Users Committee, one of the many various things you do on the MSS when you’re not running events or trying to raise funds to run events. A thrilling dose of mystery and excitement – when will the Grainger museum reopen? What books will be put on reserve this semester? Where has all our library funding gone? And who has been hiding every single freaking book on Mozart ever written?

August 13: Music Ball was sensational. It went from 7 pm – 7 am and had a live jazz band and the world’s coolest bathrooms. Seriously could not figure out how to use the taps in the bathroom due to flower arrangements everywhere.

August 14: Nobody rocked up to class today. Woke up at 8 am to bump-out Music Ball stuff. Try and fail to sort out another chamber group.

August 16: Open Day. MEGA-SIZED tour groups at the Con. My tour was kind of lame… ‘and here is a practice room. And here is another practice room. And here is a room that is not a practice room, but you can’t go there because it’s locked.’

August 17: Uni Orchestra concert. All-Russian program.

August 19: BMus Standing Committee. Committee that designs new subjects for music. Conductor’s Orchestra – basically a gig where you get paid to sightread a symphony under the baton of student conductors. Great job, good fun, tells you aaaalll about how badly you sightread and about all the deficiencies in your ability to count and your familiarity with the orchestral canon.

August 21: FINALLY sorted out a chamber group. Program = Schubert, Shepard on the Rock with piano and voice, Jolivet, Sonatine with flute.

August 23: Got an email saying that my Property essay from last semester got into the finals for the LSS Paper and Oral competition. Panic at the thought of giving a presentation. Ponder on the patent unfairness of the disproportionate rewards I have been getting from my corner-cutting, reading-not-doing, class-not-going, last-minute-mad-scramble study of property law. Try to make a chart of marks vs percentage of reading done and find no visible correlation…

August 24: Composer’s Orchestra. Which is just regular orchestra but with readings of student compositions instead of Rachmaninoff rehearsals. Sightread four new works.

August 25: Second Conductor’s Orchestra gig. Again with the counting failure. Decide to check out aural studies books and redo first-year aural studies.

August 27: Paper and Oral Presentation. Free wine and sandwiches! See, priorities.

August 29: Melbourne Journal of International Law training day. The intricacies of the em-dash. Again. Oh, and more free sandwiches. Which is of course why I show up in the first place. That and the fact that I love my MJIL people because they are all weird vegetarian grammar nerds who speak fluent French and volunteer for human rights organisations.

August 31: And now we are at yesterday. Hooray.