My Roller Coaster Day

So. One should start of knowing that on Tuesday I had 3D. I was MEGA pumped when I got in there, but as my wood grew smoother, I grew more and more tired. I left and was useless for the rest of the night. Thus -- I slept.

I slept for a few hours and then woke up and tried to finish my GD poster and work on my Critical Analysis. At 4 am I finally went to sleep after a hot shower (because that's the only time of day you can get a truly hot shower) and I didn't finish my Critical Analysis. In fact, all I got done as far as that homework went was finding out that William Blake was one of the biggest influences on Maurice Sendak, and THAT, my friends, was not relevant whatsoever to my paper.

My Iron and Wine alarm was set for 8 o'clock in the morning, giving me an hour to wake up and get ready for work. Alas, I should know myself -- I always sleep until I REALLY have to wake up, so when the alarm went off I didn't press snooze, I just pressed "Confirm", aka no more alarming. My eyes peeked through their lids across the room towards my clock whose hands are so similar I can rarely tell which is which (usually inferred by the lightness out my window) and it turns out I have 5 minutes to get to work. I JUMPED out of bed (a trait inherited from my dad, which is a long story...) and I put on the first thing I saw and ran out the door.

The previous day was so lovely, almost jacket-less weather, but this morning it was snowing again. I was, for the first time, mad at the snow. Thunderstorms were the only thing my heart desired, and they ran off further into the distance with every flake of falling snow. I stumbled into the Business Office and blinked my eyes awake while my morning voice still lingered. As usual there wasn't much for me to do, so I filed all the extra stuff and learned how to hand out refunds. Thrilling.

Then everyone except Miguel goes into a staff meeting. I'm cool with it; I feel less awkward when I can do zero work by myself rather than do zero work around all these hustling-bustlers. Then one lady comes up to the window asking to get her time card, but all I heard is, "Can I get my shimmyjabwowow?" (I'm still learning the Business Office lingo.) So I turn to Miguel, whose body is completely covered by his cubical except his forehead, and I'm like..."What do I do?" And he gets super agressive and says, "I'm on a conference call..." I look around, "It's in the drawer...the one on the right...you don't need a key...it's the one on top."

Okay now was that so hard? Goodness. Anyhow. I felt bad. Usually when I'm in an environment completely foreign to me I get SUPER self-conscious and inferior. I suppose that a typical homosapien trait, though. After work I headed to the Service Bureau to print out my mediocre GD poster. There were problems with the color callibration on the Konica, and even after they got it fixed, my final print out was a piece of shit. I was really upset. Then I forgot to print out all my process documentation, so I felt extra annoyed.

By the time I got to class I was cussing up a storm and in a really pissy mood, but as soon as we turned in our un-critiqued final products, I was over it. We got our new assignment, which is making a zine, and I was totally stoked. Up and down and up and down. Then she said we were going to see the second Candidate for the new MCAD Presidency do a question-answer session down in the auditorium. I was like, "Okay, whatevs." Little did I know it would speak VERY true to me.

This man, Sam, is a very stand up guy. Right off the bat he was a jokester and called for our attention. He is very established in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Midwest, and, dare I say, the nation. He spoke of various accomplishments such as being a huge part in our light rail systems and, my favorite, attending Julliard. At first he said little about his music career, mostly that he was very good, knew every woodwind, but gave it up to do something else. Later in the session he started talking about it more and more. He talked with the sort of passion that I believe most musicians are born with. He spoke of his ideas to incorporate music into MCAD more. He shared his fear of picking up an instrument and realizing he lost all the music. Everything he said made me want to cry. My pals kept giving me glances like, "He's the answer to all your dreams," but I couldn't look back at them because I was trying very hard not to cry. For the first time I think I truly felt that lump in my throat, and I swallowed it with great great difficulty.

Sam spoke of his 5 dream jobs. He said that, assuming you are already successful, what would your 5 dreams jobs be? All I could think of was playing music again. For some reason all I want to do is to play music. By that point I was hooked on his every word. He has a lot of reasoning and sense to his actions, but he never loses sight of his dreams, and I thought that was very admirable.

Afterwards the crowd cleared out fairly quickly. We were a few of the last people to leave and I looked back at him and, for the first time with a guest speaker, felt the NEED to go and thank him for his inspiring words. As soon as everyone else cleared out and I was the last one with him, I shook his hand and said, "Hi, I'm Sarah."

And then I started crying.
I don't know why, but it's like he put everything in perspective for me. Made me feel okay with the way things are, yet not okay with settling. I explained to him my current indecision to continue with art next year, and that I had been looking into music school, but how all my fears and lack of knowing where to begin was interfering with any ability to decide.

He asked me, "How old are you?" (I knew where this was going.)
I answered, "18." (And by that point I was so out of my mind that I had to think, "Am I 18? or 19? I can't remember!")
And he said, "And what did you play?"
I answered, "Trombone and Bass Trombone mainly."
He asked, "Were you really good?"
I tried modestly to reply, "Well yeah, I believe I was."
He asked, "Classical or jazz or what?"
I said, "Well both, but I'm really into jazz."
And he exclaimed, "Oh I can see why you miss that bass trombone then!"
And he said, "This is where you start."
And he gave me his card and told me to email him.

We talked a little more, but I could see he needed to get out of there. I felt like I could talk to him forever and I had so many things to ask him about. I couldn't stress to him enough, I think, how much that hour and a half meant to me, how much it settled my heart that he wanted to bring music to the school, how he pretty much was the answer to my dreams (though I didn't say that!) We talked about some other things too, but I can't quite remember them.

All I really remember is how big of a fool I felt for basically crying to him the whole time we were talking. I think I saw his eyes getting teary, but who knows. I suppose that's not really what he was looking for when he came to MCAD today to answer a few questions....

So. After that I went home, kind of unknowing of what to do then, after such a dynamic and emotional bit of time. My roommates asked, "So what did you think of him." And, because I was still kind of crying, all I could say was, "I liked him." Boy was THAT an understatement. Goodness. I needed him. It's like God truly answered my prayer on that one. I needed a place to start, and that start came to me. Sigh.

So eventually Charlotte and I walked up to the Wellness Fair to check things out and then we go sit with Ethan. Boy oh boy, it's been a long day. Ethan and I had a GREAT adoration discussion about Thrice and other post-hardcore bands like Thursday and mewithoutYou. Then we all watched Lost, which is always a roller coaster in itself. Then everyone left and I decided to stay behind. This kid Mark? or Matthew? I can't remember...was playing piano and I went over to just spectate and maybe strike up a conversation. He said he plays a little piano, but mainly 9 years of drums. He's 21? now and this is like the third or fourth college he's been to. He was in a band who got a record deal, but apparently they broke up because the lead singer wasn't pulling his weight, wasting his talent. Yeah.

Then he left and I dabbled on the piano while Jamie dabbled with her Media 2 homework, of which I should have been doing. Then, out of nowhere, Tuesday pops up saying she wanted to get a hold of my but couldn't, and heard some piano playing of which she explored and turned out to be me. COOL! The she asks if I want to join her for some pie at Perkins. Being the spontaneous kids we are, we say, "Shore!" And we all venture out. ('Twas Charlotte, Jamie, Tuesday and I.)

We got there and. Well. Tuesday and I get MEGA giggly around one another. Moreso than I think I've ever been with anyone else. And for some reason it's not annoying, it's genuine laughter for no good reason, and it's really healing for me, being in such a cold environment sometimes. So we're all sitting at the booth and after about half an hour with our menus, we order home fries and pies. By the time it gets to our table, Tuesday and I are in a laughing FIT. We seriously cannot stop. And we're never even laughing at any one thing in particular. It's just really goofy laughter. I felt kind of bad because I didn't see Charlotte or Jamie really getting in on it, and I can't imagine the rest of the restaurant was all too happy with our cackling. Nonetheless, it was unstopable -- so unstopable that Tuesday was crying, and we were nearing a puking stage, not to mention the oh-my-god-I'm-going-to-pee stage. It was great!

So after we were done giggling our guts out, we barely got our pie down and then we left. 'Twas a solid evening out. I hadn't been away from the college in a while either, which is always nice, fo sho. Oh and we had a BOGO with the pie, so we brought home slices for the boys. Then I went home with Tuesday and we watched Clarissa Explains it All, something I hadn't seen in AGES. It was great. All around. The style. The Lingo. The Acting. The COLORS. Oh man. Wonderful.

OH and I love their cat Henry.

Then I came home and am sitting in bed when Charlotte asks to use my bathroom. So she came. Now she left. And I'm sitting here again. Very tired, reflecting on my very eventful Wednesday, I wonder what Thursday will hold?

Your Documentor,
Sarah