it's all about classical me

Classical me. Classical you. Classical who? Classical Me is a chance for musicians at my high school to perform every semester in front of... their parents. Okay, I'll admit, among the crowd of parents, there are also some siblings, classmates, and the three school music teachers. But that's what I love about it. There isn't anything at stake, like there is at an audition, but it still mimics that horrible, anxious feeling you get every time you perform. Cold, clammy hands that make it impossible to play the violin, shaky knees, butterflies. It really is just wonderful. Apparently that feeling wears off as you perform more. Although, I am pretty sure my sister's cello teacher just said that to convince us to play at the next recital.

This was the second time I performed at Classical Me. I played Bach's Partita No. 3. The only rests are the very first eighth note and the very last one. So technically, there are no breaks for four whole pages of music. Not to mention that those four pages are virtually all sixteenth notes. Perhaps that's why I was so nervous.

My first Classical Me performance was in the second semester last year. I played Praeludium and Allegro, composed by Kreisler, and I was the only freshman! But, this year, many other people in my grade performed. That's probably because sophomores, juniors, and seniors can get honors credit for music class by performing at Classical Me and writing a music-related paper each semester. I wrote mine about the effects of music on the brain. I must say, it was pretty awesome. There was even a labelled picture of my own brain. :)

Here is a video of my performance. It has nice sound quality, since my parents recently invested in a microphone for videotaping. I played in the second half, fifth to last. While watching all the other performances, I had to continuously warm my hands up, then cool them down again. Like I was saying before, I hate cold, clammy hands. Luckily, when it was my time to perform, my hands were the perfect temperature.

pigtails are back

Yay! I have finally finished my Spanish project. It is a music video to "Me Vale," a song by a Spanish group called Mana. I know, I know, quite exciting.

The theme of the song is that you should not care what others think of you. The rough translation of the first line is, "I do not care what people think of me. Even if you wear your hair another way, I still like to wear my hair like this." So in our video, we put pigtails in our hair to represent rebelling against the norm.



My group and I chose the song because it is reasonably catchy and upbeat, but what we didn't realize was that it is extremely wordy. Then, it came back to haunt us when our teacher said she wanted us to mouth all the words. So, we had to memorize the whole song for filming, and then edit all of the clips super accurately (to the 0.1 second). I have spent so long on this project that the song is probably permanently embedded in my mind. Why couldn't we have chosen a song like "Egoista," which has one word of lyrics repeated over and over again?

Now, I can look forward to the best part: presenting it in front of the class. Nah, that was sarcasm. Last year, I had to present two Spanish (non-music) video projects, and I seriously wanted to run and hide. Trust me, it is that embarrassing.

on tour

For my first college tour, my mom, sister, and I took an hour long road trip to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. My mom says she went there 100 years ago, but I'm not sure I believe her. Anyway, I have always wanted to visit. My mom also mentioned that colleges may read my blog, so in deference to this, I have decided to use proper capitalization in this post.


First, we went on a guided tour of the campus. It started off wonderfully, with my mom subtly informing our tour guide that his fly was down. Wow, what a truly awkward beginning to my first college tour. He looked so embarrassed, the poor guy. I don't think that I could tell a complete stranger that his fly was down, especially if I had to spend the next hour with said stranger. This just shows that my mom is an extremely nice person. In fact, she has also told two strangers that their shirts were inside out and two that their sweatshirts were backwards.

As you would expect, the tour only showed us the nicest buildings on campus. I was especially impressed by Gilman Hall. The guide said that they recently renovated the hall for $73 million. *Jaw drops*. The hall was really dark and old when my mom was at Hopkins, but I guess that the huge chunk of money transformed it into an amazingly beautiful place to hang out and study. The rooms are surrounded with stained glass windows that let light in. There is a little coffee shop with large white lanterns hanging from the high ceiling.


I also really loved the Hutzler Reading Room, nicknamed the "Hut," which is a study area. It looks so quiet and comfy. According to my mom, people pull all-nighters studying at the Hut.


The rec center is also really nice. It was created in 2005, so it is fairly new. Apparently, there are separate workout spaces for athletes and students so that students don't have to exercise next to athletes and feel insecure about themselves. Really, that is actually what the tour guide said. So, since there is a lot of equipment, the rec center isn't too crowded during non-class hours. My mom told me that that was a problem at Berkley, where she went to graduate school. In addition, my little sister and I got pretty excited when we saw that there was a rock climbing wall.


We walked past the freshmen dorms, but didn't get to go inside. Then, we walked to the library, which apparently has six floors. According to the tour guide, the library gets quieter as you go down, so you can customize your study experience. Before we actually went inside the library, my mom, sister, and I left the tour early to catch another tour of the engineering school.

We visited three labs. One was a structural engineering lab where they tested cold form steel with a Multi-axis Structural Testing Rig. It was quite huge and painted blue, thus given the nickname, the Big Blue Baby. The next lab worked mostly on medical devices to assist surgeons. I found it really cool, since I am interested in the biomedical engineering field. One device they designed helps surgeons avoid tremor when doing surgery on the retina of the eye. My mom pointed out to me that the lab, which was programming-related, was located in Hackerman Hall, haha. The last lab was a material sciences lab where they tested how stress, heat, and electrostatics affect various materials.

I don't really have any other colleges to compare to, but I love Hopkins. It is close to home, the facilities are nice, and there are great research opportunities for engineers. I bought some Hopkins clothing at the bookstore, too. :)