In which Daniel recalls the last days of sophomore year in a kaleidoscope of moments.

           Perhaps the word “snapshot” is an inaccurate description of this blog post, because rather than describe a single moment or emotional state I’ve experienced, I will instead present a series of fractured feelings and actions that I recall.  It was, after all, in this way that I closed my second year of college: confused, panicked, and chaotic. It was pretty awesome.

*

            I am lying upon the floor in the lobby of Schneebeck Concert Hall, three of my classmates from Music 231: Classical to Romantic Eras sprawled in various places around me.  Music history textbooks are strewn across the floor, hindering the progress of young music students as they attempt to get into the music building through the lobby.  In preparation for the long night of studying for the incomprehensible monster that is our final, I have brought snacks.  Many snacks.  But it is not so much the number of snacks that I have brought that impresses my peers, so much as the quantity.  It is remarkable what 64 fluid ounces of Boathouse Chai Tea can get you through.

*

            With only minutes to spare, I glare angrily at my very last Music Theory final, wondering how on earth the atonal twelve-tone rows before me are related.  Surely they must be, and I am just not seeing the connection?  But aha!  I see now how the lines are inverses, and with only a minute to spare, I scribble down answers that were most likely (hopefully correct).  Inverse of 8!  Retrograde Inverse of 10!  Retrograde of 3!…?  Close enough!  And with that, I turn in my last music theory test of college.

*

            Three people remain in the last few minutes of the Music History final: Kelton Mock, Minna Stelzner, and me.  Yes!  I think to myself, I remain writing in my test alongside the two students that are most likely to ACTUALLY know what they’re saying!  And this time, I am not the last person writing in my test booklet because I am taking time making up answers, but instead the last person writing because I have so much to say.  Who knows their music history?  This kid.

*

            “Hold on, please”, Dr.Padula – head of the School of Music’s vocal department – calls as I preemptively attempt to leave the stage of Kilowrth Chapel after only the second song of my jury (the school’s singing final).  “We’d like to request a third song”.  What?  I panic as I smile and step back to into place in front of the piano.  “Donizetti’s Me Voglio Fa’na Casa, please”.  Somehow, I glide through the song in a vague daze of exhaustion and panic, and all is going well until I reach a line that I’ve forgotten.  Damn, I think, I was so close, and I rapidly begin synthesizing Italian from the verses I’ve already sung, until my pianist comes to an awkward halt in confusion.  There is a slight pause, and I leap right to the closing section of the song, barreling through rather inelegantly until I reach the end.  Whoops.

*

            A small group of the brothers of my fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, are throwing a Frisbee on a lawn by a beach at Point Defiance.  One of us grills homemade hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken-apple sausages, the scent of it ashy and savory. We talk about nothing in particular as we play, and while I liked them all before anyway, I am certain that I belong there because we are all very bad at Frisbee.

*

            I received an A- on my jury!  How did that happen?

*

            Despite all the boredom, pain and suffering that Aural Skills has necessitated, I cannot deny the perfect, precise beauty of my completed final as I analyze the final chord of my harmonic dictation and officially complete sophomore year.  It was a good thing, really, to have taken this class… even if it required three separate tests for each unit, and the completion of an ear training computer program named MacGamut that may or may not be evil incarnate.  How wonderful that I can hear music and understand its harmonic language; how useful all that piano practice was.  But then again, these sorts of things always look better in hindsight.

*

            Worn out from a strenuous evening of packing my room up, but determined to seize one last opportunity for socializing before I leave campus, I prepare to head over to a friend’s house at midnight.  “You better take the dessert food”, my only remaining housemate instructs.  “We’ve still got a third of an apple pie and that enormous container of vanilla ice cream”.  “Do we have paper plates and utensils?” I ask, and she opens her nearly empty cupboard in the kitchen to pull out a box of paper plates, forks and spoons.  “I looked at these about an hour ago and said, ‘I’m going to need these later for some reason’, and this must be the reason”.  With great delicacy, I stack the paper plates and utensils on top of the pie, and fit that pie into the ice cream container – which is so enormous, the pie fits.  “Oh my god, that is so perfect,” Rosa exclaims, “I need to instagram this right now”.  I grin as we both take a picture of this perfect little moment.  College is, in fact, the best.

*

            One blog post remains before I am, at last, finished blogging for this semester, but before I write that final farewell, let me say this: that apple pie was absolutely delicious.