Interesting
Wow... its been a while since I wrote in here. A lot of stuff has happened since my last post... like.. a LOT of stuff. I had the senior honors assembly, baccalaureate, and graduation. Man... I graduated... I'm not in high school anymore. That is so weird. I can't handle the feeling. Anyways...
This was probably the most stressful part of my graduation weekend and the most stressful part of the end of my high school career. I kinda stretched myself too thin (surprise, surprise) and agreed to participate a LITTLE bit too much in baccalaureate. Chorus sang, I gave a speech with Susan, I played cello on "Praise...something," and I accompanied Justin and Abby on piano for their duet song. I can't remember the name of that one either. It was intense. Susan and I hadn't written our speech until like the Friday before baccalaureate... I was a bit nervous about how it was gonna go since we had little time to practice and everything. I was actually a lot more nervous before we FINISHED it, but I was very satisfied seeing how good the finished copy turned out to be. The speech didn't go over as well as I had hoped. Mrs. Linear kinda forced us to write a "serious speech" since Brent and Ashley were already doing the "funny speech," so we kinda found it hard to follow that order. I think that we should write whatever the hell we want to write and say what we want, but so it goes. We had a few funny parts in our speech and I think the reason why I don't see the speech as a complete success is because no one laughed at those "funny" parts. I suppose they might of just not been funny haha, but at least there would be someone out there giving that pity laugh. There wasn't even any of that! hmmm.. Well I am anxious to get the dvd of it all back so I can see how we really did.
Reading over this, it sounds like I am not happy with it. Thats not true. I just feel like the audience didn't really get what we had to say, or at least not appreciate it.
Next came the cello. Well, chorus was in there somewhere, but that didn't really matter all that much. Chamber singers just sang a song called "Hear our prayer." Its beautiful. All of the senior chorus members came up and sang that "Praise...something" song and somehow Ms. Tyree convinced me to play the song on cello. The song begins with whats SUPPOSED to be an opening fiddle part, but she insisted that I play it on cello. This meant that I had to play in the fiddle's octave because of course Ms. Tyree doesn't settle for anything less than the absolute BEST. I was most worried about this part. It was a SOLO solo...the kinda where she is playing a couple of chords behind me and my sound is definitely heard good and clear. I was shakin'. Normally, it wouldn't be so bad because I do that kinda solo stuff at church all of the time ... well that is whenever I actually go to church...but this solo was higher than I have ever played before. Im really not exaggerating. This is the first time I have ever played in "thumb position" in public. I was so nervous that I got up at 7am the morning of baccalaureate, closed the doors to my kitchen, and practiced in there until 9 so that I wouldn't wake up the family. This was the morning after my graduation party. OH YEA ... that happened too. There was this one note in the whole solo that I just couldn't hit. I was always off when trying to get this note and it was a high B that of course had to be the climax of the whole opening. I think I only got it right about 2 of the 100 times that I practiced it. I also agreed to tutor Chris (my little middle schooler) at 9am that morning because he had his final math exam the next day. Well to make a long story short, I think I nailed it. I think that I played the opening about as perfect as I, a third-year cellest, could possibly do. I was so happy. As soon as I hit that note, my body just relaxed and I enjoyed playing the rest of the song (including the part when Justin, my page turner, dropped all of my music basically on the ground). I can't wait to hear the tape.
The piano was the final part of my participation in baccalaureate. Justin approached me a good deal in advance of the service and ask me to play for him and Abby. I was flattered that he asked me, so of course I agreed not thinking about all of the other crap I had to do. The piece he chose was "At The Beginning" from Disney's Anastasia. I learned it in the ridiculous key that was written on the sheet music that he gave me and then he asked me if we could lower the key because it was so high for him to sing. I was kinda aggravated that he wanted me to transpose the stupid thing, but I took a look at it and it really was high for a male tenor...really high. I took the time to put in every single note and rhythm one by one into the computer program and finally finished and transposed it all. I learned it in the key that he wanted to sing it in (which so happened to be incredibly MORE difficult to play) and then abby decided that it "sounded weird." We ended up taking it up a half step and there we had it. It was a lot easier to play, but I had to learn it AGAIN. The THIRD time. woo...
At baccalaureate, the whole song went well except that Justin and Abby were really far away from me and I could barely hear them at all. It sounded to me like we got off a couple of times from each other, but everyone else said it sounded fine. I played a couple of REALLY wrong notes, but I guess it went well. I think Justin and Abby were satisfied, although they might have picked Ms. Tyree to play with them if they could do it over again.
On to graduation!
After all of the practices. After all of the years, months, days, and minutes of counting down, it was finally here. It was the most thrilling experience walking out in front of the thousands of people in the Siegel Center. I acheived my one and only goal for high school: get in the top ten of my class. Yes.. Number ten right here baby. woo. I was so happy. I got to sit in the first row instead of WAAAAAY back with the "smiths" in row like 80 something. I got to stand up when I was individually recognized when they said, "Tenth top scholar: Paul Smith, attending Virginia Tech School of Engineering." It was so great. I worked my butt off for that.
The student speeches were alright. I was expecting a little more out of Brent and Rodney, but they did better than I could have done, so no complaining. David McClendon's speech was superb. It was very well done. He put a lot of thought into that and I know that it paid off because it was the best graduation speech that I have heard (I have heard several, believe it or not). Haha.. the best part was spending 30 mins trying to find my family and jill in the MASSIVE crowd outside of the Siegel Center. It took me FOREVER, but I finally found Peter and he took me to everybody else. We took some pics and then we were OUTA there. What a night... what a night.
