IHS WISE PROGRAM - Narrative Essay/Bibliography/Research Commentary

     So basically, I have decided that for my narrative, I'm going to tell the story of the lesson I learned/do some more in depth reflection. For my presentation though, that's going to be entirely demonstration of research (mostly macro?) because I know I didn't demonstrate a lot of that in my journal overall. I feel like my journal might be very similar to what I might put in my narrative, but... we'll see?

Inspiration & more - Today's Obsession: http://www.youtube.com/user/SunnyChoiMusic

    I love how every time I feel like giving up on playing something, I can just go on youtube and find my interest back into playing piano.

    Sunny Choi is an amazing piano player who plays interpretation covers of songs that are released. She plays songs like "Just The Way You Are" by Bruno Mars and "Jar of Hearts" and even Lady Gaga. I think she covers all songs that are recent/new/played on the radio.

   This is just an example, but they're all amazing, and I love how she uses her whole entire body in her playing. It's almost as if she's flowing with the song. I wish I could achieve this magic. Haha.

Wohooo!

   Tong Hua is doneeee! I thought this song would be so much easier because of how slow it was, but some of the chords are crazy impossible. Haha... I'm so glad I got over the ending bump. Even though I can't play it perfectly, when I hear myself hitting the notes and I feel them flow together and I hear them resembling the actual song, I get really really happy. Even though it's still "broken", I can imagine myself playing it perfectly with all the notes flowing smoothly. I think it's kind of weird that I feel this way, and it's sort of an embarrassing, but oh well. I just hope I can get this song perfect in the next week.
    I don't want to reveal toooooo muchh here because I want it to be a special performance when I play it for my presentation, but since I haven't really had practice with audience in performance, I am planning on playing the song for an audience to practice either this Friday or this weekend. I'm contemplating whether or not to just go to church and play it for a bunch of strangers as like a... "test". Hahaha.

Thoughts after the sample...

   So I was Carrie's student evaluator, and I've got to say, it was amazing. I've always loved her slam poetry, and hearing everything again was just an irreplaceable experience.
   I'm kind of scared because I'm not exactly READY to present... because I don't know what I'd do. However I'm really excited to get everything done. Carrie's presentation was really well done, and you can tell she had a lot of practice too. Her voice was strong and her message was clear, and during every minute of her presentation, I was actually wondering how horrible it would be if I couldn't do any of that. What if I trip? Or fail? Or the piano won't work? There's so many 'what if's' and I kinda got overwhelmed.
   Aside from that, as Carrie's evaluator, I read her journal, and I found her style of writing really great. I wish I had done that for myself before, but it's too late now... yeahh.

童话 part 4

  Yeah... I'm still on the third page because I decided to try to play through from the first page, and it didn't really work out... but I still have time to prepare this for my final project!

Journey without Mrs. Miller

   I guess it's really time to talk about this, because I definitely should do it at some point. It's been quite some time (more than two months?) since I've broken away from lessons with Mrs. Miller. I think it was still around the middle of March when I first stopped, and I must say, there are teachers for a reason. I used to think that having someone there wasn't actually necessary, because I my entire jump start to piano...[I've decided to expand on this in my actual presentation instead of communicate it here!]

童话 part 3

Okay, so I worked on this song a lot but I'm still on the third page. Some of the issues I had before kept occurring. I still have problems with transitioning and such, and it's slowing me down a lot. Right now I'm only practicing reading through the notes, and playing everything at a super super super slow speed, but I can't wait to play everything at the actual (still slow) tempo.

童话 part 2

  I LOVE this song :) So far I've gotten through the first two pages, but I still need to practice more to have it sound reallyyy good. I really want this entire song to be perfect because it just, it would ruin everything if it sounded terrible. It'd be like disrespecting the song. Haha.

童话

   Ms. Lord says I should try and maybe have my younger sister find a piece of sheet music for me to sight read but honestly I know I can't do that. It would be stepping way out of my comfort zone. Instead, I thought I should make a compromise and prepare a piece to present as part of my final project. This would definitely be stepping out of my comfort zone even though I remember I previously stated that I wasn't too much affected by stage fright.

  I found this song from my iPod bank, and I think it's a very good fit for me right now. It's slow and flowy, and sort of similar to Canon in D, which I had played before. 童话 (tong hua), which means fairytale in Chinese, is a rather old, but still popular, Chinese song.

   I really like this song because it sounds really pretty and I know the lyrics to the song. It seems pretty attackable, so I'm gonna go and try out this piece right now. In the description of the video above, there is a link to the sheet music, which is what I'm using. Hope for the bestt!

Notes and Bits from Mentor Meeting

• a lot of breaks
• figure out how to speak towards these breaks?
• push more to seek more - bear that in mind
• journal? what are the reasons? explain.
• road to take? 
• not pushing = do more hands off
• you decide your fate
• mentor's job? - you (I) backed away from my project, so did Ms. Lord

-Make more lists! What do you know now that you didn't before? Of self, topic of interest, people, etc.

-PREPARE FOR PROJECT - anticipate what your evaluators are going to ask!

-scan your journals

Where's your endpoint? -> self teacher? why? 

Have Julianna bring in a piece? (final project idea?)

What do I want to know more about that I don't know now?

Do I want to explore other adults learning the piano?

Mentor Meeting Planss!

  Yeeah I see that I haven't really been doing much working on my goals. It's really falling apart. Maybe it's the end of the year coming along so quickly but I do realize that I haven't been keeping up to date with everything. One step in trying to fix that, however is that I will be brainstorming more of my ideas about my final project with Ms. Lord. Since that's coming up really soon, I need to confirm what I'm doing and work on it. So if I use some of this mentor meeting to come up with ideas, I'll at least definitely be working on one of my goals that I set for myself last week.

Saturday's practice

(Since Ms. Lord said I should do more like, recording of what I actually do...)
    I practiced today from 5:40 pm to around 7:00 pm, before dinner. I started off playing repertoire in the first 20 pages of my Progressive Piano book. I had a lot of trouble during the sections where it was based in the key of E so that's probably something I need work on more. Uhm, now I pretty much know the music to Canon in D by heart, so I'm basically just practicing for fluidity and better transitions (transitions are harder for me to remember when I'm not looking at the music). Yeah... I took like a 15 minute break somewhere amidst this and had cookies! :)

Thursday Mentor Meeting

  I feel like this is once more reenforcing the facts that I've been behind and there are some definite things that I need to get done. There's definitely a lot to do, but I guess if we had to narrow it down to the most important/urgent ones, planning for my WISE project and reflecting/demonstrating research!

Uhohhh---

  I might've mentioned this before, but my AP Physics C exam is from noon to 5pm on Monday, which interfers with my mentor meeting. I've contacted Ms. Lord and changed the time to Thursday.

New Goals for this Week :)

   I didn't really do much last week, so this week, I'll try to work on WISE and piano a lot more. Here are my goals. I'm only going to set a couple because I've realized it's a lot more important to be concentrated and focused rather than to have lots of expectations.

1. Make solid plans and work on final project.
2. Fill in the past holes in my WISE blog.
3. Practice everyday (I really didn't do this last week, so...)
4. Update and compile my (annotated) bibliography.
5. Upload another video.

Soo... that was a fail...

   It is now Saturday, and I've had AP exams that crowded up so much of my time that I didn't even get to make a plan to try to incorporate piano into my schedule. I am sad to say that I have not worked on much or any WISE this week, except on Thursday, when I didn't have an AP exam (I have 6 exams this year, technically you're only allowed to take 5 in total, but Physics C has 2 parts, so it  counts as 2 exams). On Monday, I have my Physics C AP, so I won't be able to make it to my mentor meeting, and I'm hoping to fit some time in for practice tomorrow. This really sucks, the fact that I haven't done any WISE work. I had really hoped to manage my time and make ends meet, but I ran out of time even just to do that. I wish I had realized this earlier, and maybe planned my schedule for AP week ahead of time, WAYY ahead of time. I'm honestly pretty disappointed in myself for being so uncommitted. What a fail... it's the end of the year and I don't have long before I have to present a final project. I really need to get my act together.

In Class - Sign ups for presentations

   I had originally signed up for June 14th at 1:00 in the afternoon, but turns out Mary wants to switch times with me because she wants her mom to come see her presentation, and her mom can only make an afternoon time. However, after I talked to Ms. Lord about it, I found out that my government final is in the morning of the 14th so I don't think I'll be able to switch with Mary.

Plans for AP Week

   So I have a lot of updating to do. A bunch of my entries previously are just stemmed and seem to have nothing written for them. Honestly I just haven't had the time to take out my journal of written notes to put it online. I'll start the backings or the stems of my work for the future but I never seem t want to get to it and have it done... it's like I have all the tools but I just don't want to start it officially yet. I'll start something and right in the middle of it, I'll stop. Anyways, so I need to make plans for

Monday's Mentor Meeting

  In this mentor meeting, I revealed the fact that I think I am going to be really stressed during AP week and that I might possibly fall behind a lot in my WISE work. Of course, it's best if I make plan for this week but I hope I get a chance to actually do so, because I have so many exams this week that I honestly think I'm not prepared for at all that I'll end up cramming entire nights before the exam. Ms. Lord really thinks I should make a plan too. She was actually the one who suggested this because she sorta realized that I'm kind of the person who'd drop everything when something big, like, AP exams, are here. And I guess I've never admitted that about myself, but now I can't deny it.

Sunday's Reflection && new goals

For: last Sunday
Last week's goals said:

1. Ask Julianna to critique.
2. Look through all past journal posts and REMEMBER WHAT YOU SAID YOU'D UPDATE (speaking to me)
3. Try to journal as soon as things happen, if possible (ie. right after a mentor meeting or right after practice)
4. Use this week as a last week for Canon in D, practicing and "perfecting" (? possibly ?)
5.  Brainstorm a bit more about end project ideas.
6. Research on history of the piano.
7. Contact Yuangting Li, a Chinese girl at IHS who gives piano lessons, for some help in trying to work on Fireflies?

   Yepp, I finally did it. On Saturday, I asked Julianna to sit down with me for a bit while I played. It was definitely awkward because for me, it was weird having someone younger act as a teacher, and for her, it was weird being the "older sibling" or the "more experienced" one. My sister commented on my fluidity and also told me that I was speeding up a lot in certain areas where I shouldn't have been. At first I had a lot of trouble pulling words from her, but soon it worked out okay. According to Julianna, I had to look at my fingers a lot more than the music, which could be an issue as I'm not supposed to focus on my fingers, but the notes on the sheet. She also told me that my fingering was also wrong in the last section, but that wasn't too big of a deal. This was actually a funny story because my little sister could not make herself 'critique' me until I offered her a bribe (Reese's cups, yumm). 
   In terms of my other goals, I am slightly lacking, as can been seen in the recent couple of days, so I will be extending this goal period for a while to fulfill these goals, (especially 2,3,5,6). I did get to contact Yuanting and will post a short interview at some point in time!