Mentor Meeting & Response on Ideas for End of the Year

(semi posting this like a week later, but the date's set to when it's supposed to be so that my journal entries are in order as they're supposed to be)
   So like I've stated in my last mentor meeting blog, I've still been having trouble coming back online. But anyways, in my mentor meeting today, Ms. Lord congratulated me on sort of finding my way, and stepping out of my comfort zone (a lot)? Similar to my last mentor meeting post, I seem to be still having lack of motivation in coming online onto my blog. Scraps of paper keep piling up somewhere around the house when I write notes down for my journal, but I'm really having trouble coming back here to update. Maybe it's the end of the year or maybe it's cause spring break/AP week's coming, but it's definitely an issue. Which brings up the next point I need to make. What am I planning for my end of the year presentation? The end is coming by really fast and no joke, it might crash into me, so where am I headed? Ms. Lord says it's a good time to start thinking now. And I have, a little bit, or at least in the thirty minutes...
   I guess I'm still not quite sure on exactly yet, but I think for my presentation, what I could be (possibly) showing are (oh my gosh really?) my progress videos, if they turn out okay and I do enough [maybe just the first and last?] and perhaps teach the class a little something that they would be able to play on their own?

Before My Mentor Meeting

   Mentor meeting today 7th period! I've kind of been contemplating whether or not I should continue taking piano lessons from Mrs. Miller because to learn fingerings, it can basically be taught in one lesson... but Mrs. Miller's also teaching me about keys and such so... I don't know...
  This is just a little note to myself for things I want to bring up and talk about today with Ms. Lord:

• Future plans... Am I going in the wrong direction? A new direction?
• Do I have to have recitals?
• Am I going at the right pace?
• Should I start learning pieces on my own?
• Should I continue piano lessons with Mrs. Miller?
• Should I tell Mrs. Miller about my blog?

Lesson & A List of Recommended Pieces

FOR:  Friday, February 25th, 2011

   I forgot to practice today, but I did make up for it on Saturday... just saying.

   Something else I forgot was the fact that Mrs. Miller said I could pick out a piece to learn now! Anything, anything at all! Should I try Fantasie Impromptu? I mean just listen to it, it's crazy beautiful... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvm2ZsRv3C8

...but also crazy impossible? I mean some of the really hard pieces that I've already learned how to play (by ear/memorizing fingerings) are Beethoven's Fur Elise, Brahms' Hungarian Dance, and Mozart's Turkish March. But those were by memorization, which is by far, much easier than reading sheet music.

Here's something I found on Google that I thought might be useful in the future...
a list of recommended classical pieces!

  Andd... also I kind of made a list for modern songs even though in one of the other posts, I said I wouldn't make one. I only have one title on my list right now, and that's Owl City's Fireflies. 

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amm7Do0ySkU

   The piano version is really really pretty sounding. If two days, I'll probably just pick something off this list instead of going with the first song I hear on the radio (most likely this song?). 

Dear Reader

     It's incredible how music is such a big part of life nowadays. I don't think I've ever gone through a day without turning on the radio or dancing to my iPod. But that's music in the digital sense. There's a lot more to music than just what you find on iTunes.
    One of the first instruments I've ever really been instructed in was piano. I think I was about eight years old at the time, and I memorized the fingerings to Fur Elise from my Casio keyboard. Even though it seemed amazing at the time, it was a terrible way to start off piano. Why? Well, I ended up not being able to fully dedicate myself to learning how to read sheet music. I figured I could always just learn by memorization, so why worry about reading the scores? Haha... sucks for me now that I realize it's so much harder to re-memorize the things from before than to just re-read the music. So anyways, that's pretty much why I decided to dedicate my English project to piano, to learn how to read sheet music.
     I guess it's also more than that, if you want to take into consideration the fact that I'm aiming to learn some specific pieces and that I want to learn more about the correlation between a person's behaviors and their exposure to music.
    Have you ever heard people do a cover of a song where they both play it and sing it? I so want to do that! Well, at least the playing part. So that's why I'm certain that at least one of the pieces I will learn will be some modern song. I'll definitely learn classical pieces too, but I really want to be able to do a cover of a song at some point. And aside from that, I've been noticing how music helps calm me down slash it affects my mood a whole lot, especially when I'm stressed or upset or something. So I'm kinda investigating how music correlates to a person's behaviors and such. I mean I've found some key pieces, like music therapy, so that's definitely something I'll be researching. After a couple of months, I'm kinda hoping to evaluate how my experience with this piano learning affects my personal behavior through my own perspectives.
  I'm really looking forward to the end result because being able to play piano well would not only give me a hobby, it would make my parents happy as well. I think I'm really going to enjoy what I get out of this project, because it's a skill I'll be able to keep forever. Of course there's going to be challenges that I'll need to face. A definite one is overcoming my lack of daily commitment. I've never really been able to follow a routine and do something everyday, so this will be one of my top challenges. I think another challenge is going to be finding the time to do all my practicing and working on piano related material because, like everyone else, it's a fun year AND a busy one too. Good luck me?

-last edit 02.13.11