Okay, it's time for a bit of gloating. I passed my keyboard test today for the masters degree! I had been freaking out progressively more and more over the last few weeks, leading up to today, when all my concentration was shot until the time of the test. I took it with the three theory professors, but luckily, I was taking it in an office where the piano faced the wall, so I didn't have to see them looking at me. They asked me to redo a couple of things during the test, like harmonizations I could have done differently, but I was able to answer all the questions they asked and figure out all the things I had done wrong, which weren't really bad in the grand scheme. One nice thing is that they picked really easy keys to play in, so even though I had been practicing my C#-minor and Ab-major, there were no scary keys. =)

I think I was so freaked because the entire test was sightreading. There was sightreading of a melody, and then I had to transpose that melody to another key. Then I had to sightread a little Mozart excerpt. Then I had to read a chord progression they gave me in a certain key and flesh it out-- there wasn't any printed music, just chord symbols, so I had to think fast about notes and inversions. Then I had to add inner voices to a Bach chorale for which they gave me the figured bass (symbols underneath the music that tell the performer which notes to add), and finally, I was given a melody and a rough outline of how to harmonize it, and I had to come up with a nice accompaniment. I took a lot of time in between each thing, and except for a few finger malfunctions, which I corrected quickly, I did pretty well. They asked me to leave the room while they conversed to decide if I had passed, and I was in the hall for about thirty seconds before they called me back in and told me I had passed. My thesis advisor, for whom I'm also a TA this year, knew I had been practicing a lot because he had heard me on various days from the hallway, and he commented that all my hard work had paid off.

I feel gooooooood. It's mostly a sense of personal accomplishment, but there's also a tinge of girl power in there, because I showed up the two boys who took the test earlier this year and failed it the first time. At least if I hadn't passed, I would have been in good company, and the worst that could have happened would be that I'd have to retake it. HOWEVER, I get to cross this off my list and move on.

Now I just have two things left, but they're big things. I have to finish my thesis and defend that, and I also have to take a comprehensive exam and defend it during the same session in which I defend my thesis (I think their rationale for that is to freak students out as much as possible). That will all likely happen around August or September, so I may actually graduate in December! I've been taking Ph.D. classes in the meantime, so it's not like I have to hurry and finish my M.M. so that I can move on, but I'm ready to be done with it and get my first pink hood, which will then be superceded by the cooler pink hood I'll get when I finish the Ph.D.

It all just seems so doable right now. Quick, bottle this feeling so that I can recapture it later!! The downs in grad school make me feel so awful, but the ups definitely make up for it. Here's to ups.

Labels: school

• posted by erica 4/27/2005 05:40:00 PM
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