Visit The Urizone | 01/20/04
Last night, after preparing for class, I wrote an entry for Brian's webpage. Anything that can make Rob laugh must be funny. It longer than I anticipated and required a few rewrites but I think the end result was pretty awesome. This site got a lot of referred links, apparently in the thought I employ the clever writing daily here. Oh well. For the second time in the lab, the computers were not working properly. After the 9am class I went around to each of them and made a complete list of everything that was wrong on each one. Of the twelve in the room, only two were "error-free". The quotations marks are there because "error-free" just means that all the software was there--not that it worked. As if the Glord (God-Lord) of class caps wasn't fair enough to me, s/he could have at least given me a decent shot at teaching what I'm supposed to. After "teaching" the 11:15 class, I went home, typed up my Bibliography homework and sat through another horrific session on basic computer usage. Although I nodded off a few times, I never reached deep sleep. This was fine, since I got there late and had to sit right in front. There was a huge adrenaline surge when the professor asked me how to fix something. After that I stayed more or less awake. On Thursday we have a test on some German words. I thought I already took that class. Scheisse! Dit hat man wohl ins Gehirn geschissen und vergessen umzurühren! Fine. Learn to speak German on this site! After class, I walked back home, hung out with the Chomp and then walked back to snooze through another Caribbean music class. I managed not to fall asleep at all today. Glord knows how. Oh that's right, we got out early. I went to rehearsal to find out Ryan was sick and Chris was in charge. I also found out a new grad student was going to be visiting because he might be in charge of the ensemble next year. WTF? Why aren't they offering that to me? I have way more experience than this guy (although he is very nice and definitely has playing experience) as well as a great track record of teaching here (except for Student X but that was his/her fault). Moreover, this is supposed to be a top music school yet we have this half-assed steel drum band. This is not Ryan's fault. This is the department's fault for not letting us expand out to our potential. U of Miami...Appalachian State...West Virginia...all these hellhole music schools somehow manage to scrape enough funds together to have good steel drum bands, why not us? We have (I've heard) one of the best Ethnomusicology programs in the country yet we can't put anything decent together? When was the last time we bought a new pan--1983? Honestly, it's ridiculous and whomever is in charge next year really needs to bite them on the butt. We attract tons of people to play with us, fill the concert hall and put on one hell of a show. While I mean no offense, do any of the other groups outside of Salsa and possibly Blues Lab even have the potential to get people to go see them if going to recitals wasn't mandatory for undergraduates? There is so much I could do with that ensemble that would bring so much positive publicity to the School of Music that I just don't understand why hire some other grad student to do it. Because he has a degree from a no-name school but the piece of paper says Ethnomusicology? I'm not asking to teach a seminar. True, I probably do not meet the requirements to teach a lecture class on the topic but again, that's the not the class I want. I know I just ranted for a while but I'm not in a bad mood, really. Seriously.
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