My new theory/aural professor really makes me appreciate Dr. Eaton’s teaching style last year. This new professor I have is Russian, which is already frustrating because you have to listen extra closely to make sure you can even understand everything he’s saying with that accent. That makes it really hard to make sense of things when he’s talking about material that we haven’t covered yet.
Last year, my professor always did notes with us on a projector, so we knew exactly what to write down, exactly how to spell things, and exactly what examples were for what definition/word/concept. I’m a more visual learner than an auditory learner, so it was really, really helpful that she did it that way.
But this guy basically just talks to us, and when he feels like it, writes something on the white board. But there’s no real structure to what or where he’s putting things. He just scribbles a group of chords over here, and another group of chords over here. He doesn’t write down what it is underneath or below it, so if you fucked up and didn’t hear him SAY what it is, you’re just writing down a random chord with absolutely no clue how it relates to anything that’s going on. He said a whole list of different modes of music that I didn’t know how to spell, so I just wrote bullshit on my paper with question marks everywhere thinking that MAYBE I’ll try to look them on Google and it’ll give me the actual spelling or something—but I know I’m going to be too busy or forget or just not bother because I have tons of other work to worry about spelling.
It’s just SO damn frustrating, because music theory is so fucking hard. And even when Dr. Eaton took her time explaining things and telling us how it all worked and showing us and giving us examples and writing notes with us and correcting us on the chalkboard, I still struggled with it all last year. There are still basic concepts that I never fully grasped, and those are going to MURDER me this year because this new guy just assumes we have all that down flawlessly, and he just goes SO fast through things that I don’t have a second to process it or hastily scribble it on paper before he’s moving on to something else.
For the first time in my life I’m legitimately scared that I might have trouble PASSING a class. And if I don’t pass this class, I can’t be a music major, so I’m basically fucked forever.
It’s only the second day of school, and I’m already so stressed and frustrated that it feels like it should be midterm or final exam week.
Idk. Every single day I feel less and less like I’m meant to do music. Idk what I’m doing with my life.
I have my first private lesson of the year in an hour, and I’m just praying I can scratch out an A somehow. Last semester when I started getting B after B after B after B and then a C or two, it was just depressing as hell. -__- Then I have aerobics of all things, half an hour after that. Then a shit ton of work.
Don’t know how I’m gonna make it through this year. God.
alwaysamelia likes this
archiescrush posted this
