Hello world! Finals week is officially upon me and I'm really feeling the stress and pressure that comes with it. Of course, since this seems to be a recurring theme this past semester, I have decided to write a post instead of studying. We can count this as a little study break because my brain is close to going haywire. 

Anyway, I wanted to do a bunch of posts about my college experience since I'm getting close to finishing my freshman year and I just think it'd be cool to catalog my thoughts on different topics throughout the years. So, as you can tell from the title, I wanted to share my experience and thoughts on juries and musicianships and in order to make things easier to read I thought I'd insert some pictures I took months ago for a haul that I never got around to posting cause I already have them edited. :)

All right, so for those who don't know what I'm talking about - I'm a music education major and my primary instrument is piano. For music majors, we have two "performance" opportunities that we need to participate in. The first is musicianship which is a class where you have to perform a piece in front of your peers and they, along with a professor, get the chance to critique you on your performance. For my college specifically, we need to sign up for two slots per semester. The second one is the jury which is essentially a final exam for your instrument. For my jury specifically, the panel of judges (made up of piano professors) pick a technique (scales or etudes) for me to start before moving on to two pieces, one that I pick and one that they choose on the spot.

For me personally, I'm a nervous wreck when it comes to performing in public so both of these requirements are really stressful for me. Before college, I had a nightmare image in my mind about musicianship and how it would be like a roasting session in front of everyone. During my first semester, I was super nervous for both musicianship and juries days before they actually happened and I would still be shaking the day of. For this semester, I didn't get nervous until literally five minutes before which I think messed me up more since it was a sudden adrenaline rush. 

Looking back on the experience, I can't say that exposure has made me a better performer. I honestly don't know if I was expecting to be more comfortable with performing after just one year, but I don't really see much of a difference. I definitely didn't put in as much effort piano-wise spring semester which is really bad because you can never have a break as a music major, but it's been a big struggle trying to find the motivation to practice and get things done. One of the things I definitely need to work on is defining my practicing method because it's going to play a huge role for everything in the upcoming years.

I don't know if this post was actually informative or helpful in terms of juries and musicianship because I feel like it's such a random topic that isn't something people are naturally curious about but it's been fun analyzing my thoughts throughout the year. I knew that I wanted to keep track of my anxieties regarding performance so this was definitely interesting to reflect upon. In short, juries and musicianship still scare the crap out of me and I wait for the day when I can perform without my entire body going into a panic mood.

So I guess this concludes my first college related post and I'll definitely be posting more reflecting upon my first year of college once finals wrap up. If there are any particular topics you're interested in, please let me know in the comments and I'll get to drafting up a post. I just hope to post more in general even though I'm still going to be so busy since I haven't been posting very frequently...I don't know, but I want to try :)