A disgruntled chorister whine

The stress is getting to me. Today my student who has deferred her jury actually showed up for her lesson, although I received an email from her yesterday saying she is sick again. She should have stayed away. Instead, we went at it for about a half hour, her stopping and wheezing and crying. At one point she was so distraught she had to put her hand on my chest so that she could coordinate her hyperventilated breathing with my normal cadence enough that she could then use her asthma inhaler to open her tracheae. I have never experienced such a thing before. Her concern is that she�s missed so many lessons she cannot afford to miss anymore, no matter how unproductive they may be. Needless to say, that half hour was not very productive.

We ran through the first half of the choir programme today, having done the second half last night. The more we do this, the more disenchanted I become with the choice of repertoire and the dissemination of it. I am seriously reconsidering my participation in the choir, at least for the spring show. Perhaps if I went to Herr Doktor Professor and said, �Jamie, I know you really want me in the group because the sopranos are finally in tune, but I don�t find this repertoire challenging and I feel that my talents are being under utilized. If you want me in the spring show, you will have to make it more worth my while.� Okay, that sounds harsh, but I listen to the solos he�s assigned, and some of them are godawful. Meanwhile, there�s our friend the part-time religion prof who always, always gets a big solo (he gets a whole song to himself this time, as well as other shared spots) and I end up sharing a Jim Cr0ce song with my graduating student, whom I made sure got the lion�s share of the solo. There seems to be something terribly unbalanced in all of this. I did not join the choir to sing solos. I do that already. But I need more incentive to stay in the group for the �pops� concert every spring. Yes, I shall have a chat with the conductor after the dust clears from this weekend.

In the meantime, Patsy cut Latin class short this morning, giving us back our tests (I got 24/25 because I mistranslated vidit as sees instead of saw) and handing out the next two verb synopses to fill out. Lolly and I headed up to the Loft to work on our wombat translation, although we�re not going to get it finished before school ends (a week tomorrow is the end of classes). After she left me to go to the library, I bought three new T-shirts at the dollar store in town to wear to the choir concert. I also shortened my new jeans this evening and taped the first installment of Dr. Wh0 for bindyree. Oh yes, I also picked Little Princess up from school in my pyjamas. Yep, that just about wraps it up for now.

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