“The thing about creativity is, people are going to laugh at it. Get over it.” ― Twyla Tharp

So far, I've enjoyed reading The Creative Habit. I think it gives a great insight to the creative world to people who may not necessarily be apart of it, or people who don't see themselves as a part of it. It's a good book to read to expand your knowledge and see things in a different light and actually appreciate the creative people and creative thinkers out there who don't get much credit, especially in school. It's terrible to say, but creativity isn't held as high as it should be. It's made me look into my own habits of what I do with my music and made me think a little bit deeper about what I do and maybe should start doing. I've never been the type of person to not be creative, it's just who I am, and part of the reason I've always been so involved in music. But this book also explains that being creative doesn't have to do with just arts. You can be creative in almost any job area in the world, you just have to incorporate your creativity into it. When you're a teacher, you have a different teaching and learning style than that of your colleagues and your students. Therefore, you need to create a way for every student to be able to learn in their own personal way. That goes for a lot f job fields. This book is definitely a good way to get people thinking in a different way and to get the world to realize that being creative is important, and not just in art, dance or music. It's important in so many ways. Society seems to forget about the arts though. They think that learning to play an instrument or learning to draw or dance is not as important as finding what X equals. And honestly, how important is finding X? Where is that going to get me as a musician and music teacher? My student will never need to find X. So why must that be drilled into our heads when it's not necessarily important? I think it's important to be well rounded, and know how to play an instrument, or to be able to draw, or dance as well as being great in science or math or being a teacher. I think this book shows how important creativity is very well. Creativity is not dead.

What makes SCSU a great place to go to school?

I think I like how this video came out better than the first one. I'm pretty satisfied with it and I'm happy I used some effects with this one. The effects made the last one weird and messed up the timings so I didn't use them. I like the effects of the pictures in the beginning of the video the most. I think this video does show what a beautiful campus southern has and explains the amount of diversity throughout campus. I hope you enjoy it!
Pictures from Google
Song; Unity by Shinedown

Thank God midterms are over!

So midterms, huh? Well in high school, they were nothing to worry about. I never even studied in high school! I always did great. But college is a whole other story. You have to actually open your book and read it. Overall, I'm not as satisfied with my grades as I had hoped to be. Of course I tried my best. I never once said "This isn't the best I could have done. I just gave up" I didn't give up, but obviously there were things I didnt understand as well as I thought. I did do my best, but I will do even better for the rest of the semester. So, I'm not completely satisfied, it sucks, but seeing grades that I never saw in high school has caused me to want to try harder. It lit a fire inside me to do my best and go above and beyond what I'm used to. Maybe there were times that I slacked a little bit but still felt my work and effort were sufficient when they really weren't. But I'm not going to beat myself up over a midterm grade. I'm going to let it inspire me to do better. You shouldn't let one grade define you as a student. You're smarter and stronger than you believe and you can always push yourself. And if you're failing a class, you should definitely push yourself so you won't have to take it over again. Just don't let it make you think stupid, you can overcome it. These grades don't show up on your transcript anyways. It would be in your best interest to learn from the mistakes you've made and your final grade will be so much better as a result. And if you have a professor anything like my wonderful music theory professor, then you're lucky. He told us that if we do considerably better on the final than the midterm, then he'll make the midterm weigh less than the final, and it'll help our grade. My professor lives for his students to improve, and that's all you can ask of yourself. So yeah it sucks you failed your midterm, but you can always do better.

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."-Aristotle

In the past few months, I’ve wandered around campus in my free time and while doing that, I noticed that there are a lot of sculptures and art work all around campus. I think its one of the things that makes SCSU’s campus so beautiful. The one that I like the most is the one outside of Engleman Hall. It’s called H2o: Liquid Zone by mikyoung kim. I think today I realized why it’s called that. When it rains, all the water collects in the base of the sculpture. I really like this sculpture because I’m not too sure what it is. It’s pretty much up to your imagination. You can interpret this sculpture in so many ways. It can look like so many different things. At first, I thought it looked almost like three birds. But now that I know what it’s called, to me it looks like it could be a body of water. Maybe a beach of some sort, because it’s curvy, so that could represent waves. Or maybe a river and the curviness could represent the current. I often walk by this sculpture, just to look at it. I’m not really sure why I’ve taken such a liking to it. Whenever I meet up with my cousin on campus, that’s where we meet up. We just called it “the weird sculpture thing outside of engleman”. But now that I know the name of it, we can actually refer to it by its name, or “the water sculpture thing”. But I digress, this sculpture is a very interesting piece of art work and you can never really be too sure of what it is unless you google it, maybe. But it’s more fun to interpret it in your own way anyways. Any piece of artwork can become anything you perceive it as. That’s what is so great about the arts, everything can be perceived in a different way by different people.

Your professors are your friends, ask questions; they will help.

I recently went to my Music Theory and Musicianship professor during his office hours to ask for help on certain things I didn’t understand in class. He asked me what I was having trouble with, I explained to him the problems I was having. I was having issues understanding divisions of beats, and certain things pertaining to rhythm. He explained everything fluently, and made it much easier for me to understand. I think it benefitted me a lot in the rest of the activities we did with that information and I understood it better for when I took my midterm this morning. I love that professors will take the time to explain things to their students one on one to help them understand what they’re doing in class.

How do you get rid of stress around midterms?

Everyone knows that midterms, exams and finals make people stress out to the extreme. And we all know that stress affects you negatively in so many ways. So it's very important to find something that will take your stress away, especially when you've got a big exam to worry about. So what I did on campus one day, was get my cousin and my sister who both go to SCSU as well, to go to the track with me. The three of us went on a walk/run. Exercise is one of the best ways to relieve stress because it releases endorphins while you're doing it, and endorphins make you feel good. The little exercise session made us feel really good and less stressed afterwards. We got to spend some quality family time, did something that was good for us in more than one way, and felt better afterwards. It felt really good to get out there and forget about all my worries for a little while because all I had been thinking about was my midterms and how nervous I was. Going for a run with two people I'm very close to made me feel a million times better and made me less stressed and less worried about them. I started to feel at ease with the whole situation and I began to think clearer than I had been previously. I realized that I just need to study a little at a time and not just pour it all on myself at once because I won't learn or retain any knowledge that way. And doing everything at once is a great way to stress yourself out as well, but doing everything too late will also stress you out. So I decided I needed to make a schedule of when I would study for my exams and it helped me a lot. The point is, when you're feeling stressed, take a break and do something that will take your stress away and you'll feel so much better.

How am I doing? Midterms...

Looking back on the first half of my semester, I felt like I did all right in my classes. I feel like I could have done better. I think I could have studied harder for tests, I could've listened better or tried harder on homework. I also think I could've talked to my professors more if I was having a hard time with something. I'm going to do my best the second half of the semester and keep that going throughout my entire college career. I'm not saying I did terrible the first half of my semester, but I don't believe I did the best that I could. I mostly think that's because I needed to adjust to college life, but partly because I may still have the "senioritis" mentality from high school. Those are two things I need to overcome on my own, and I think I'm starting to, and I believe that will help me do better for the rest of the semester. My goals for my first semester were to do well, to get at least B's in my classes, because I want to adjust still. Hopefully I'm getting good enough grades. I also wanted to make sure I had time for myself and time to have fun. I didn't want to just do homework and have no social life, because no one wants that, especially as a college students. Besides, that's a fast and easy way to burn out. You have to set aside time for yourself and time for your schoolwork and time for a job, if you have one. I'm hoping that when I see my midterm grades, I will be satisfied. Once I see my grades, maybe I'll be less stressed out. At least, that's what I'm hoping for. But at any rate, I plan on doing better for the rest of the semester, and the rest of my time in college. I don't want my college career to get screwed up because of one bad semester, so I think I need to step up my game.

Majors Expo

On Wednesday, I went to the Majors Expo to learn about my major and other majors that SCSU has to offer. Naturally, I went to the table for my major; music. I had a wonderful conversation with a man from the music department about everything they have to offer. He explained to me all of the requirements a music major has, he also explained that free lessons are offered to music majors. I definitely plan on taking voice lessons, or piano lessons. Even though I do both, there's always room to grow. I also visited the theater table. They told me about the show they are putting on this month. I also got free tickets to the performance! I enjoyed learning about my major and different majors and I wish I could have stayed longer but I love knowing more about my major than I did before. I also like learning about other majors, in case I ever wanted to change my mind. I think it's a good idea to explore different avenues just in case things didn't work out. I hope everyone went to the majors expo and learned some new things.

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone"-Neale Walsh

When you push yourself out of your comfort zone, and it ends up being worth it or something not as bad as you once thought, it's a great feeling. I'm not a fan of roller coasters. Mainly because I'm afraid of heights. I freak out and go completely numb and can't move. But this weekend, I went to six flags, and I forced myself to go on Batman. I'm not gonna lie, I was freaking out. My sister and boyfriend told me it wasn't that bad, there were no flips, which was a lie! There were quite a few. They were just trying to get me on the roller coaster. After I got off the ride, it ended up not being as bad as I thought. I enjoyed it, actually. I had a rush of adrenaline. I wanted to go on again. It felt good to step outside of my comfort zone for once. I feel like that's something everyone should do, Step outside of their comfort zone. You never know what good could come out of it. I just sort of conquered my fear of heights, I've still got a ways to go. But you could accomplish something great if you take a risk and take a shot. You could get a promotion at work, or get a better grade on a test. You could end up in a great relationship with someone you've been interested in for awhile, if you just tell them how you feel. Besides, taking risks makes your life exciting, and no one wants to live a boring life. You want to have fun, so do something out of the ordinary. Take a risk. Just don't do anything that could get you arrested. That's not exciting, that's just expensive. So take a chance, you never know what could happen.

Failure shouldn't be what defines you, you should be what defines you.

Failure should be seen as the motivation to do better next time. Failure should never stop you from following your dreams. Everyone fails or makes mistakes at some point, but you have to learn from your mistakes to be better. Think about the music you listen to. All those musicians probably went through a period of time where they didn't think they were good enough because they made mistakes and failed something. But look where they are now. They achieved their dreams. Think about doctors or nurses. They have to work so hard to get where they are, and they have to work really hard everyday. Not everyone can deal with the things they see and go through everyday. But that's what makes them special and important. But in high school or college, they might have failed an anatomy test or chemistry test and thought they couldn't do it or they used it as the motivation to try harder. Think about an artist. They work really hard to fine tune their drawings or paintings. They make sure every line is perfect. There were probably times where their picture didn't come out right or it didn't go into the school art showcase and it made them feel like it wasn't good enough. They can either let that ruin them or try harder on the next picture. Think about all the athletes that you look up to. They worked so hard getting into shape and working on their skills. If they had a bad game, they wouldn't let it get to them. They'd try harder next game. The point is, you shouldn't let failure define you. You should let it encourage you to do better, push yourself to your limits and see what you can do. Failure isn't who you are. It's a part of life, but you can always turn it around.