2 Months

I've been here over two months now!
The week of not going out was a success, I'm trying not to go out as much, mostly because of all the money I just spent on Christmas presents, yes, Christmas presents. I have to mail them soon so I can be sure that they get there in time. With the postal strike and the rush of Christmas season, you can never be too sure.
Still haven't played in an actual basketball game! The last one was canceled last minute by the other team (via text), and I was pumped to go to one today, then found out I have a compulsory meeting for my job. I'd been looking forward to this meeting, but now that it's keeping me from playing I'm not so excited about it. I went to the departmental board meeting for the music department yesterday. There's not much point in me being there, I just sat and listened, there were some interesting statistics from the NSS (National Student Survey, taken by graduating students) though, comparing the departments in the school. No surprise that the music department has a couple low scores, and the anthropology department has one of the highest, they know what they're doing over there. The meeting today is the student staff forum, no idea how it works, I think I'm practically running it though, so we'll see what happens. I have tons of issues I want to bring up, but I need to gauge whether the students agree or not, not quite sure how to do that without looking like a fool.
Oh I didn't mention that I stumbled across a parade the other day! I went to St. Paul's Cathedral and there happened to be a little carnival and a parade outside! I think it was for the Mayor, but I had absolutely no idea at the time, and I'm not too sure anyone else did either, haha.

The meeting today was, well, interesting. It was some of the board from yesterdays meeting, and the student reps. So it's not actually a forum for the students to attend, just me and the reps. The vibe from a couple of the board members was that they were just going through the motions and that what the students had to say was silly (granted, a couple things were). One topic that was debated for at least a half an hour before I could get a word in was about how teachers should be evaluated. I explained how it's done at UMD, they liked the idea, we made a motion that will most likely be passed at the next board meeting. So far so good. Of course, the one thing most important to me was just written off, doubt the practice rooms will ever be open later. The other thing was making the facilities more available to students outside the department, to which they said "that's not our problem", I was completely shut down. Are you freakin kidding me? I even said, the last thing you want to do as a music teacher is make someone stop playing music forever, ex. drumsets weren't made available to me at UMD and I don't play anymore. They don't care at all. But, I do know that if a non-music student joins an ensemble they get access to rooms and equipment, so, I suggested better advertising for the ensembles. And noted that I've met at least five violinists who want to play but don't know how to go about joining or who to get in touch with, which completely shocked all of them (loved the looks on some of their faces) because apparently there's a shortage of violinists. So, that will hopefully be taken care of. Another suggestion I made was a performance from the tutors at the beginning of spring term, which they all laughed at and found quite a silly proposal. One just thought it was too much work, really? I explained that all I'm saying is one song by any teacher who feels like getting involved. Sorry, but if you don't have at least one song ready for performance then you're not a professional musican and shouldn't be teaching. But she did make note of that proposal, so we'll see. And at the end I requested the help of the student reps in gathering recordings of songs written by Goldsmiths students, so that one day every week all music played in the Student Union Shop will be by Goldsmiths students, and if all goes well with that I'll be producing a CD for sale with the label "Made in Goldsmiths", I don't know if that impressed the staff but it seemed to excite the reps.
Anyway, it's an ok start (minus the face that my face goes red every time I speak in public).