Rock Bottom

It's done. Two and a half years of my life are done. The final exam only took 25 minutes to write, but we all had to wait until the very end to leave. I started a nice Aussie chant once we were all outside. That was pretty sweet. I was shaking all through band this morning. I am relieved.

Why am I glad that IB is over? IB has contributed, either directly or indirectly to pretty much everything negative that has happened to me over the last 7 months or so. This year has marked my worst health and physical state ever. Late nights of studying and homework, combined with stress and lack of exercise have to led to at least three nervous breakdowns that I can recall (and the first one happened before the school year even started. I was working on my Miles paper when I got frustrated and started yelling at the computer and running around the house....stupid bug...you go squish now...), spent a lot of time with my head feeling like it was stuck in a toilet being constantly flushed, and lost my dinner on more than a few occasions.

IB has also cut into my personal life. Anyone who knows me also knows that I have a great passion for music and I love playing my trumpet (FoM, watch out). However, nearly every performance that I have played in has come immediatly after a prolonged bout of not practising at all and consequently I played like ass in the concerts. The Christmas concert was the week right after the musical, during which I did not practise at all. That's what happens when you've got to be at a theatre 25 minutes from your place for 6 until 10:30 each night from Monday to Saturday. If I hadn't been taking IB English, Mrs. Bohonos wouldn't have had me as a volunteer to do the sound. I didn't mind doing the sound, but I also wasn't able to practise on the weekend after the musical because I was scrambling like mad to catch up on all my work and fit it in with reffing (oh, that weekend was terrible. Stupid fucking coach. Ah well, she got what was coming to her eventually and it was all the more sweeter that I was there and got to see it). I played just awful in the concert on Wednesday. No range, no tone quality, no endurance. Ugh. I'm probably being too hard on myself, but I'm just bitter because as soon as we came off the stage I went into the jazz room and played the melody in 'Yagi-Bushi' perfectly after screwing it up out there. The jazz concert was a little better because by then I actually had time to do some practising, but it still wasn't all it could've been, in regards to my playing.

Then there was Chicago. No practising that week. Writing effing TOK paper and finishing the Miles paper (which turned out not to be due for another month and a half). Had another breakdown in there. I played terribly in Chicago, my immune system was already shot from staying up late every night studying and working on those papers, so that the very first morning I came down with a massive head cold after the 16 hour bus ride. For the next few weeks or so, I wasn't feeling well enough to do any good practising, and IB was loading on even more work, from group 4 (I got my revenge for that, though. Glittery rainbows! w00t!), to just a crapload of tests in everything. In IB, when it rains, it pours. Consequently, my personal playing at Optimist wasn't all that great (even though symphonic band and the senior jazz band both got 5/5 times three, and the wind ensemble got 5/5, 4.5/5, and 4/5). Fortunately, the Big Band Dance didn't go that way, and now IB is done, so I can practise all I want before our concerts (concert band is May 31, 7:30 PM at MTC, $5 at the door; jazz is June 8, 7:30 PM at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, $5 at the door) and all should be good. If only I had enough time to put 'Danza Sinfonica' together...

All that IB work had quite an effect on my social life as well, which was just starting to come out of its hiding spot after all those years (17.5, to be precise). All that work pretty much meant that going out on weekdays would always be a no-go. I think Samantha and I went out once on a weekday once school had started again, and that pretty much ended terribly. When we broke up, one of the things she said she couldn't take was the definite lack of seeing each other. I didn't see her at all during exam week, not even the night before I left for Chicago because I had to finish writing those goddamn papers. Having to be home at 12:30 also didn't help, and I'm pretty sure that the curfew had something to do with IB (I need to rest to study well?...blargh...) So yes. IB helped destroy a perfectly good relationship. We're still good friends, in case anyone is wondering, and we might be going to see Wilco together, so it's not like that.

IB English stifles the creativity out of you. I especially loved the booklet we received explaining to us what was funny and what wasn't. You can't just enjoy poetry and novels for what they are; you need to pick apart every last word so that it reveals to you something that you really couldn't care less about Just enjoy the effing story; none of that in IB.

I've had it up to here (*indicates eye-level with hand) with IB. What has IB done for me, in the positive, though? I never have to take a frigging English course ever again. I had the sweetest history class ever. I can write a mean essay. I listened to so much Miles to write my paper. I had such a good time researching that piece that I don't care how awful my mark is. By the end, I was writing it for me, not for some stuffed turkey halfway around the world. Fuck that. I have a pretty good understanding of the theory of relativity. Now, universities are throwing themselves at me (or, they would be if I bothered to apply anywhere else, other than U of M). I also didn't have to deal with any stupid kids; they all got weeded out after grade 10.

Now it's over. Time to work on my valedictorian speech submission. Should be interesting.