lowquality.net

I have not made many seri­ous posts lately. I haven’t, mostly, because every seri­ous thought in my brain has involved the same old bitch­ing and com­plain­ing: my gripes with unnamed tech­ni­cal school, my gripes with not hav­ing enough time to do all of the things I want to do, my gripes with how unbe­liev­ably fat I have become, and my long-standing gripe with liv­ing in Hamp­ton Roads.

You add all of that up and sprin­kle it with my usual day-to-day bitch­ing and com­plain­ing and you have a lot of fuck­ing whin­ing. There’s enough com­plain­ing on the inter­net and I don’t want to bore any­one (Like I have read­ers, who am I fool­ing?). Fur­ther­more, I am mak­ing a noble effort at chang­ing, what seems like, every sin­gle aspect of my life all at once. Inspired by JSleeper’s amaz­ing progress at gain­ing weight and improv­ing his health, I have been to the gym every day but three in 2007. I am also try­ing so hard to prac­tice bass as much as I can every week but it has not been easy. I wish I was play­ing more, but I just do not have the time to com­mit to a real band. No more than 6 months ago I was com­pletely dis­in­ter­ested and dis­il­lu­sioned with music, but now I have been sur­pris­ing myself by sneak­ing out of class early before lunch so I can prac­tice for a measly 20 min­utes before work.

In addi­tion to the bass, Kim and I still have ten­ta­tive plans to move to Brook­lyn after school, pro­vided I can find a job up there. Who knows if that will happen.

Which brings me back to com­plain­ing about unnamed tech­ni­cal school: I have said it many times, but I am less than con­fi­dant that this school is train­ing me to be qual­i­fied for any real job. Today the Cam­pus Pres­i­dent came and inter­rupted class so that she could teach us all how to shake hands prop­erly. Yes, you read that cor­rectly. SHAKE. HANDS. PROPERLY. She main­tained that this was because employ­ers that hire unnamed tech­ni­cal school’s grad­u­ates com­plained that they were hir­ing peo­ple who were not good at shak­ing hands. I’m not jok­ing about that, she actu­ally told us that while hold­ing up 80 bucks in fanned out 20 dol­lar bills (pos­i­tively gangsta and super classy) and telling us how much more money we could all make if we learned how to shake hands.

First of all, I don’t know how bad of a hand­shake you have to give some­one to make them go back to your col­lege and com­plain. Nev­er­the­less, I do not think it is any college’s respon­si­bil­ity to train a stu­dent in the basic social eti­quette that even the most dead­beat par­ents teach their kids. If the worst thing you can say about some­one apply­ing for an entry level IT job is “They can’t shake hands prop­erly,” then per­haps you should take the the time to show them what they are doing wrong your­self. Assum­ing they’ve got the nec­es­sary skill sets and work ethic and they don’t talk like a moron in the inter­view, maybe the poten­tial employee is a bit rough around the edges? What kind of cry­baby employer would com­plain about some­thing like that??

Well unfor­tu­nately, I would guess that the phras­ing of the com­plaint to the school prob­a­bly went some­thing like “They can’t even shake hands prop­erly!” Mean­ing that the stu­dents’ lack of job skills com­bined with their lack of social skills makes them impos­si­ble to hire. Our cam­pus pres­i­dent prob­a­bly fig­ures it is eas­ier to improve the social skills of the stu­dents her­self than it is to improve the aca­d­e­mic envi­ron­ment of the col­lege. Both of these improve­ments are her respon­si­bil­ity but I don’t know that she needs to per­son­ally inter­rupt classes to accom­plish this. When things like this hap­pen I sit in class and day­dream about Mor­gan Free­man com­ing into my class with a base­ball bat and mak­ing var­i­ous admin­is­tra­tion mem­bers sing the school song in the bath­room. Hmm.. maybe I should get to work on that school song.

I know that I am def­i­nitely bitch­ing now and I know that I said I wouldn’t do that. In spite of my usual com­plaints I have man­aged to con­nect with a few of the bet­ter teach­ers and made clear how seri­ous my inten­tions and inter­ests are. This has helped me gain some cool oppor­tu­ni­ties and it seems like these instruc­tors are just as relieved to have a stu­dent who isn’t a com­plete dum­b­ass as I am to talk to a pro­fes­sor who engag­ing, inter­est­ing and enlightening.

I think all of my issues with unnamed tech­ni­cal school have made me really reflect on my time at Berklee Col­lege of Music. I loved Berklee, but there is a point at which I (and many of my friends) became com­pletely jaded by it. I didn’t fully real­ize how awe­some that place much of the time I was there (and I was there a lit­tle longer than most). I had great teach­ers at Berklee– incred­i­ble teach­ers! To any new Berklee stu­dents who might be read­ing this: you have some of the best musi­cians in the world ready and will­ing to help you learn every­thing you want to know. You also have amaz­ing facil­i­ties at your fin­ger­tips– even though some­times it might not seem like every­thing is as good as it should be– and you have access to all of it. I miss that envi­ron­ment, those peo­ple, and the music I could ran­domly stum­ble across on any given day. I met Rocco Pres­tia on Mass. Ave. just casu­ally stand­ing out­side of the BPC! I met Dr. Dre just walk­ing around the school! I stum­bled into a lec­ture given by George Duke because I didn’t have any­thing bet­ter to do one afternoon!

I recall a moment where there was a kick-ass jazz combo play­ing in 1A on Boyl­ston. The combo was made up of fac­ulty and they were just unbe­liev­able, but all I wanted was for them to shut the hell up so I could fin­ish a project I was work­ing on in the lobby. I should have just ditched the project and watched the show– those guys were amaz­ing! I could tell they were amaz­ing, but I didn’t care, all I could see was what was in front of me and not get­ting done. That is the best anec­dote of missed oppor­tu­nity I think I have in my life. I think it takes an ele­ment of unhap­pi­ness to find what really makes you happy. I think being in that Berklee envi­ron­ment was a con­stantly over­whelm­ing sen­sa­tion where the worst thing I had to com­plain about was not get­ting class­work done because I stayed up jam­ming with friends in the base­ment of the Comm. Ave dorm and not get­ting up for class because I’d stayed out all night with friends and had the best time of my life.

On a slightly unre­lated note, I would love to have a prac­tice facil­ity like Ford­ham Road here in Nor­folk. We don’t even have “music build­ings” down here like in most major cities. In Hamp­ton Roads, bands prac­tice in stor­age build­ings– and only if they don’t get kicked out because of the noise. I’d love to have a quiet place to which I could escape and prac­tice for a few hours with­out any dis­trac­tions. I think it’s funny for me to say that, because when I first went to Berklee it was hard to get used to the “fish­bowl” doors on the prac­tice rooms in the base­ment of 270 Com­mon­wealth Ave and the feel­ing that every­one was scru­ti­niz­ing you while you prac­ticed (I found it eas­ier to sit fac­ing the door than to have my back to it). I’ve seen sim­i­lar sound­proof prac­tice rooms at Old Domin­ion Uni­ver­sity and they make me instantly nos­tal­gic every time.