I’m just a crappy guy.
I just finished all of my work for my Computer Applications class (basically an MS Office course). It is now 10AM and class ends at 1PM. But I have no place to go, so I am staying here for a while.. someone tell me a story.
Actually, I know my learning curve will start to steepen, if not immediately, in the near future. I’m kind of inspired to start doing some extracurricular geeking just so I won’t be too overwhelmed when my major-relevant courses start to kick in.
A couple of days ago, Kim told me that her mother was going to change real estate agencies because she found a company that can offer her 100% commission. She has been with the same company for 15 years or so and has many established clients and has considered how much money she could be making if she was able to take home all of her comission (she sold 3 million dollars worth of houses last year). Basically, she interviewed this other company and has decided to go with them.
As a joke, I started propositioning Kim to ask her mother to sell a house just for us. She sells so many houses, maybe she’d sell one and it would be particularly easy, then she could just pretend she didn’t work for it at all and just give us the comission. It’s not like Kim asks for anything from her parents anyway, if her mom sold one million dollar house out in King’s Grant or something, she could just give us whatever the comission was and Kim and I could split it and pay off some of our bills.
Then I started thinking more seriously. What if something like that happened? What if my student loans just disappeared? What the hell would I do with my life? I must admit, knowing that there is this gigantic $150k+ debt out there waiting for me is my main motivation in life, right now. It’s the reason I am going to school for Network Security. If it were suddenly gone, I’m not sure what I would do with myself. I take comfort in the fact that I have a couple of years of school before I need to think about where I will work, where I will live, and what I will do with my life once I get there. Knowing that I have that time, is what makes me feel good about going to the gym, I feel like I have a head start on my new life when I finally get started with it– that “new life” also including being in better shape and more healthy.
If my loans were suddenly gone, I am not so sure I would be as motivated to go to ECPI. I probably still would, but I don’t think I’d feel as focused on it. It’s funny how I talk about how much I’d like to be out from under that debt, but really I just want to be out from under it in my own terms.
I started classes at ECPI this week and so far it has been good, but now that I have started a non-music education, my interest in music seems to have peaked again. As a result, I am practicing pretty regularly again, which is good. If anything good comes from my attending the school at this point, it’s that I am getting into a regular schedule. I am getting up way earlier than I have in years, which means I go to bed a lot earlier so I am not staying up late and eating and watching TV and doing nothing. ECPI is proving to be a major factor in the JAFAP. Since school is only from 8AM to 1PM, I have plenty time for practicing, as well as teaching, which is something I need to pick up the pace on.
(I made some flyers for bass lessons, anyone have any ideas where I should put them?)
I think learned something about learning today. For a long time, I had resolved myself to being “right brained” without really understanding what it means. If you read anything about the human thought process, being “right” or “left” brained has nothing to do with apptitude to different subjects, but just how you approach those subjects. Music is regarded as a creative or “right-brained” activity by many but I know of quite a few “left” brained musicians who see and revel in the analytical aspects of music. I was totally dreading taking math courses again (I haven’t cracked a math book since high school) but today I had my first class with Mr. Hamza at ECPI, and he’s pretty incredible. My first impression of him is that he is a “right brained” person who works with numbers. One thing he said that struck home was his focus on the process of the equation, not obsessing over the correct answer. Since it’s what I do, I attempted to relate this philosophy to music and the creative process. The result really doesn’t matter in music, you know how a song will end, the fun part is getting to that point and what you do in between. I’m seeing the possibility that numbers can be approached in a creative way that is every bit as effective as simply seeking the right answer. I can’t really go into the detail. I am just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
However, I was pleasantly surprised that my strong music theory background was helpful in wrapping my head around some of these basic algebraic concepts that had forgotten (or so I thought I did). Mr. Hamza made a statement at the beginning of class that many people who hate math turn out to be good “math thinkers” and it’s just a matter of getting the tools. I won’t say that I had no role in my ability to learn this stuff before, but no teacher I had in high school (or middle school) ever made these concepts seem functional, usable, or even relevant to me. I have a feeling, just based on my first experience with him, today, that Mr. Hamza is about to change my whole perspective on math.
