clear floors

In spite of the fact that I have stayed up till 2 am (and sometimes as late as 3) almost every single night for the last three weeks, I am forcing myself to combine basic chores with the lesson-planning that is nagging me.

I am having a weird summer.  I know it will look much better in retrospect.  Right now it’s a haze of productivity and sleeplessness.  And outright JEALOUSY towards people who have free time in the evenings and on weekends.

I am teaching all three levels of RCM history.  I didn’t know that was going to happen; right up until the first day of classes, I thought I was only teaching History 2, because it was the only class students had registered for in advance.  Then, out of the blue, one person signed up for History 1, and one person signed up for History 3.  This gave me and the music school a dilemma.  We either had to surprise the students with much higher prices for private history lessons (to make sure I got paid my full rate), or tell them classes were cancelled due to low enrolment, or … ?

Informing parents after they’ve already gone through a registration/payment process that they have to make a hefty adjustment on their account is never a happy thing.

Turning away students who have already paid a big, nonrefundable fee for an RCM exam that they are expecting to take is never a happy thing.

So I decided to make a split History 1/3 class.  It has effectively sucked up all my free time till August 4th, and I’m not even getting my full rate per hour because that’s still just 2 students (I need 4 to make my full rate).  But here’s why I decided to do it:

1. I’m just that seduced by challenges.  I love to take a difficult puzzle and make it work.

2. I wanted students and parents to remember, "This school offers all levels of history, and the instructor is creative."

3. I wanted to keep up the momentum of the history program.  (The History 3 girl will be the first student of mine to complete all 3 levels, so I’ll be able to point to that; the History 1 girl will be able to take History 2 in the fall.)

4. History 1 and 3 both cover the Romantic and Modern periods of music history.  As the History 1 girl is known to me and has previous exposure to the concepts, it seemed safe to start her course in the middle, so that she and the History 3 girl could walk side by side in the same time periods, just focusing on different composers and pieces.  It has worked out beautifully.  While I teach one, the other is busy doing practice exams, and I have been able to create segues between their solo work, so that  I am often talking to both of them about concepts they’ll both need.

There.

I had to write that all out somewhere, just to remind myself that I’m awesome.  I’ve been really squirrelly, almost jokingly-suicidally so … or at least, fantasizing about running away and joining a circus, or just moving to a town where no one knows me and I can remake myself as anything.  Now isn’t that interesting?  I do feel … stuck, trapped, thwarted.  There.  I wrote it.

Back to chores.