WARNING: It's the first day of school

"So I thought about the army. Dad said, 'Son, you're fuckin' high."

This is a line from one of my favorite Ben Folds Five songs. I seem to only listen to Ben Folds Five when I'm in the mood to give the finger to the universe. Or at least my DMA seminar professors. It's not because of the work, or the papers, and certainly not because of the company: quite the contrary - the DMA kids and I have a blast chewing the fat over lunch every Tuesday afternoon when seminar is over, and Helen seems to actually take an interest in our diversity so it might not suck this semester. It's because they can't ever tell us we're doing an okay job. Your paper was either:

1. too long/short
2. topic was too broad/not broad enough
3. too much like musicology/theory/history/your mom
4. had too much to do with a discipline that they don't care about
5. too much/not enough expression of your own opinions

I got my seminar paper back today. Can you tell? It had no comments, no grade, no remarks within the body of the paper itself, but it did have a one-page eight point font single spaced letter from my teacher telling me how he just can't figure me out because on the surface, I seem to be open-minded and adventurous but really, I'm just narrow in my singer-centric attitude toward the musical world. I would like to point out that I got an A in this class. This is not about bitterness over a grade - this is about the part where my teacher decides to try and play psychologist through commentary on my paper. Do you want to know why I'm singer-centric? Because I'M A SINGER YOU SHITHEAD. Maybe if my degree coursework somehow reflected that fact, I might be more willing to sit through your discussions on middle eastern tonal systems instead of trying to memorize operas that I don't have time to practice because I'm doing what? WRITING YOUR FUCKING PAPER.

This is grad school. It is impossible to write a perfect paper. But the constant ivory tower pontificating on the importance of education addressing all sides of diversity why didn't you tie in the part about serbian music of the 1980s and make it work with a topic on 14th century chant and do a spectrograph of the pieces you were listening to blah blah blah who cares makes me want to set myself and others on fire in the middle of the conservatory parking lot. Last time I checked, getting your doctorate was about becoming specialized in an area. I'm not getting a DMA in 'purveyor of all knowledge that pertains to everything with the word music in it' I'm getting a DMA in 'vocal performance.' What was my paper on? It was on issues of performance and sonic differences between the boy's undeveloped voice and the adult female voice - a topic that is both interesting and pertinent to my studies. This topic was approved in advance, and I gave an in-class presentation stating exactly why I excluded certain aspects from my paper. I excluded discussion of consonants because it would have taken another ten pages to explain all of the anatomical information that pertains to execution of consonants. I didn't deal with pronunciation because I would have had to do another month of research on pronunciation of texts that are versions of bastardized Scottish, which I didn't have time to do and furthermore, the paper was only supposed to be 25 pages not a fucking dissertation.

Sidebar: my husband is now addicted to the song 'Fergalicious' and I actually took five minutes our of writing this blog so I could play the video of it for him. I suppose it could be worse. At least it sounds like a good rip-off of 'Supersonic.' He says the line that makes him laugh the most is the part where she says, "I be up in the gym, just workin on my fitness."

Know what I want? I want to put my stupid seminar jackass teacher in the same room as Fergie and see who comes out alive. I'd bet all four of my degrees that she'd kick his ass.
And I would SO sell tickets.