October 22, 2005 at 4:27 PM

Well well well, I haven't updated this for a while. I had my fall break last weekend and it was good to get home. I saw a lot of relatives, ate a ton of food and did not have to worry about college. The week before that was midterms and I'm happy to report I got an "A" on all of my midterms. I also made a very important dicision over the long weekend as well. This will be my first, only and final semester taking viola lessons. I decided that I love the violin too much that I could never stop playing it.

This decision comes as great relief to me. I have been struggling with it since the second week of school when I started taking lessons on both. I know that they will try to get me to reconsider, to take lessons on both, but for the sake of my sanity and my grades, I cannot. As such, I am not going to buy that Russell Coe viola. It is a fine instrument, but soon I will be needing a new violin bow, and perhaps senior year I will be getting a new, very nice violin. I just cannot spend my parents money right now with the thoughts of my future in violin. It seems foolish since viola is not my passion.

I have really put a lot of time and money into violin, in fact, most of my money went into something violin related. I have paid for lessons by myself at $15.00 per half hour, 2 times a week for about 2 years and the other year it was only 1 time a week. I have bought my own strings, $50.00 sets, every 3-4 months. I have a nice sheet music collection, which is still growing, in which I have bought alomost every piece of music I own and probably spent around $2,000.00+. I also have bought my bow and half of my instrument with my parents at a cost of over $1,000.00. In total, that takes up about all of the money I have ever made at my job in the grocery store Hy-Vee. I don't regret spending this money, I wanted to make the violin my life, my career, my passion, and my reason for being. I can't start over again on viola. I don't have the money, I don't want to invest the time. I have worked hard on violin. Three years ago, before I started private lesson, my practice was worthless and I played out of tune constantly for everything. When I started lessons my practice became focused and longer, often times I would practice 5+ hours a day. I went from being a below average violinist to being Associate Concertmaster of my high school orchestra in lesson than 2 years.

I have cried over the violin, when I felt like the world was crashing down on my. I would play something and it just wouldn't come out of the violin the way I wanted it to. But I persevered and went to each lesson prepared and knowing the Maria would help guide me on the path of getting better. Now, the violin is my passion, my voice, my love, my life, my future.

This entry has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.

October 22, 2005 at 4:27 PM

Subscribe

Laurie's Books