So, school begins on Monday for me. As much as I’ve enjoyed winter break, it’s time to get back into the realm of productivity. Now, in the past, I’ve had pretty bad stress issues. Who doesn’t, though, being a music major in college? So I’ve come up with a list of rules for having a low-stress semester. I hope you find it helpful.

1. Make “To Do” lists. This will help you not only keep track of everything you have to do, but I find it very satisfying to cross things off of my list.
2. Prioritize. What should you do first, write the paper due in two days or catch up on all the episodes you’ve missed of The Office? C’mon. Suck it up and do the paper! All-nighters are not fun. Trust me…
3. Don’t procrastinate! This is my biggest thing. I have realized, however, that I feel much better about school (and that I get more sleep) when I don’t wake up at 6 a.m. to do my homework on the day it’s due.
4. Take time out of the day for yourself. Do you find this rule surprising? Everyone needs a little bit of time during the day to just stop for a moment, gather oneself, and return with a fresher mind. Even if you only have 10 minutes of free time, listen to music for those 10 minutes, or read, or talk to a friend or something. It’s incredibly important to have a little ME time, otherwise life tends to get a little overwhelming.
5. Don’t worry about things you can’t control. Nothing causes unnecessary stress like worrying about things you have no control over. It may be hard, but just let go.
6. Take care of yourself. Eat healthy, don’t skip meals, and SLEEP AT NIGHT! Don’t stay up until the wee hours of the morning on Facebook when you have an 8 a.m. class! Sleep deprivation is stressful because it’s harder to be productive when you’re completely exhausted every day.
7. Plan fun things. So, it’s Monday, and you have a long, grueling week ahead of you. Solution? Plan something fun for the weekend! It’s kind of like a reward for making it through the week.

Remember, all work and no play makes Sarah a dull girl.

Useful link of the day: Pandora Radio The best Internet tool I’ve found for discovering new music!

Short-term

1. Wake up at 7 in order to get to the practice building by 8:30. I have long since realized that I am most productive when I practice earlier in the day, and I would love to get routine out of the way before classes. I hate waking up early, so this is going to be a challenge.
2. Market myself more. Recently, I took the initiative and sent e-mails to quite a few churches in Bloomington, offering my services as a classical trumpet player. And none of them e-mailed me back…sigh. Tomorrow I plan to send out follow-up e-mails. I also want to e-mail band directors and see about acquiring students for private lessons. I used to teach in high school and loved it. Plus I wanna MAKE SOME MONEY!
3. Get better at sight-reading. This is a key musical skill that I’m relatively bad at, because I rarely do it. It’s something I need to be good at, especially if I want to do commercial playing.
4. Get better at piccolo trumpet. If I can get good at piccolo, I’ll have more playing opportunities. Hopefully. Plus, I looooooove piccolo trumpet.
5. Play more with other people. Playing routine or duets with your peers is good for both the experience of playing in front of others and, when it comes to duets, sight-reading.  Playing in front of your peers is especially necessary, because it is usually your peers who are your harshest critics (even though you love them dearly, like I do, because the IU trumpet majors are super cool).
6. Worry less and don’t take failure so harshly. I have discovered that I am most productive when, guess what, I don’t stress out! Wow. What a novel concept. For example, school orchestra auditions are a week from today. The older I get, the more I realize that school ensemble placements don’t really matter all that much. Who’s going to care in 10 years that I was 2nd in chamber orchestra in the fall of 2009? No one. I won’t even care. (Actually, I’ll remember it rather fondly, as we did Bach’s B minor Mass, which was amaaazing.) I especially need to work on the accepting failure aspect of this.
7. Get my Audition Practice Group going again. Back in the spring of last year, I created a group specifically for the purpose of practicing auditioning. Last semester it died, mainly because last semester was CRAAAAAAAAAZY. I want to bring it back, and hopefully people are still interested in the concept.

Long-term

1. Get into a summer festival. For the past two summers, I have attended summer school, and while both summers have been a valuable experience, I really need to get out of Bloomington for the summer. I’ve been going to school constantly for two and a half years now, and so I need a break. However, I don’t just want to sit around in Michigan all summer. So, I would love to attend a summer music festival.
2. Play successful auditions. By this, I mean getting more comfortable in audition experiences, which still freak me out.
3. Become a better lead player. I would love to play lead in jazz band. High notes are way fun. First, though, my range needs to improve a little and my sight-reading needs to improve a lot, as does my jazz style.
4. Practice more consistently. I’m putting this as a long-term goal as opposed to a short-term one because I know that once I get back to school, I’m going to be super motivated for a week or two, but then I’ll start staying up later, sleeping in more, and making poor time management choices, and I’m sure the amount I practice will nosedive a little. It usually happens. I am going to prevent that.
5. Update this blog! Yep.
6. Maintain a brass quintet. I have to get chamber music credit anyway, and I would like this brass quintet to play weddings and whatnot.

What are your professional and musical goals for this year? Have you thought about them lately?

Useful link of the day: http://www.savvymusician.com/blog/2010/01/23-resolutions/

In the meantime, here are some fun links.

Awesome music business blog: http://www.musicianwages.com/the-working-musician/

Composer John Adams’ blog, which is rather hilarious: http://www.earbox.com/posts

All sorts of wonderful: http://www.theonion.com/content/index

Also wonderful: http://www.newyorker.com/

This will happen soon. I promise.

I am currently a music performance major in the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University Bloomington. I play trumpet.

The goal of this blog is for me to chronicle the journey I am about to embark on–the quest to become a professional musician.

“Quest?” “Journey?” Already I’m starting to get melodramatic! Anyway, I’m mainly going to write about the experiences I have and what I learn from them, as well as the directions music takes me. Hopefully this’ll be useful or something, to myself if not to others.

Considering it’s nearly 1:30 a.m., my first real post will be tomorrow. Hmm…how to get people to read this…