Basically, this whole last week was just sad. I studied really hard for a chemistry test and got a mediocre grade on it. I had an insane amount of meetings and things to show up for that I could hardly keep up with. There were auditions for the spring oratorio that the music department puts on every year, and I couldn’t find enough time to rehearse before the auditions that were scheduled for Friday afternoon. It was just a bad week.

Here’s how the FGC went down: I met with my voice teacher a few minutes before the audition so we could go over the part one more time. I nailed it when we went over it, notes and rhythms right, and hopefully a metric butt-ton of volume. Alto lines need extra power! I went in confident. I was slightly intimidated because there were only 2 other freshman who were auditioning, and the others were upperclassmen. I let that go, though, because I was mostly doing this audition for experience.

The solo parts worked out so that there was a bass and alto duet and a soprano and alto duet [because the alto is pretty much the star in the Handel ‘Te Deum’]. I sang the duet with the bass first, and you guys, I totally rocked it. I don’t even care if it sounded good, at least I got it right! Then the soprano and I did our thing, and something funky happened. I don’t know what it was, but something was wrong, so they asked us to do it again.

Oh my word, that second time, I came in at the wrong time, got half the notes wrong, and just completely lost my butt. It was nuts. Looking back on it, it really wasn’t a big deal, but it was a poop end to a poop week and it basically seemed like the end of the world. I tried to apologize to the soprano I was with for messing her up, and I couldn’t even get words out, it was like Sea World exploded on my face there were so many tears. I was so pitiful!

But you guys, this is totally not supposed to be a story about how college is so hard it will make you cry, this is a story about how I sincerely just needed a nap! I called my mom on the way back to my room and scared the living daylights out of her with my “YOU HAVE TO COME PICK ME UP I CAN’T GO HERE ANYMORE WAAAAAAHHH” and then got in my bed and went to sleep.

And then I woke up.

AND THE LIFE WAS OKAY AGAIN. I woke up and seriously I was like “Okay, and why was I crying?”
That was a fabulous FGC though and I am very glad it happened!

The moral of the story is: Take a nap when you need it. It may save you from wailing your little heart out in the middle of the music building!
Anyway, spring break is after next week and I’m going to go see my favorite band in Atlanta and it is going to be AWESOME. The end.

Over and out,
Miss Joya

1. I am very weird and I have a lot of odd pet peeves [people poking me, people touching my shoulders, people looking over my shoulder, etc.], but my biggest pet peeve is when I tell somebody one of them and then they do it. It actually makes me want to hit them.

2. I go out of my way to avoid embarrassing people.

3. I think chemistry is the second coolest thing in the whole world. I love doing problems and learning about it and doing labs. It's lovely fun.

4. I think music is the coolest thing in the world. If there were a music history major, I'd probably pick that because I love learning about how everything came to be as it is and where we got all of the signs and syllables and trends and whatnot.

5. I don't think people understand what I mean when I say Less Than Jake is my favorite band. For the past 6 years, I have been able to listen to them at any point in my life and be smiling in 5 minutes. It's WONDERFUL. I probably looked like a nutcase today walking to class everywhere because I was grinning all day listening to them and thinking about seeing them again IN ONE MONTH AND NINE DAYS.

6. I'm very good at talking to people I don't know, but I'm not very good with actually making friends with people I don't know. I'm very picky about who I hang around [like I have room to be picky; I'm weird and nobody wants to hang around me!] so I have a LOT of acquaintances, but very few good friends.

7. I don't have a birth mark of any kind.

8. I've never dated anyone, and I'm cool with that. I'm sure it will be fun once I find someone to put up with me, but I'm in no rush.

9. The thing I hate the most in the whole world [besides the idea of hunting for sport - it's disgusting] is when I'm making a sandwich and there are holes in the bread, and the mustard goes through the bread and gets on your hands. I HATE it.

10. It annoys me when people don't speak correctly, but I don't always speak correctly myself. I KNOW what's correct, I just don't feel like saying it that way sometimes, and I'm sure that's how everyone else is.

11. My favorite thing to do is listen to music while doing nothing that takes thinking. I can't be on the internet or reading or doing homework [although I do study to classical/jazz/opera music], I have to be walking to class or driving or waiting somewhere; those are my favorite times to listen to music.

12. I am so paranoid about punctuality in school. I RUN between my classes MWF because they're so far apart, and if I were to walk normally I'd get there maybe 30 seconds late, and a couple of people do and the professors REALLY couldn't care less, but I cannot be late for class.

13. I also can't skip classes because it makes me feel like some kind of delinquent. I could have a perfectly good reason to skip class, and my parents have even told me that I'm an adult and if my time is more useful somewhere other than class that day, it's not really a big deal, but it will just eat me up.

14. I, like Amber, make lists of things [we often make lists together, go figure].

15. My favorite places to be are as follows: Wilmington, NC, Gainesvile, FL, Furman University [NOT Greenville. Although it's cute, nobody can drive!], Columbia, SC, and Myrtle Beach, SC.

16. I hate everything about the state of Georgia. I have good friends from Georgia, but I hate the majority of the people, I hate the roads that are NEVER finished, I hate the speed limits, I hate the venues, I hate the drive.

17. I've never thought of myself as having any self-esteem issues, but I used to not be able to be friends with someone if I couldn't find [or make up] something about me that was better than something about them. It was a WEIRD phase.

18. I just learned to put on makeup 2 months ago and it's fun. I only wear it when we go out on Friday/Saturday nights or if I have a performance, though. I love putting it on and I like the way it looks, but it takes too much time to put on in the morning and I'm not waking up any earlier!

19. I pull out my hair ALL THE TIME. My hair is ridiculous and even though I wash it every day it starts to lock on its own because it's really curly, so whenever I'm sitting idly, I'm probably pulling out my hair. I'm trying to stop, though, cause it's weird haha.

20. The top 5 show experiences I've ever had are as follows:
1. Backstreet Boys Black and Blue of 2000 in Greenville, SC
2. Warped Tour 2006 in Charleston, SC; specifically Less Than Jake
3. Valencia in March of 2008 in Gainesville, FL
4. Less Than Jake in June of 2008 in Myrtle Beach, SC
5. Bamboozle 2007 in East Rutherford, NJ

21. I really like to capitalize words that I want to emphasize in my sentences. I hate having to write for English classes because teachers don't want you to do that.

22. Our bell tower is off by 4 minutes and it drives me NUTS. It plays pretty songs at "noon" though.

23. I'm the type of person that won't stop talking about something/someone for weeks, and then later on I don't give a crap. I do the same thing when I get really excited for a show I'm seeing, but I get excited too early, and by the time the show has come around, I really don't care anymore so I don't have a good time.

24. Obligatory mentioning: During high school, I traveled with my friends all up and down the east coast to see bands and those were absolutely some of the best times of my life. We stayed mostly in SC, NC and GA, but went as far down as FL and as far up as NY [not driving though, ew]. I was perpetually broke because of it, because after 10th grade my parents cut off their funding haha, but I couldn't think of a better way to have spent that money.

25. I can't stand the taste of any kind of alcohol. I don't know what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. We're going to toast with sparkling cider at my wedding, apparently, cause everything is so gross to me.

I hope that was enjoyable. Here's a little last.fm because it's been a while.

Over and out,

Miss joya

First thing’s first: Top 5 Albums of 2008. I am quite the music lover, although I never listen to new music because I love my music too much, so if a band has made it on here, assume they were worth the listen! Also, if I get wordy, you’ll have to forgive me. I wrote reviews for my high school paper and I write reviews for The Paladin, so sometimes I tend to lean toward journalism.

Valencia – We All Need A Reason To Believe
This album is 100% my number one album of 2008. I’ve been a fan of Valencia for about 3 years now, and that whole time I never imagined them topping their first album, This Could be A Possibility. WRONG. I absolutely never get tired of listening to this album. I listen to it when I run, when I walk to class, in the car, in the room when I’m cleaning up, EVERYWHERE. There’s not a single song I don’t like on the whole thing. It makes me proud to be a fan!

Less Than Jake – GNV FLA
As much as I talk about Valencia, people are surprised to learn that Less Than Jake is my favorite band. Well, they are and probably always will be, and I am so happy with what they’ve done with their newest album. In 2006, they put out In With The Out Crowd, which I LOVED, but you could tell it wasn’t Less Than Jake. Even they didn’t like it; they never play many songs from it live and even talk openly about how they think it wasn’t too great. But since then, they left their record label and started their own, and you can tell that they’re much happier with this album, as am I! It’s very much like old Less Than Jake, but not so much that it seems like the same old album again.

Driving East – The Future Of The Free World Is Riding On This One
It baffles me that this band is not bigger. They came to my hometown [COLUMBIA, WOO WOO!] in the summer of 2008 and actually had to cancel the show because they weren’t making enough money from the tour. I was fairly heartbroken, so two days later my friend and I drove four hours to Raleigh, NC to see the same show and it ended up going on as planned. But…there were, like, fourteen people there, and my friend and I were the only ones who knew Driving East. It pains me, because this album is so…fun. It’s a fun, sing along in the car with the windows down album, and nobody knows that! WHY?! Well I’m begging you, LISTEN TO THIS BAND. THEY ARE REALLY, REALLY GOOD. The end.

The Cab – Whisper War
I hate to say it, but this band is so talented. During March/April/May, my friend and I followed Valencia around for a few shows and ended up seeing them 6 times. They were on tour with The Cab, so we ALSO ended up seeing The Cab 6 times. We tried so hard to fight loving them, because they’re honestly a boy band that plays their own music…but it’s AWESOME. They’ve been described as a mix between Fall Out boy and *NSYNC, and they take that as a compliment. This CD is seriously just fun.

Forgive Durden – Razia’s Shadow: A Musical
Dude. This thing absolutely rules. It’s an actual musical; there are characters and there’s a plot and drama. I actually cried at the end, I could not make this crap up. I never get to listen to it because I can’t just listen to one song at a time, I have to listen to the whole thing [do you just read three pages out of Harry Potter then put it down? I think not], but when I do listen to it I fall in love with it all over again. It’s so incredible that Thomas even THOUGHT of this, not to mention actually pulled it off without it being lame.

And there you are. Feel free to share yours!

It really SHOULDN’T be now because we just got back from Thanksgiving break, and that’s almost an entire week to do your work for finals at your leisure, in your comfy bed, in your cozy house. RIGHT. Because ANYONE does work over Thanksgiving break. Don’t get me wrong, you definitely should because it will make your life so much easier the week before classes end/finals, but if you decide not to during your tenure in college, trust me, you are not alone.

It’s not so much that I have anything super hard to do, I’m not synthesizing new elements here, I just have papers to write and voice jury to practice for and final projects to turn in…and I just don’t wanna do it! It’s not even that I’m THAT lazy of a person, I just really would rather do anything else in life.

But, unless a college education starts being free of charge in the next two and a half weeks, I’m going to just shut my mouth and get it done. Furthermore, I would not like for my mother to destroy me over my grades. That’s right, she would not kill me…she would destroy me. Different concept entirely.

Now allow me to gripe just a second; when I say to people that I’m a music and chemistry double major, I usually get “Chemistry? Whoa.” And sure, chemistry is hard and whatnot, but how does no one understand that majoring in music is terrifyingly [Word says it’s a…word] difficult as well?! I can tell you why Na and Cl bond to each other readily and I can draw cyclohexane for you all day long, because there’s just one way to do those things. There is not, however, just one way to sing or play the violin or piano.

It’s so weird trying to explain to people that I HAVE to practice singing for hours a day because if I don’t, I’ll forgot how to do it correctly [e.g. today in my lesson; first lesson after a break is never good for me!]. I could basically ramble about this all day and it wouldn’t make sense, so allow me to just sum it up: treat music majors very kindly, because most of them are probably about to implode.
Anywho, I must get back to all of this business I have to do. Woooohooooo.

Over and out,
Miss Joya

P.S. last.fm again! There’s never anything super interesting on my last.fm but I think it’s fun so don’t judge me!

P.P.S. I hate listening to Christmas music, but the title seemed appropriate.

This is me with my friend Sian and JD from Valencia at a friend's birthday party in 2006.

I’m totally done now. ANYWAY, we drove up to that, had a lovely time at the show [because I also love two of the other bands Valencia was with, The Matches and Bayside]. I got to see my best friend who goes to College of Charleston for the first time in a few months because we used to go to Valencia shows all over the east coast together, and now we can’t unless it’s summer! I’m glad we got to meet up at the show, though. It was just like old times ☺.

Sarah and I drove back between midnight and 3:30 a.m. which was...quite an adventure. Let’s just say sanity ends at around 1:45 a.m. for me, and our trip lasted MUCH longer than that!

Saturday, we all relaxed together and decided to stay in for dinner. Well, I mean…technically we stay in EVERY day for dinner that we don’t go downtown, but this time we really stayed in. A few girls went to Wal-Mart and got a lasagna and French bread and I made some veggie burgers for myself, and we had a cute family dinner around our kitchen table! Rather precious, I’d say.

I swear I'm wearing pants.

P.S. if no one's noticed, all of my journal entry titles thus far have been Spice Girls lyrics. I've run out of Spice Girls songs I like, though, so I'm going to switch to something else. See if you can guess what :)

P.P.S. Here's some more last.fm for the week. Updated top artists!

There’s nothing wrong with going to Halloween parties at the frat houses and whatnot [not like I was invited, I am so the opposite of cool] but if you’re a lazy homebody like me, there’s also nothing wrong with sitting in your room on Halloween!

It didn’t feel much like Halloween to me, though, because last week was Furman Fall Fest and we all dressed up for that! Furman Fall Fest is basically where kids from Greenville come trick-or-treat and do… other… Halloweeny … activities on Furman campus because it’s too dangerous in their own neighborhoods. Our hall was a trick-or-treating hall [some other halls were haunted] and we basically put “Thriller” [Michael Jackson’s, not Fall Out Boy’s!] on repeat on the iPod speakers and dressed up as…whatever we could find in our closets!

The Halloween Village People.

It was somewhere near the most precious thing I’ve ever witnessed, not gonna lie. That was all the Halloween I needed, and that’s coming from a person who has only NOT trick-or-treated two out of her 18 years of life.

That’s pretty much it. I’m done with midterms and I did pretty well on all of them. Life goes on in general!

Over and out,
Miss Joya



P.S. I thought I’d leave you with something different this time, because I realized last.fm updates automatically no matter which chart you post, so the last.fm chart from my last post is updated with how much I’ve listened to each artist over the past week. How about recently played tracks?

]]>http://engagefurman.squarespace.com/joya/2008/10/18/get-down-get-deeper-and-down-saturday-night.htmlJoya2008-10-18T23:35:19Z2008-10-18T23:35:19ZPlease excuse my [dear aunt sally] lack of updates as of late; first there were some issues with the internetz on campus, then I had to get a new screen on my computer because I cracked it like a spaz. But, I’m back now!

Today was another Fall For Furman and there were two good things about it: 1. We get SUPER good food in the DH when there are visitors and 2. I LOVE prospectives! I love to be able to answer people’s questions about Furman and about college life in general, because I made the mistake of pretending I knew all there was to know about college, which made for a whole lot of anxiety once I got here! So if you’re one of the prospectives I spoke to…hi! Don’t be afraid to leave a comment so I look like people are interested in what I’m saying ☺

But I digress; most of the parents had questions about academics of course, and all the students wanted to know about was what there was to do on the weekends, which leads me to my next point:

HOMECOMING!

Okay, so, Homecoming is literally the greatest thing in the whole world except for, like, Less Than Jake [my favorite band!] and vegan stuffed peppers [my favorite food!]. I don’t even want to give away all of the awesome craziness that happens during Homecoming week, but the dance was so incredibly fun.

I went with a big group of girls and we got lost downtown trying to find somewhere to eat because of Fall For Greenville [did we steal that from them or did they steal that from us?], so we ended up just coming back to go to Monterrey. Delicious food, low prices, and hilarious wait-staff. I loved it.

Then we got lost AGAIN trying to find the actual venue [Webb Rd. does not equal Mall Connector Rd., whoever wrote those directions!], but once we got there, it was SO much fun. Trust me, one of my friends was my half-date so I know both perspectives, you can have crazy fun with or without a date. It was a LOT of fun.

That’s basically it. Note that I’m just pulling things out of the air when I write these entries, so if there’s something specific you want to hear about, let me know and I’ll look into it for you!

Over and out,

Miss Joya

P.S. Some of the shelves in the library move ELECTRONICALLY. As in you PRESS A BUTTON and the shelves move. I love this place.

P.P.S. I'm going to TRY to remember to post my last.fm each week when I update just because I know I really like seeing what other people are listening to, so that automatically means you are interested in what I've been listening to. If you don't know, last.fm is a program that works in conjunction with iTunes or whatever you have to make charts of how many times you listen to certain artists or songs. Here you go!

Those are my top artists for the week. Share if you have one too :)]]>http://engagefurman.squarespace.com/joya/2008/10/5/im-giving-you-everything-all-the-joy-i-can-bring-this-i-swea.htmlJoya2008-10-05T14:03:47Z2008-10-05T14:03:47Z

Before I came to Furman, I led quite a ….sedentary lifestyle, if you will. I hate[d] sports, I hate[d] physical exertion and if it didn’t involve food, TV and my bed, it took a lot of convincing to get me to do it. I wasn’t exactly lazy or anything, I just hated…you know, the sweaty, tired thing.

Me on the field with my team. So intense.

Somehow, being at Furman has not only provided me with different means of trying new things that I never would have thought of doing before, but also the mindset of “Why not try it?” In my Freshman Colloquium class, every week we discuss different aspects of being a music major, from practice techniques to stress management to different career paths you can choose with your music major. When we talked about practice techniques, the lecturer was a clarinet player so my thought was “This will be a great time to tune out and theorize about Lost before the new season comes on,” but when I actually found myself listening, I realized he had valid points. He talked about how he worked out in the PAC so he would have healthy lungs, because you have to have good breath support to play the clarinet.

So I’m thinking “Hey, I’m a singer, I have TERRIBLE breath support,” [which I totally do; I admit my faults] “Maybe I should try this.”

Needless to say, the PAC intimidates me for the moment because I assume REAL athletes go there to work out and if I go in there and start clanking two pounds of weight around they’ll all think I’m a freak. But, this happened to be the

week my hall was short on players for our weekly intramural soccer game. I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t get out there and make a butt out of myself on that field, but my hall staff was begging me and so I caved. What did I have to lose?

This is my soccer uniform. See, totes was not kidding.

Me before President's Dessert! Apparently, this will be the only picture.

1.    GET A PLANNER. No you can’t use iCal, no you can’t use your Gmail calendar, no you can’t use anything digital! Just…trust me. You’re not going to be the nerd who whips out your computer in EVERY class, because it’s really not necessary, and what if your professor tells you something and you’re like “Oh, I’ll put it on iCal when I get back to the dorm”? YOU WON’T. Get a nerdy little planner, or use the one Furman sends for free, and take out a pencil or a crayon or a quill and write whatever it is down as soon as you hear it.
2.    For the love of all that’s good and holy, look at the planner! It doesn’t really help to write it down if you don’t...look…at what you wrote. Personally, I have huge desk calendar on my desk and a small one I carry with me. I write academic stuff in the small one first and events/fun stuff in the big one first, and transfer everything important to the big one. For instance, if I want to go to see Chuck Norris speak [which is totally happening, and I’m totally going] but I have a crazy huge Calculus test the next day, I can see that it could be an issue. Hooray.
3.    Don’t be a nerd and skip all the fun stuff during one week because you have a big test on Friday, you’ll just be sad!
4.    Don’t be a huge social butterfly and try to go to EVERY fun event, because you’ll probably implode.


There, that was helpful, right?

-Miss Joya

[p.s. I'm totally trying! Now, I can't figure out how to get more than ONE picture to show up in the posts. I'm a total caveman, I know, I'm sorry!]