Journal+9-Sneeze+2

It's the fall of 2009, the start of my freshman year in High School. So far, I've been enjoying the high school. The upperclassmen aren't as bad as I thought. All seniors who are friends of John F. are actually becoming quite friendly to me. It helps to have known a popular senior my whole life. There are just a few crazy upperclassmen, especially sophmores. I just learn to deal with them.

Orchestra has been very fun. Mr. Curry is awsome. As my friend Jason told me the first day of orchestra, "It's not really orchestra. It's more like Mr. Curry's spaz hour." It also has been much more intense than Middle School. Instead of practicing for forty minutes every six day cycle, we practice for eighty minutes every other day. Also, the music is much more challenging, its something I really enjoy. Mr. Curry is talking about a song called Jurassic Park, which he is having to transcribe the whole piano part. He says its very challenging, and it will be played on a synthesizer. I'm very excited to see this music and start practicing it.

Mr. Curry has just given me the music today, and its harder than I could have ever imagined. It was so hard, Mr. Curry announced the difficulty of the music to the orchestra. He said, "O.K., I have this new song for you. It's the Highlights from Jurassic Park. Viktor is playing a sythesizer part which is a combination of the harp part, bells, and piano. It was a pain transcribing this and it will be an even greater pain for Viktor because there are several pages of 32nd notes." At this point Jason gave me encouragement by pointing across the room from the bass section laughing at me. I saw the music, and my jaw dropped. I would need serious practice on this music.

It's winter and we've just finished our winter concert. We are working on both our spring concert pieces and pieces for the Mark Wood event. The Mark Wood music is really easy, so I've been devoting some time to Jurassic Park, but with no success. I still haven't gotten much farther in the music than when I first received it. In orchestra practice, when I get to the 32nd note sections, I can't keep up at all. I'm really thinking of either not playing or getting someone else to play. I'm dragging the orchestra down.

It's spring and the concert is rapidly approaching. I've had a breakthrough with Jurassic Park. I can now play part of the 32nd note section at tempo. All I need to do is learn the notes for the rest of the section, and I have the piece nailed.

It's two days before the concert, and I finally learned the piece perfectly. I jumped to the floor screaming with great jubilation. I had finally learned this piece, which had taken me most of the schoolyear to learn.

It's shortly after the concert. I played through Jurassic Park with little errors, and people are giving me more compliments than I normally get from performance. Rather than the usual, "Good job," I am actually being given praise on the level of difficulty of Jurassic Park. If I hadn't been forced to play the music, I would have never even tried it, and I would be a much less accomplished pianist. I am very proud of myself, and so is Mr. Curry. Now, the possibility of playing Rhapsody in Blue during the spring orchestra concert of my Senior year seems closer than ever.