Almost Old

Well, the time I've waited all of my life for is almost here: graduating from high school. I've been so ready for this day for years, but now that it's finally creeping up on me, I'm not sure I'm prepared. Sure I'm ready to be done with school. Heck, I've had senioritis for years! I'm just not sure I'm ready to leave my friends. I've had such a well structured life for so long. Now that I'm faced with the unknown I'm feeling a little apprehensive. Not nervous exactly, I'm sure it'll all be ok. Just mostly sad. I'm checking out a week earlier than everyone else to go watch my brother's graduation from law school, so I'm missing a lot of the typical closure activities. I'm missing my last choir concert, and as the choir president I feel really bad about that. I absolutely love choir. It changed my life and attitude so much. I made some amazing friends there. In fact I feel like all 26 (I'm including Mr. Morrise) of us are best friends. We can tell each other anything. That's what happens when the gift of music is involved. You almost don't have a choice. I love it!
I'm also missing the seminary senior testimony meeting. I'm the vice president in the seminary council, so I feel really bad about that. I was looking forward to hearing the testimonies of my peers and being able to share mine. I have a very strong testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel. The promise about asking and receiving (was it Moroni?) can change lives. I'll never be able to deny that I know the truth.
I've made such good friends with all of those kids on the council! Some that I never imagined speaking to in my life. I'm so grateful for the chance that I was given to be with them. It was a great blessing. I'll truly miss them all. Maybe we can have seminary council reunions!
There is also a scholarship-presenting-ceremony-thing on Wednesday that I will not be able to attend, but that's ok. Jody said he'd take care of it for me. It would just have been fun to see all of the scholarships my peers get.
It is starting to strike me that I'm not going to see some of these kids again. Maybe ever. I really have a great class. Sure, we have our share of...unique individuals, but for the most part I love them all. Even the unique ones. I've had the opportunity to get to know many people from all groups last year and this year through the different activities I've done and I've learned that, for the most part, people are good. They may look strange and have some weird ideas, but they are worth getting to know. I will truly miss high school.

P.S. Golly! I need to learn how to write shorter or something!

The Chamber Choir that Dwindled in Unbelief and Other Unrelated Topics (and by the way, I'm really sick of being sick!)

This years chamber choir is kind of falling apart from the inside out. I've been thinking about the causes lately, which is a stretch for me because I usually don't analyze things very deeply. I'll start by explaining the previous choir attitude as opposed to this years'. Last year chamber choir was the thing to do. Everyone wanted to be a part of it because they could see what a bond we had with each other and how much fun we had. There's just something about singing in a good choir. I can't even explain the feeling. I just love...connecting with other people. When you sing you are all working together to make a certain sound, and for me it is a very emotional experience. It's kind of like a runners high. You could be having an absolutely horrendous day, which happens a lot, and when you go to choir and sing you become so caught up in making beautiful music that it all falls away. This year, something is not the same, that much is apparent. There are several of our key singers that are not coming back next year because they haven't had fun in choir, or aren't getting along with someone this year.
As I mentioned before, I have been giving the cause of this rift lots of thought and contemplation. Last night (or this morning, whichever you prefer) around 4 I had an epiphany. When my brother came home from his mission he was talking about a "virus" that they had in the mission. It all started with 2 missionaries, 1 companionship. They decided that the rules and duty's of a mission weren't written for them, so they decided to live by their own rules. Well, these missionaries became trainers, taught them their bad habits, and those missionaries became trainers, and so on. It didn't take long for the attitude of these two influential missionaries to spread throughout almost the entire mission. Well, I think that this is the exact thing that has happened in our choir. All it takes is one influential person to start complaining, and everyone else follows their example. If people complain enough they eventually start to believe what they are saying. I have watched it happen all year, and not realized until now that it was the cause of the bad attitude of our choir. It is very difficult to feel the bond that is usually characteristic of a chamber choir. The person that started it all was not difficult to point out. This person was also a complainer last year, but she was not in a position of leadership, and therefore was easily thwarted. This year they are a mighty senior, and I might add a very good singer, and many of the students look up to his/her. This person is not shy about voicing their opinions, which are more often than not quite pessimistic. They are constantly back-stabbing the teacher to anyone who will listen. Our choir wasn't this way at the beginning of the year, and now that I think of it, I can see how it became infected. Slowly more and more people began complaining about the littlest things until many of them don't have anything good to say about the choir because all they have concentrated on for so long was the negative. This goes along perfectly with my theory of happiness in life. If you concentrate on only the good things in your life, trust everyone (or at least give them the benefit of a doubt), and let all of the bad things sift through your strainer then you will see no reason to be unhappy. If you constantly seek out the bad in every situation then you will have a depressing, miserable life. It's as simple as that.
Ok. I'll get off my soap box now. It's time for bed, especially since tomorrow is Preference and I got 3 hours of sleep last night (thank you, Cully).

Paper

What is this world coming to? I just took two of my finals on the computer. We don't even have those cool little test booklets anymore. I never thought I'd see the day, let alone participate, when we had no use for paper anymore. It's a strange feeling. We don't write letters, we email. We don't write notes in class, we send texts (not that I do, if my mom is reading this). We don't keep journals (unless you're my sister who hasn't missed a day since she was probably twelve and she's, what, 24?), we post blogs. We don't need to print pictures, we have electronic picture frames where you just have to plug in a flash drive and it goes through a slide show of all your family pictures. We don't even need test booklets anymore, we take it on the internet. I guess I can't see them replacing toilet paper any time soon. Thank heaven!
Last night I performed in the St. George Tabernacle with my choir. It was really neat. For one of our numbers that we do with the Large Choir they went up on the balcony thing and encircled the room. The song was an old chant-type thing that monks used to sing in monastaries, so it sounded really echo-y and cool. I just love singing. It's my absolute favorite. Kimber, my exquisite friend, if you read this, we definitely need to do a lot of trios while you're down. I borrowed a ton from my grandma for this very occasion.
The girls in the picture above are me, Kimber, and Stacia, two of my best friends. They also happen to be the other two girls in our ladies trio. Our voices blend so amazingly well that sometimes even we can't tell who's voice is who's.