Today officially marks the end of Winter Term 2023 and as promised, I am back with part two of my Winter Term reflection (part one can be found here). I can’t believe that the spring semester starts next week! These past few weeks have been relaxing, busy, and exciting, all at once. Other than working on my Winter Term project (a.k.a. practicing my repertoire in preparation for my senior recital), I turned 22, formed a casual, just-for-fun chamber music ensemble with some friends, attended the Winter Term Ball, and much more (I will go into more detail about my month outside of my Winter Term project in a future blog post).
I went into Winter Term with the intention of working on my recital repertoire to the best of my ability, and then deciding whether to perform my senior recital during the upcoming spring 2023 semester or during the 2023–24 school year (double-degree students have the option of scheduling their senior recital in either their fourth year or fifth year) by the end of Winter Term. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until much later that this was not the best mindset to have! Let me elaborate.
I have always been a pretty indecisive person, and I think that has its pros and cons. The reason why I’m often indecisive is because I want to make the best, most informed decision possible in any given situation. This means that my decisions tend to be carefully thought out, but it can take me a long time to come to that decision. Out of the several lessons I learned and realizations I came to while working on my Winter Term project, perhaps the most important one is that sometimes there is no right or wrong decision — the best thing you can do is to just make the decision and commit to it! It would have been much more helpful for me to start Winter Term with a clear decision (of whether I would schedule my senior recital for this spring or next school year — now I realize that both of these are viable options, and one is not necessarily better or worse than the other), commit to it, and prepare for my recital with that intention clearly in mind, instead of the other way around (i.e., working toward making a decision). If I had made a decision to have my recital in the upcoming spring semester, I probably would have been more focused and intentional with my practicing and the goals I was setting for myself because I would have had a sort of “deadline” or set time frame to base my preparation off of. Now that I have come to this realization, I have committed to do my senior recital during the upcoming semester. I will be able to sign up for a recital time in February, and since the recital sign-up process is on a first come, first served basis, fingers crossed that I can get a good date and time!
