Early Music: A Lonesome Interest

My friend at Periphery is pleased to have stumbled across a fellow blogger who can discuss, among other things, Cat Power. Which made me think how nice it would be if I knew people, face to face or in cyberspace, who talked about how much they love Orlando Gibbons’s “The Silver Swan,” for example. My tastes aren’t esoteric in the grand scheme of things – I’m only starting to branch beyond various “best of” Renaissance compilations, and “The Silver Swan” has to be one of the best-known and most-performed madrigals ever written. And I know people with this interest do exist, since they’re posting on youtube.

Still, it’s incredibly meaningful to me that someone I know — my dad — now shares my love of this song. I included it on a mix CD that I made him for Christmas, and he can’t get enough of it. In fact, yesterday when I called him in tears about various set-backs and resentments, he used the lyrics to rebuke and encourage me, if you can believe it. Thanks, Dad, for always being willing to check out whatever I’m interested in, and for the immense satisfaction of knowing that someone shares my emotional response to this music.

Undergrads these days

I’m sorry to be the typical bitter, hyper-critical grad student, but I am continually dismayed by the amount of hand-holding and downright sinful indulgence that undergraduates at this institution receive – not only because, in many cases, it makes more work and worry for their instructors, but because it encourages them to take their education — no, sorry, their degree and their GPA – as a right.

Two cases in point I heard about today:

- my friend was talking about how she’s annoyed that lots of her students have asked her for recommendations without doing any of the things that recommendation-seekers are supposed to do (provide a stamped addressed envelope, a resume, give plenty of time, etc.), and yet she doesn’t know whether to be mad at them or the university, because some webpage on recommendation gives plenty of instructions to the recommender (what to say and not to say, get them in on time, etc) and none to clueless undergrad seeking a recommendation!!!  Like most things about this place – it wasn’t like that where I came from (University of Chicago).  We were carefully schooled on how to make giving recommendations as easy as possible for our teachers, and we had way too much respect — and fear — of them to take them for granted.

- In the coffee shop where I’m studying, I briefly overheard two undergrads comparing their grades by saying angrily – “He gave me a B-.”  – “He gave *me* an A-.”  – “If you talk once a day, that’s a automatically a C or a B.  Once a day.“  What bothers me about this conversation is not so much the complaining about grades, but the phrase “he gave me” that tripped so easily off their tongues, as if that were a totally arbitrary decision, as if they had no control over the grade they got.  I’ve complained about grades in my time, but I think I said, “I got —-,” not “he gave me —-.”

Granted: today I asked two of my professors for recommendations on 3 days notice!!  But I was really embarrassed and apologetic about it.