UIL and figure skating? Michelle Kwan style.

Spring break is almost upon us! UIL competition is the last hurdle before a wonderful-much-needed week off.

For those of you who don't know, UIL is the University Interscholastic League which governs the school system like corporate America controls the White House. What you get in orchestra is a perverse competition that governs how music is taught in the state of Texas. Every school can send groups labelled as Varsity and Non-Varsity, etc., so ensembles are built in a hierarchy. Naturally, we would want to do well in contest, so teachers divide their program so that there is a disparity between the have's and the have-nots.

Whatever.

So, my non-varsity group did themselves proud yesterday morning. While they were performing, I got faces looking back at me as if saying, "We're really doing it! We're on a roll. We better not screw it up." It was completely rewarding.

I made the analogy to my students (as any good homo would) that certain passages were like figure skating triple-triple combinations and that they would really have to nail them to succeed. Well, they did!

Michelle Kwan

signature spiral with crying eyes

So, I'm proud of my students. They are proud of themselves. We do a so-so job in sight reading room (aka the torture chamber).

We get our scores:

1-1-2 in Concert (overall 1)

1-2-3 in Sightreading (overall 2)

I'm totally happy thinking that we got a 1 and a 2. The end, right? nope.

Apparently there are fun names like Mah Johng hands like Seven Sisters and Lucky blah blah. 1-2-3 is apparently "the dreaded rainbow?"

It was like the 6.0's in figure skating in the old system. Everything seems convoluted. Remember Oksana? I mean, when she was a sob story, before she became a trashy drug addict? She and Nancy Kerrigan had the same ranking, but Oksana was listed 1st more times in the Long Program, so she won overall.

Why do we focus on these stupid things? Why do we have names for judging phenomena? Do we actually care that much? And why do we let UIL bully us into the way we think and teach? There is no UIL in life. You don't always get a medal.

Well, we'll see how Varsity goes this morning.

Stay posted for spring break and my house hunt!