Good morning and Happy Weekend! I hope that you had an amazing week! For the most part, I did. It was crazy busy, but pretty fun. 😉 I will tell you all about it.
Some of the amazing things that happened this week, I was accepted in our schools NJHS (National Junior Honor Society). I am really excited about this! We turned in our applications awhile back. I wasn’t exactly sure of when I would find out if I was invited to be a part of it, but it happened this week.
Also, we had our Cyber Preliminary Competition. This event went really well, I think. In case you are not familiar with how this Preliminary Competition worked, I will explain it for you. Basically, all of the participating teams / schools met at the Advanced Technology Center. We were not supposed to bring anything other than our Raspberry Pi (that is the platform our competition is working around), not any saved code, no additional supplies, just our Raspberry Pi. (Not every team honored that regulation, and my school kind of felt at a disadvantage because we did. I guess that piece of information, is neither here nor there, just a side note. My parents always say “You can’t control what other teams do, so just focus on doing the best that you can and don’t worry about anyone else.” I tried to do just that! I tried to do the best that I could.) We had 2 hours to create a new carnival game. We needed to write a program using either Python, or Scratch, on the Raspberry Pi, and get it running, with whatever craft supplies we used for the game part of it (and most importantly, trouble shoot it your idea to get it working 😉). 2 hours might sound like a long time, but my team used and needed every single second. Fortunately, I had a stellar team! I focused on writing the code, and my two teammates focused on the craft part. I am happy to say our idea worked! Yay! We don’t have our feedback from the judges yet, but I felt like our presentation for them, went really well. Hopefully, our judges will agree with that. 🙂 I am really hoping, we will get feedback this week. The challenge for the actual competition is being released May 1. It would be nice to have the feedback from the preliminaries in mind, while we start brainstorming on how to solve the next challenge.
Bock, J. (2016). A Raspberry Pi. [digital image] CC BY- NC
The last awesome thing that happened was, I found out I earned straight superiors on my Solo and Ensemble events. I was super excited about this! So for this event, you can pick out up to 3 pieces to play for judges. They will critique your performance, and tell you what you did well, and what you could improve on. Superior is the highest rating you can get. I picked out a challenging piece for both my alto solo, and for the clarinet (which I am getting better at 😂). Also, I played the soprano in a saxophone quartet. I was kind of worried about it all coming together with everything, everyone seems to have going on. I am so happy with the results! Not only am I happy with the results, I am so happy it is over. 😂 Yay!
Another really fun thing I got to do this week, was help host the instrument petting zoo. A bunch of us, got to bring our instruments to the school and show them to students that are thinking about joining band. We played for them, answered any questions that they had, and told them what we loved about band. That was a blast!
So, I know you are probably thinking, this sounds like a really successful week, right? It was! It was also kinda of a blur. All week seemed like I had one event after another and I really didn’t have too much time to complete homework, and never anytime to relax. Sometimes, when things seem to be moving faster than you, it might seem like you start to feel hopeless. In the end, after I had completed all of my challenging events, I felt great. How could this be with all of this stress?
I read a quote from Barack Obama, he once that said “The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something.” So, I guess that is the “big idea” of this blog. 😂 It might be hard to see what your choices are, especially when you have a lot of deadlines and requirements on you. However, doing something about all of your pressures, will make you feel better! Next time you feel like me, with too much to do and too little time to complete it all, remember this story. More importantly, remember take the wise words from President Obama and spring into action!
Well, I am off to practice the piano. I have one last audition this week, for a recital coming up at a local University. I am kind of taking a risk for my audition. 🙂 Instead of playing a classical piece, I am playing a jazz selection. I will let you know if it works out. 😉
Have a great day and go play Acalympics
Acalympics.com 