hi friends,
just wanted to check in and apologize for my absence for the past few weeks. for one week I was on vacation, visiting my family and helping my sister move in for her freshman year of college (aww). then this past week I started college band camp, and prepared for the upcoming semester.
and boy do I have stories about this past week, yikes.
I decided to sign up for marching band after many weeks of struggling with indecision. marching band is two one-credit classes, 8 hours a week (not including games), and offers me next to nothing academically (other than a guaranteed A), because it is an elective that does not double as a humanities. for those reasons alone I was reluctant to join, because my grades are the most important aspect of my academic life and I want to graduate on time. I
also hadn't practiced my instrument since I graduated high school in May 2016, had minimal interest in joining anyway (there wasn't much nostalgia begging me to come back), and because I won't be living on campus this semester, I'm going to be wasting a lot of time driving when ideally I'd be doing homework (or resting...or doing literally anything else).
despite all this, I decided to join band anyway. mostly because it would get my parents off my ass about it, but also because I thought I might enjoy being back in an activity that I quite enjoyed in high school. I'd meet new people, get to play my instrument, and get to go to all of the games for free. so there
are definitely perks.
...and then band camp happened.
band camp is an entire week, 12 hours a day...which on its own is pretty exhausting. and right off the bat I was told that I wouldn't be allowed to use my personal horn
because I was a first-year member, I would be getting one of the older and uglier horns from the school, but was assured that it was still a high-end model. needless to say, it's ugly and not as nice as my personal one, but it gets the job done. I'm on second part anyway (which thank god because the first part's notes are
way out of my range), so I don't need the nicest horn.
so I get through the first few days and the whole experience is turning out to be very...ok? it's not as fun or rewarding as high school band was (which is really disappointing), but it's not unbearable either so...idk. I spent most of my time at band camp playing catch-up with the returning members, which really made things annoying. there wasn't a lot of time dedicated teaching new members the music or special visual stuff because we were in the minority, and it was just assumed that we'd get it eventually. I have all the drill down, but still know none of the music, so I just march and don't play. which really defeats the point of band for me? I'm sure I'll get it eventually but I just feel like I'm wasting everyone's time (including mine) if I'm just there to be another visual rather than a musician. fortunately the people are very nice and welcoming, and there will be plenty of social activities for me to participate in. I'm especially excited to be hanging out with all the girl trumpet players because I don't have a ton of girl friends
so that'll be nice
buuuuut the real kicker of my week was having too much to drink at a party and then subsequently getting
food poisoning from the school diner!! yay!!
so from Wednesday-Saturday I felt like complete ass; vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, chills, sleeplessness, dehydration, the works!
I went to the doctor twice, once on Thursday and once today. still waiting on the results from a stool sample (which is its own type of nasty to collect), but my blood and urine results show that I'm completely normal? I'm not running a fever, my electrolytes and blood cell counts are normal, and nothing is conclusive until we get the other results back.
the most irritating part of all of this is that I'm not the only one that experienced food poisoning! several other people in the band have complained, and so far nothing has been done to combat the literal epidemic that's breaking out. my school has heard the complaints but is refusing to call it food poisoning. I feel like I'm being gaslighted, because every time they try to talk to me they come up with excuses for how it simply
couldn't be food poisoning. they're trying to blame it on band camp and "exhaustion", and generally just talking down to me and giving me their fake sentiments of wishing me well. I don't really buy it. it'd be much more honest for them to just admit someone or something went wrong, rather than making me feel like an asshole and doing whatever they can to avoid a lawsuit. just hoping these stool sample results come back with something conclusive. wish me luck lol
anyway, I'm feeling a little bit better, but now I'm just nervous for the semester to start. I think this english class is gonna be hard ;(
thanks again for your patience and I hope I can get back to drawing soon! I have a lot of cute stuff planned :^)
tl;dr -- band is ok, I got food poisoning and I want to die, school is coming up soon, and idk what I'm doing with my life
thank you for reading! hope you all have a great day and start to the beginning of the semester