Olivia is a glass ceiling breaking filipina-american celebrity. Once a child star, now a well renowned singer, songwriter, pianist, actress, producer, and philanthropist. She does it all. She was in a very public and adored relationship since she wa...
"No, ma'am. I'll have others take a look as soon as possible."
"Oh and have Mr. Rodriguez help you with your form. A conductor needs to be confident and show it with his or her body language," Professor Watters adds to her very public critique of my work.
"I'll get right on that, Professor," Nathan says. He's more than proud to help me with my form, I had never gotten the hang of conducting but it was always something I wanted to do. To lead an entire orchestra, OMG!
"Show me what you got," says Nathan.
I start a piece and instantly he comes up and corrects everything I'm doing, "where did you learn what you're doing? It's a mess..." Nathan has a look of disgust on his face and laughs.
"Ughhh I've never done this before! I don't know how!!!" I say frustrated. Not that I think I'm hot shit, I just usually am pretty good at all the stuff that I take on. Maybe because this is new and uncharted territory, but I really suck.
"I'll help you out, superstar. Don't worry about it. Only if you help me with my transposing. That's my Achilles heel as conducting is to yours," he jokes.
I collapse onto my hotel bed feeling utterly defeated by today's critiques. The rest of my cohort has an advantage that I don't — they have each other to lean on for each assignment. If I'm going to make it in this program I can't do it alone, I realize. I roll over onto my back and pick up my phone to call Lee to tell him to come over but I decide otherwise.
I open my messages and select the group chat, "Chopin Wannabes" such a dumb name for our group of friends from the cohort.
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In about 5 minutes time I get seven "I'm there" messages. I send them the address of the hotel and call the concierge to see if I can get a conference room and a bellhop to help me lug all my stuff downstairs.
In less than an hour, all seven of my friends from the cohort make their way through my homework and projects I submitted to Watters today. Red pens in hand, they made their corrections. I mean, I knew it wasn't my best work but they could ease up on the red markings...
After 7 more hours of school work, I somehow manage to improve my form and the 6 assignments and projects I tried to turn in today.
"Why didn't you call any of us before you turned it into Watters?" Julia asked while drinking her beer.
"I didn't know if I should or could," I shrug.
"That's the whole point of the cohort, it's us teaching each other as much as Watters teaching us. She's just there for advisement basically," Fabian adds.
"Next time, call us so we don't have to cram for seven straight hours. Not that the food and beer weren't great but..." says Victor.
"Yeah, I got you guys now. I get it," I throw my hands up as a sign of defeat.
