Week 2

A week and a half of classes down… I am really feeling like I am getting settled into the routine of classes again. I can say that I am enjoying all of my classes except for the choir class.

I am a bit surprised that I am enjoying the Latin. Latin will be very difficult, and is taking a lot of time to study it… but I can honestly say that I am enjoying it. The priest that teaches it makes it fun, and doesn’t seem to get frustrated if he has to repeat something, actually I think that he enjoys the repeating because he is repeating something when we ask, which shows him that we are truly trying to learn the material.

I am actually very surprised that I don’t like my choir class. I never imagined that I would do well in it… I don’t hear tones well enough to hit the pitches. I also haven’t had any sort of musical direction since middle school, if even then, I don’t remember if we had music after elementary school. I did think that I would enjoy it though. I enjoy singing at Mass and along with the radio. I truly enjoy the act of singing (although it may be painful for those around me).

I guess that I am frustrated with the way that the choir is run, and the instructor… After one class period we were put in the choir loft with no help in how to sing the songs at all. The choir director makes whispered announcements in the choir loft that many people say that they can’t hear, what I have picked up out of those announcements doesn’t help because it uses words that I am not familiar with and have no clue on the meaning. I am not trying to slam the choir director, to be fair to her we did have a big Mass last week (Mass of the Holy Spirit, to ask the Holy Spirit to guide the students and the faculty during the coming academic year) and she needed to get ready for that, but I do feel that this isn’t what I thought I was getting into for the choir, I thought we would be helped in our singing.

Tonight at our cam meeting I mentioned that I am considering dropping choir, I have found out that even though it was presented by the choir director as a required class it is actually an elective. The seminary does require a man to be checked off at being proficient in singing the Mass parts, but that is not the same as taking a choir class. The rest of the guys convinced me to give it another week… which I will do because we have a while before the drop deadline. After the meeting two of the guys did come up to me and expressed that they understand where I am coming from, especially since I do ask questions and this gets me singled out without getting the help… they said that the rest aren’t experiencing that, and that the choir director probably doesn’t realize that it keeps falling on me. I do hope that it gets better and that we actually get some instruction to help us sing, rather than just using us as bodies up in the choir. I truly want to learn and get better, as I said in a previous post I agree that it is important for a priest to be able to sing well, so that he doesn’t hurt the ears of his parish.

I have had a couple of people get a hold of me and say that they have thought about calling me at different times, but are unsure about it because of the image that they have in their mind of seminary life. They say that although they are pretty sure it isn’t true, the image they have is from the movies of old monastic life with guys walking around in silence for selected hours out of the day and they don’t want to disturb that. I will go more into the schedule, hopefully in my next post (unless something else comes up that I feel like talking about) but in short if you want to contact me just think of it like I’m at a normal college… classes and meetings, but the rest can be open. I silence my phone when I can’t take a call… and I make judgement calls on how long I anticipate I need before answering any call. So feel free to call me, if I can answer I will, if not I will call back either the same day or within the next couple.

Peace,
Adam

P.S. I wrote this all last night, but rather than my normal practice of posting immediately after writing I decided to take a bit to think and pray about what I wrote. I decided in this case to go with my first impression. I did take some time to talk to a guy in my class who has already gotten to know the choir director fairly well. He told me that the impression that she wasn’t doing it intentionally is very accurate, and that she would feel really bad if she knew that it was coming across this way. He recommended that I go to her to express my concerns of the class before I make any decision on staying in the choir or not. I had actually attempted this before, I had stopped by her office a few times to see about asking these questions, but had not caught her in her office. As I said before I will give choir at least another week and have decided to make a few more attempts to contact the choir director in this fashion.