You know that feeling you get when you're so excited your stomach is fluttering, only you've begun to feel it for so long, it's settled into a constant simmer down there, like an extra shot of adrenaline just waiting to be released into the blood stream?

          That's how I've been feeling for the past two weeks. In mid-February I applied to two schools for graduate studies in vocal performance and composition, one in Bangor, Wales, and one in Aberdeen, Scotland. Exactly three weeks ago, four business days after I'd submitted my applications, Bangor sent me an offer of admission, and then this morning, I opened my email to the same response from Aberdeen. It was exhileration in the extreme the first time, and then, as I began delving into process of preparing for going overseas, still unsure of my position with Aberdeen, the excitement settled from a high-pitched yodel to a gentle but persistent hum. 

This morning, the waiting was over, but I realized then that I now had a greater decision: Bangor, or Aberdeen? Wales, or Scotland?

Many of you know that in 2018 I applied to study at Cambridge, England, and was promptly declined. It was discouraging at first, and I wondered if graduate school was only a pipe dream, but then I determined that I was going to show them. According to the faculty, there was nothing wrong with my application, but the fact that they had so many students applying per year, meant that they could only choose the most outstanding students. Basically, my application wasn't impressive enough.

Well, by all that is good, I determined, I was going to make it impressive enough. My plan was to start a choir, as well as participate in some vocal and composition competitions, and then apply again, with fresh material, and a few awards under my belt. However, life kept getting in my way. In 2019 my attempts to get a choir together flopped, a composition and two vocal auditions for competitions didn't even make it past the first round, and then, 2020 happened, and all my ambitions for a flashier application ground to a halt with it.

Talk about being admitted to a whole new level of discouragement. "I'm never going to get into grad school." I told myself. I wanted to go to grad school so I could perfect the two skills I wanted to devote a large part of my life to: singing and composition. Yet it seemed that not only were doors slamming shut in my face, but that I simply wasn't good enough to be admitted for graduate work at anything better than a shoddy school that accepted everybody, and helped nobody. 

It was in this state of deprecating disorientation that I was bumbling around last summer, when someone asked me the obvious question? 

"Why do you have to go to Cambridge, or Oxford?" (this was the other school I decided I'd try out for as well, when I reapplied).

"Because I want to go to the best school, and have the most impressive resume, and gain automatic respect from everyone who's ever looked down on me in the past!" That's what I felt like answering, and that's when I realized that half of my reasons, at least, for wanting to go to one of those schools were all wrong. 

Firstly, going to the best school doesn't automatically make me the best person or give me the best education(of course we have to define "best" as well), and secondly, no number of letters after my name will give me respect from anyone, at least not the kind I truly crave.

I decided to sit down and sort out what I actually wanted from graduate school, or, to put it better, what was most desirable, rather than what did I most desire.

In the end I discovered that the good things that I desired, a shorter time, lower cost, smaller class sizes, an environment with a rich musical tradition, were all things I was still going to find primarily in the UK, but, I discovered, not necessarily at Cambridge.

As my mother mentioned during one of my depressed rants, "There are other schools in England besides Cambridge and Oxford."

True!

What a revelation, there were actually other schools. At first I felt like I was settling for something mediocre because I couldn't have the best, but when I realized that most of my reasons for wanting the top schools were prideful and selfish, I decided that it was okay. 

After researching, I realized that not only were there other schools in Britain, but there were other good schools too. The two I finally settled on were not what I'd initially expected, but as I conversed with the faculty and staff, I discovered that at both I would get a solid education, and maybe, too, without some of the hustle and bustle that I would necessarily have had to deal with at a more prestigious university.

It has been a process of acceptance, to a certain degree, and sometimes a little humbling: I don't tell everybody about my former failure. However, convinced of the fact that I will get a solid musical education at either Bangor, or Aberdeen, I'm now pretty excited at my prospects.

I have yet to decide which school I will choose, but hopefully God will make that clear to me in the next couple of weeks at most. What I do know is that, while it's not Cambridge, it's Britain, and I'm going this fall!!!!!

That's just plain-old exciting. 

I will miss being a way from friends and family for the larger part of a year. (I'm so grateful it's only a year). And, there will be a lot of things to adjust to, but in the end I know it will be a time of growth and grace for me. A time of learning, loving, and living, and, hopefully, a year in which I draw closer to my wonderful Saviour and Friend.

       Thank you, to all my friends who are reading this, for making these last six years, during which I sweated through an undergraduate degree and scores of violin students, so fruitful and blessed. I look forward to see what God will bring, and any of you are welcome to visit me while I'm there, provided I'm not inches deep in papers, or music notes!

I'll close with one of the songs I recorded for my audition tape. It's one that I consider the most soulful of all the songs I chose. This is Dvorak's "Song to the Moon," from his tragic, but glorious opera, Rusalka.

      And for now, that's my announcement. Excelsior! 

             ~ Christianna

           Exactly two years ago I stood in a church in Virginia before the casket of a seven-year-old boy. He was a boy who had been so full of vim and vigor last I'd seen him. A boy who, every time he spoke, made me smile. One whose violin ability progressed so quickly and so well, that I thought, "If any of my students ever become virtuosos, he will be one." And yet, there I was, that sunny day in Virginia, standing before his casket. 

             I didn't dare approach too closely. I didn't want to see him lying there, cold, still, empty. I wanted to remember him as I'd last seen him, the laugh sparkling in his luminous eyes, dimples on his cheeks, romping with his brothers in the sunny, dew-speckled grass. 

              When I first entered the church, a few minutes earlier, a swarm of unfamiliar faces buzzing about me, the first thing I encountered was the engulfing hug of his father who was almost as surprised to see me as I was to be there. I'd learned of my former student's passing only the day before and decided immediately that is would be worth the two hour drive to his memorial service the next day. I cancelled all my lessons that day--they understood--and drove the whole way, trying not to think of anything at all.

 

           All I knew was that a darling little boy who showed tremendous promise on the violin, whom I'd seen less than four months ago, just before his family moved up to Virginia, was now dead. What was I to think? I'd encountered death before, but never before had it stung me so close to my heart. 

            I remember with razor edge clarity the exact circumstances I was in when I opened the email from one of Jacob's Aunts telling me of his passing. I still remember the exact angle of the sunlight slanting through the coffee shop window onto the table at which I sat. I remember clammy fuzzy feeling I felt as I read the email for the fourth time, still not fully comprehending what it said. 

Jacob, dead?

Right then and there, I pulled out my notebook, the one which I reserve for some of my deepest musings, and wrote what may have been one of my worst poems. I had to. It was the only way I could immediately process the information. How ought I to handle a person leaving his body behind, going to another world where I cannot follow until God wills?

            How can I gracefully drain the cup of grieving when it is passed to me, unexpectedly, unrequested?

           For me, Jacob's death was one more nail in the coffin of hopes and dreams I had for this life to be perfect, to be fulfilling. Of course I knew and acknowledged in my head that this world was deeply broken, and only God could bring restoration. Still, I clung to the fast fading fantasy that perhaps for me, I could grasp the oil of perfection in this world. Just maybe it wouldn't slip through my fingers like it did through everyone else's. 

              That mirage had already been smashed more than once, but this served a more severe stroke. 

I could say with Longfellow in truth: