Memory Day: Ten Years Ago Today

On January 9, 2003, I was in my final semester at Florida State. I had no classes other than composition lessons, and my sole responsibilities involved teaching two sections of Sightsinging and Ear Training (MUT 1241) while proofreading my Master's Thesis.

My two classes embodied the life-long struggle between haves and have-nots. One was taught in a giant echo-y clsasroom with a single (unstaved) blackboard and a tape deck. The other was taught in the state-of-the-art music dormitory, in a classroom with full audio capabilities and whiteboards. On this particular Thursday, I had just given out the first official homework assignment for the classes:

• Login to the lame, but school-required, Blackboard site.
• Reply to the email from my private course listserv.
• Obtain a "Practica Musica" student file to enjoy a semester full of meaningful ear-training homework assignments.

I was also a member of the Music Theory Grad Student basketball team, whose winning record that season (in the Tallahassee Rec League) was only outmatched by the winning record of every single other team of every other sport in history. We rarely scored more than 20 points in a game, so I mainly used it as an excuse to sprint around the court and call it exercise. In one game, I sprinted so hard that I got loopy, and actually thought we were winning for about four minutes before oxygen returned to my brain.

Other than these activities, life was pretty slow. There was no Booty yet (she was still "Athena" and living in a dog rescue agency) but I had not yet gotten so bored that I bought a bargain bin GameCube (that happened a couple weeks later).