A Student's Journey

I want to start off by saying that I had a great evening last night; I had a make up piano lesson. And let me tell you again, it was a great lesson. We've briefly talked about why I re-started, after a decade long hiatus; literally, I had not touched a piano since I quit in high school. I'm a changed student: I've taken to tracking my practice and aim for 30-45 minutes daily. Sure, stuff comes up and I don't always practice as diligently but that's the nature of being an adult student (with anything, really!).

I've mentioned that I want to learn to play a stash of new arrangements and some old ones, but upon further reflection, I have decided to re-do all the grades I did do... from 1 through 8 including the theory. I won't be taking the examinations again but I will be working through each grade as if I was going for an exam. This could take several years but it's like many of the things I've started doing... it always takes time and to do it truly well, you have to diligently work at it regularly because everything has layers and "cross training" will enhance the ultimate goal. Yesterday was the first moment that I had felt like I got any real traction. K told me that yesterday's lesson was genuinely fruitful and that it sounds like I had really buckled down this past 3 weeks.

K is a great teacher for me. She's something of a real "godsend" because she breaks down the layers of playing well and her goals for her students are thorough and robust. The only thing is, I'm terrified of her. LOL really. But I've been scared of every piano teacher I've ever had... it's performance anxiety with just one other person there. Sounds ridiculous, I figure, but that's one of the main things I struggled with as a kid so now's time to grab the bull by the horns and take it on. Hopefully my Toastmaster training will kick in at some point (aaaaaanytime now...)?

Going back to my revised goal, after I get up to that point, I will start thinking about whether it would be worth my time to work towards the ARCT status. There appears to be a varied range of different certificates and diplomas so perhaps I'll see which one works best to what I want to ultimately achieve. I think it would be reasonable (at this point) to easily say that once I get my achieved grades up to snuff, I"ll be looking at moving forward to complete my grade 9 and 10 and then seeing where the wind takes me. I will probably never teach (because I have no patience for people! I mean I was a totally miserable student) or perform professionally but to be able to accomplish something on my bucket list just for me? That's got to be gold.