When I came to the university, I thought I was totally prepared for college life. I was a little scared because it was a completely new experience, but I felt I had a good background-especially in writing. I knew my direction in life; I wanted to be a music major (that hasn’t changed). I had the background in music too. I took choir all three years in high school. I took AP Music Theory, Music Appreciation and Percussion my senior year. I went to State for Solo and Ensemble my senior year, so needless to say, I felt very confident in my ability.

Then I came to college. I already knew the music theory language, so that and choir were cake classes. But, sight-singing and ear training was a completely different story. I never had to write a paper for this class, but I did have to learn the language. The professors here used a completely different language than what I learned in high school. It was very difficult to show the professor that I knew what he was teaching because I didn’t know. I had to make up the language for part of the time, but he obviously knew that I did not know my solfege.

The only other classes I took my first year in high school were honors courses, English and math. Math has always been a different language to me, but I don’t think that my math situation doesn’t really apply to Barthomae. For most of my other classes, I didn’t have to write papers. I had to write two vocal critiques, but I knew that language already, and the language of music has many acceptable choices of vocabulary.

My first English class was Intro. to Fiction. This was my first frustrating experience with inventing the university. I turned in simple papers. I wasn’t required to do research, but I had to turn in the equivalent of reading responses. I thought I was doing great on my papers. I checked grammar, syntax, and transitions, and I thought my ideas were solid (partly because I had studied most of those stories in high school). I’m not saying that I received bad grades on my paper, but I was not getting my expected scores. And, I could not figure out what I was doing wrong! I even received a paper with an A-. That’s not necessarily a bad grade, but there was not a mark on the page! As far as I knew, I didn’t do anything wrong, but I couldn’t get a perfect score.

Then I had my Honors English class. Again, I did well in the class, but the process of discovering how to invent the university (or this branch of it) kicked my butt. I could not understand how to get the larger picture into my papers or how to write outside of the typical five-paragraph essay. In fact, as you can see from this blog, I’m still in the mindset of the five-paragraph essay. I was able to discover how to avoid the five-paragraphs in our more difficult papers, but the “So what?” of my papers, I could not get. I could summarize and organize, but I did not know how to find the connections. I probably still don’t know how to do that. But, by the end of that composition class, I had been through that process three different times, and I found out a little more about inventing the university each time I wrote.