My Anxiety List

    I don't know how it is that time is of such a nature that sometimes it can drag along so slowly while simultaneously rushing along so quickly.
    This is how the winter went for me.  It seemed as if the days of freezing temperatures and snowy, icy pavements and roads and being cold morning to night would never end.
    But the weeks between my last student recital back in December and my next one - which is
today - seemed to rush by too quickly.

      But fortunately everyone's nerves seemed to be fairly at bay  during our rehearsal last Thursday (including mine, probably because I was preoccupied with a certain cinnamon roll at the time.  See post from  3/20/2015) as well as all this week during everyone's last lesson before the recital.  
    And I can say that everyone, thankfully, is off my Anxiety List.
    Which is an actual list.  (Even my anxiety can't function without a list.  See post from  3/7/2014). 
    I organize my teaching year into trimesters, each of which ends with a recital.  The week after each recital is the beginning of a new trimester, at which time everyone will be given their new performance piece for the next recital.  At the beginning of each new trimester I make a list of each student's name and their new piece.  This is my Anxiety List.

    As soon as a student's piece is performance-ready their name is crossed off my Anxiety List. 
    Students consider it special to be the first one crossed off the list, though that honor usually goes to a young student playing an elementary piece, as the more advanced pieces naturally take more time to conquer.

    If, several weeks before the recital, it becomes clear that a student's piece will not be ready by recital time we pull out a review piece and quickly dust it off and polish it up so that it will shine as beautifully as a new piece.

    I started my anxiety list years ago after an experience I once had with an advanced student who let their practicing go until, literally, the last minute. 
    This student was so unprepared that on the afternoon of the recital I scheduled and extra lesson to see if I could somehow miraculously pull a half-way decent performance out of them.  But alas, four hours before the recital they could not play the piece to save their young life. 

    That evening I cringed as the student approached the piano to mutilate their piece, kicking myself for not having taken them out of the recital altogether.
    But low and behold and to my total shock, they played their piece quite decently.
    During our post-recital reception the student's mother informed me that the student came home from their lesson and spent 2 1/2 hours knocking the piece into shape.

    That was probably more practice time than the student had spent on the piece in the previous 4 months.
    Anyway, it was from that hair's-breadth close call that my Anxiety List was born.

    And, paradoxically, having an anxiety list lessens my anxiety as well as the anxiety of my students once they know they are off it. 

    I suppose I should call it my Anti-anxiety list. 8D