Today was like any other Friday; I went to work at the library on my college campus for two hours at 8 am and then had two hours of free time afterwards before choir. The only difference today was that one of my friends and I had decided we wanted to make flashcards for our choral conducting class so we could study all of the music terms our professor had given us in a packet one day in class.
We talked about a multitude of things from class to friends to family to our professors. At one point, we were talking about piano assessments as her main instrument is organ and mine is percussion, though I have taken piano lessons while at college. When she had gone in for her piano assessment at the end of last semester, the first thing the professor who assessed the students said to her was, “Please restore my faith in humanity.” Or at least it was something along those lines.
I had a very similar story from last semester as well. The school had added on a new piano professor as one of the previous piano professors had left the semester before and I ended up having this new professor for my piano lessons. Originally I was in what was called a “duo lesson” which involved another student having their lesson at the same time as me with the same professor. Well, the only problem with that was that this other student was still very much a beginner when it came to the piano even after a semester in piano class, and I was more at the intermediate level. Eventually one of us ended up switching our lesson time to a different time because we were on two separate levels.
When I went into my piano assessment at the end of last semester, the first thing said to me was, “Colleen, please restore our faith in humanity.” Obviously, they had had some not so great assessments that day before I came in. At the end of my assessment they thanked me for restoring their faith in humanity.
Coming back to the point I mean to make, the friend I was making flashcards with this morning, after we both told our story about the piano professors wanting us to restore their faiths in humanity, she said that she has heard nothing but good things about me. And all I could wonder was is this coming from the piano professors or other students? Or perhaps even both?
People like to talk about people all the time, and it can be either good things or bad things. Hearing that someone has heard nothing but good things about me doesn’t really surprise me, but I always worry that someone doesn’t like me for some reason or doesn’t like something I do or even how I do something.
My senior year of high school there was a website that I believe was called “AskFm” in which people could ask others questions or make comments anonymously or not. A handful of my friends and I entertained ourselves by asking each other questions on there, usually not anonymously. Sometime after All-Region tryouts my senior year of high school someone anonymously told me that I was a terrible singer. At that point I started doubting my singing ability even though I was in the only varsity choir out of the four choirs my high school had. This anonymous person told me that I had gotten into the varsity choir only because of seniority and commented that I didn’t even make it past round one of region. I suppose if it were true that people only got into the varsity choir because of seniority then the choir would only have seniors, right? The rest of that year I was so suspicious of everyone in my section and even in the section over. I had no idea who thought I was a terrible singer, but I was so afraid that I really was a terrible singer and tried to stay as quiet as I felt I could be when we sang.
What do people say about us behind our backs? As far as I know, everyone who knows me at college only has good things to say about me, and it scares me a bit because what about the unspoken things my peers don’t like about me? It makes me feel as if I need to be this perfect person with a great personality and sense of humor.
People say so many bad things about people behind their backs and it’s somewhat scary to think that anyone could be saying anything about you to others. So, what are they really saying about me? What are they saying about you?
