Music and Scientific Progress

I’ve discovered that I prefer take-at-school finals to take home finals. I’d rather have the compressed stress of a few hours of testing with a definite start and end time than the elongated discomfort of an all day (or three day) take-home exam.

I had my first regularly scheduled final exam this week. After a Monday of studying Business Associations, I spent four hours on Tuesday morning writing as much about partnership law, fiduciary duties, and corporate law as I could come up with. I don’t think the end result was very good; I just hope it was enough. While I enjoyed the class and felt like I understood the legal reasoning, I don’t think I did very well on applying the law to the facts given in the final.

But at least it only lasted four hours.

Tuesday night was much more enjoyable. I was invited to join a friend for some respite from school and studying at a Tallis Scholars concert in Newport News. The Tallis Scholars sing Renaissance choral music – no instruments or microphones, just ten people singing on stage and absolutely filling the concert hall with pitch perfect music. It was beautiful.

Though I feel such music should, as a general rule, be heard in a concert hall or a church, YouTube works in a pinch. Click here to listen to Vigilate, by William Byrd.

I spent the rest of the week researching for my supervising professor. He asked me to research organ (as in kidneys and hearts, not musical instruments) donation  and alternative reproduction technologies (such as in vitro fertilization). This led me on a nice tangent into 3D printing, which has expanded to the realm of printing human tissue. One of the major companies working on organic 3D printing uses “Bioink”, an substance made out of living cells and support material (if I remember correctly). That term made me smile; to paraphrase a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon, “Scientific progress goes Bioink.”

On Saturday I was treated to another concert, this time at the Williamsburg Community Chapel . Their Christmas concert was performed with a lot of heart and enthusiasm. It struck me as halfway between the Lawrence Welk show and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Not something I’d go to every year, but a nice evening out after a week of staring at my computer.

The week ended on another musical note: the ward choir Christmas program. Our performance made me realize how quickly this semester has gone by. We started practicing Christmas songs in August; now all of a sudden the program is done and the semester is nearly over.

In fact, there are three school days left: one for six more hours of research, one for studying Trusts & Estates, and one for taking my last exam – which will happily only last three hours.

On the Impossibility of Finding a Familiar Face in a Dark and Crowded Street

Fireworks framing the roof of the magazine.

This post might also be titled “On the Ease of Watching Fireworks After the Leaves Have Fallen Off the Trees.”

Or, as I originally intended, “On the Evolution of Panic.”

I’m speaking here of academic panic – the experience of having a big paper or project to work on all semester and procrastinating until the mounting pressure and shrinking time impel you to get it done.

The grade for my Public International Law class is based on a 30 page “major academic paper” (my professor’s description). In law school, that means lots of research and citations to authoritative (or at least trustworthy) sources. I made some progress on my paper through the semester – mostly because we had due dates for our topic, outline, and rough draft –but I still had a lot to finish this week before it came due at 5 pm on Friday.

As I slogged through it, I traced the evolution of my emotional reactions to working on it:

• For most of the semester, my attitude was best exemplified by a James C. Christensen painting titled “Lawrence Pretended Not to Notice that a Bear Had Become Attached to his Coattail.”
• On Monday, that feeling changed to the sort of feeling Harry Potter had in The Goblet of Fire when he was desperately trying to find a way to breathe under water for an hour.
• On Tuesday, I thought seriously for the first time about the possibility of failing the class. But, I decided I preferred grinding out a mediocre paper to outright failure, which was some comfort. This stage also felt a bit like Harry Potter, specifically when he decides he’d rather face a dragon than give up and hide in the Muggle world (also in The Goblet of Fire).
• On Wednesday, I was a bit numb. About 1:30 am I paused to decide how long to stay up. At that point I wasn’t quite halfway done. I worked for two more hours before I ran out of steam.
• On Thursday I felt calmer; I’d gotten far enough that I felt reasonably certain I would not fail the class. About 4:30 am I decided to get a few hours of sleep before finishing.
• On Friday, I reached the “Never again!” stage. After an achingly long time cleaning up my citations and footnotes, I uploaded my paper to the school website, printed a copy, and drove to school to slip the copy under an office door.

At that point I was wound too tightly to feel relieved. And I discovered it is very hard to go to bed at midnight after a week of staying up until 2:30 or 4:30 am, even with only 4 hours of sleep the night before.

But my paper was done.

My weekend was much more enjoyable. I went to help with the stake’s monthly Bishop’s Storehouse delivery, I watched It’s a Wonderful Life, and I went to the Grand Illumination – Colonial Williamsburg’s official Christmas season kickoff.

The Grand Illumination is what prompted the title of this post. I knew some members of my ward were congregating in the same general area to watch the events, but I never managed to find anyone I know. As I wandered around the crowd, I met only dark (albeit friendly) shadows also milling about, watching the Fife & Drum Band, huddling around the fire baskets on five-foot poles, or waiting for the fireworks to start.

The pinwheel.
Huzzah!

They Grand Illumination program includes music and other events, but I just went to watch the fireworks finale. And I have never seen fireworks like these – they weren’t imposing and impressive like the typical 4th of July fare, they were just fun and showy and sparkly and celebratory. They were the firework equivalent of a 5-year-old’s Christmas Eve excitement.

I watched the show from in front of the magazine, which was a great place to be. A ways off on my left I could hear more fireworks going off at the Colonial Capital. A ways off to my right I could hear even more fireworks going off at the Governor’s Palace. The show right in front of me was so close it was almost on top of us. The crowd was perfectly responsive:

*first explosion* = “Gasp!” (with a communal jump of surprise)

*BANG!* = “Ooh!”  . . . *BOOM!* = “Ah!” . . . *BANG* = "Ooh!" . . . *BOOM* = "Ah!"

*long sequence of brilliant flashes and showers of light* . . . “HUZZAH!”

(Ok, I didn’t actually hear a “huzzah,” but that was the general spirit of the reaction.)

The fireworks went off right around the magazine, allowing some of the sparks to tumble cheerfully down the guardhouse roof. Some of the fireworks looked like the classic Christmas Star of folklore, a bright shining light with a long tail. The pinwheel was a bit hit. The evening ended with the Fife & Drum Band’s customary march down DOG Street.

It was great.

Maybe next year I’ll bring hot cocoa.

That little white speck in the background
is the full moon.

Fire baskets on poles: not as warm
as fire barrels, but much more
colonial and festive.

The only time traffic backs up in
Williamsburg is after a big event at the Colony.