I just remembered a moment of overload! It was finals week of my junior year of college - fall semester. I had my piano class final on my last day of school before I was to go home for Christmas break, and this final was VERY important. For my degree, I had to pass four semesters of class piano to move on to my required two semesters of private lessons, but here's the thing - I'm a terrible pianist. Within that week I had closed a show, taken five written exams, prepared a 6-song vocal jury (in four languages) and was dealing with a dog in our house that pooped all over the kitchen floor. When I got into the piano final, I froze. I couldn't play any of the prepared stuff properly - not even scales - but when it came to the sight-reading I did just fine. The only people in the room were my teacher and the head of the Keyboard department, and when Dr. Scott asked me if I had practiced and why was I able to sight-read better than play my prepared stuff, I broke down right then and there, crying and saying "I don't know" over and over again. And we're not just talking about babbling and a couple of tears. We're talking hunched over the keyboard with heaving shrugs kind of sobbing. The head of the Keyboard dept. looked at me with the most incredulous look in her eyes - she wasn't sure what was going on, and neither was I. My teacher - a very stern man who rarely showed any kind of affection for any of his students - patted me on the hand and said, "Well, I don't know why you're going on like this - you passed the exam" and then asked me to leave the room. Ms. Taylor, who'd never seen such a display in a piano jury, walked me out to her office (because I think she thought I was suicidal at that point) and gave me some pictures from the show I had just done the previous weekend. After I calmed down, she gave me a hug and sent me home. I got home and just laid on the bed and bawled until I felt better, packed up my stuff and went home for Christmas.
I've never been so embarrassed in my life.
