I had been having these freaky dreams that left me wound up and unsettled. The other day when I was chatting with friends on MSN I even joked that I should stop and go practise my violin or I'll dream that the examiner is a monster who wants to eat me up. How was I to know that it would, sheesh, be worse than my imaginary nightmare?
The day started pretty all right--I was able to calm myself after a pretty lousy lesson the night before. I had told my teacher and accompanist that the exam would be 3.50pm and the teacher told me to get there at 3.00pm to warm up. Just when I was about to set off, I started to feel something was amiss, and took another look at the applicant sheet and realised that it should be 3.15pm! It was like, aarggh, when will I stop making stupid freaking #$%@ mistakes like that?!
When I got there, my teacher told me the accompanist is rushing there and if she can't make it, he will need to ask someone to stand in for her. I was panicking already and couldn't stop shaking even when I was practising in the studio alone. 5 minutes before the exam, I went to register with the staff just outside the exam studio when a small crowd of chattering people descended on us from nowhere and started introducing this Morris guy around. I was like, uh-oh, this name sounds suspiciously familiar and faintly of authority. Then, I remembered: he's the guy who signs our ABRSM certificates! The happy people then started talking about him observing the examination and asked who the next candidate was (that would be me) and that's when I started to unravel.
I hurried back into the practice studio and almost wailed at my teacher that they are putting an observer in the room. He was quite nonchalant and said, it's OK, it's not like they know who you are etc, and I said, yeah, but I know who he is! I told him how I've seen his name on my certs and he gave this blank look people have when something bad slowly dawns on them but he quickly recovered and tried to calm me down which was, by then, useless.
All I can say was that I was horrified by my own playing. My bow was shaking so badly that it was painful to hear (and from their perspective, to watch) and I even contemplated stopping the whole thing before I embarrassed myself even further.
I didn't feel too good about this whole exam thing because of the niggling feeling that we were underprepared this time round. I was prepared to flunk, even though I badly wanted to pass. But what I didn't expect was flunking in front of the Board's head honcho. It was like wow, seriously, it cannot get worse than this. Why, why, why? Even 4D is easier to strike, if you ask me. Just thinking about it gives me a slight tummy ache. :( My only consolation is that I can stop all the practising for now and give my sore fingers a break. The dented self-confidence will take a while longer to recover, I suspect.
No comments:
Post a Comment