Midterms Almost Done!

Yesterday a bunch of us from last fall's music theory class, and a bunch of my Chamber Choir, went uptown to see my favorite teacher ever's composition be played in a concert. For the record, I love Sophocles Papavasilopoulos. And I love Sophocle's music.
But the other pieces were very...interpretive. I think I liked maybe 2 songs (including Sophocles') out of the whole concert, 6 songs. They were so atonal and experimental...and dissonant. Don't get me wrong; I love my Stravinsky, and Ives is sometimes a nice thing to crunch on...but there's something very different about what I heard yesterday and those composers.
For instance, Stravinsky is dissonant. And dissonant can be very good. But when I listen to Stravinsky, though there's a lot of stuff going on that doesn't necessarily make sense, I still feel like dear old Igor is holding me in a safety net while I am swimming in mild confusion. I feel like I can still grasp the intent; the theme, and direction, is recognizable. But what I heard yesterday...I didn't feel safe. I felt confused. I felt like there was no real direction. I felt like it was just upsetting chaos that really has no rhyme, reason, purpose. I feel like those composers are trying too hard to be deep, that they're taking music and sound to frivolousness. And frivolousness can be good, too. But this "music"? It seemed to me to be purely masturbatory.
The last song had no conductor (to our horror), and the ensemble stood and played random notes, and walked around....and started babbling! My group and I, unfortunately, couldn't contain our giggles very well. People scoffed.
Sophocles had a great song, though. Beautiful. Conceptual. Reasonable.

Tonight Stern paid for me (and about 30 other Stenies) to go eat at this très ritzy place in the Village, Jane Restaurant, so we could listen to a drunken (no joke) alumn talk about his successes and early retirement and advise us about how to become as successful as him in 20 years time. It was an interesting night where I held my tongue about my ambitions towards diplomacy and the Peace Corp (gasp!) and accidentally got in a debate with some Republican about capitalism.
Luckily, I sat next to my friend Mariam and we oggled the food most of the night. Stern overfeeds us on their tab. We had a magnificent 5-course meal: Shrimp pizza, bread, calamari w/ chutney, gnocchi, scottish salmon with brussel sprouts, and a banana brulée that made me believe I had never lived before (not to mention the free pomegranite lemonade). Mariam and I hobbled all the way home, moaning about how much we overate and felt sick to the core. I'm still nursing a bulging gullet.

On an upside, I am officially passing all of my classes (or at least 60% of them...I don't know about 2 of my grades). I got a high mark on my marketing case study, an average B on my global economics midterm, and a slightly-above-average mark on my accounting midterm! French I'm assuming I did alright on my midterm.
I took the Business Law midterm today. 123 points. 100 questions. NOT CONCEPTUAL AT ALL! Basically, the test was seeing whether or not you had done the homework and gone to classes...each question was something along the lines of, "based on a class case we worked on about a dance studio, true or false blah blah?" Listen, professors: I am not paying you to see if I go to your classes. I am. TEST ME ON WHAT I STUDIED! Not on what I did! JESUS!