Day 32: "Full & Exciting" Mondays

It so happens that I have 8 out of my 14 contact hours on Mondays. It's not as bad as it sounds though; 3 of those are musical, and these are all very positive activities. Anyhow, this is what my Mondays look like:

What went well? 

1. Started the morning off with a loving kindness group meditation.
2. Music students got offered free tickets to see baritone Gerald Finley sing Schubert's Winterreise song cycle tomorrow night, so I grabbed the opportunity and am going with two friends. Really looking forward to it.
3. Met my new singing teacher, and had a really good lesson. She is excellent.
4. Classes today were all really good. Especially Intro Buddhism, as always, and Sociology of Education (even for a 3-hour-long class!).
5. My laptop battery lasted just long enough to get me through to the end of my classes with 6 minutes left.
6. Started planning my spring break road trip with a friend. It's looking promising so far! We're thinking of going down the East coast (by rental car or buses), possibly including Washington DC, Virginia, national parks in North Carolina & South Carolina, & finishing in Florida and probably flying back.

What did I learn?

• I need to do more than breathe low when singing - I need to start engaging the upper back and really expanding the rib cage. This was actually a bit of a game-changing insight for me, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where it takes my technique.
• We were discussing Durkheim's seemingly contradictory statement re. societal norms and socialisation: "Liberty is the daughter of authority". It is somewhat paradoxical, and I think that we came to a consensus that it may not be true freedom if people are always operating within a framework of learned cultural norms that they may not be able to transcend, the liberal harm principle also comes into this because after all, you cannot be truly free if you don't have the security that you and other people have been socialised into basic norms like not killing...after all, how could you really achieve the full potential of freedom you fear for your safety?
• My intro Buddhism professor said that if you tell stories about the past, and say something like, "I was such a nerd back then!", that's really just humblebragging because it implies that you're so much better now! I had never thought about it that way before.