Nihilism in the Choir*

As my readers know, the Finneytown Chorale received a 1 in class AA at contest last weekend. This means that we qualified to move on to state contest. After a vote, we decided that we'd try it. Unfortunately, today we learned that scheduling conflicts would make it nearly impossible to go on any of the four possible contest days (well we could still actually fit in two places, but our teacher doesn't seem to be trying very hard). Because of this, anarchy and nihilism will reign in the choir.

Anarchy was already a problem. My teacher has never demanded much respect from the students, so he hasn't gotten nearly as much as he would like. Surprise, surprise. But I won't rail against Mr. McKee's classroom "control" at this time. I won't spend much time describing anarchy since I've given some description in person to my readers in the past. I'm just sick and tired of non-stop chatter and nonsense. People talk while other people talk about why we shouldn't be talking all the time. It's immensely aggravating. It's not like we're the concert choir, full of people who just needed another credit. We're all talented musicians, and an extremely high percentage of us are honors kids and "good students."

Now that we're not going to contest, we have nothing to work towards (as some people see it). This is where the nihilism comes in. With no purpose/goal to work towards, there's no reason for the hooligans not to cause mayhem. Some of my classmates and I would consider it a good enough goal to simply create beautiful music and to share this music with our family and friends. However, about half of the problematic people are seniors with severe cases of senioritis. They really don't care about anything school-related at this point, even if that means being inconsiderate towards others. My teacher might have us do this awesome but incredibly complicated Eric Whitaker piece, and maybe that will inspire some to actually work. I have my doubts.

A few of my friends and I are actually considering how nice it might be to have a study hall fourth bell with AP exams approaching. I probably won't switch classes, though. I've stuck with it this far, so I might as well finish strong.


*My original title for this post was "Nihilism and Anarchy in the Choir" but "Nihilism in the Choir" sounds like an awesome band name, so I had to leave it that way.