kajsa ㅇㅅㅇ

After waking up (getting shaken awoke by my mom cause I missed my alarm) at three AM, Mom did my hair (which is basically a mowhawk of messy buns that are like all interconnected and it looks so cool but it's a pain to do) and I did my makeup (which slayed so hard. Dramatic ombre blue eyeshadow smokey eye with a black, close-lined waterline, pink inner corner and undereye, fake lashes and dramatic eyeliner wing, and then of course silver glitter on the top. Lips are a nice, nude pink color, dramatic blush, and yep). We left the house at like 5:10 to get to the school and leave on the busses at 5:15 (absolutely so stressful). I sat on my own and kind of napped, which was nice, because I was feeling tired and not ready to talk to people yet. Anyways, we made it to the school at around 6:30, immediately changed into costume, and headed to warm-up at 7:30. We were the first to perform, at 8 o' clock. Super hard time slot. Never want to see it again. I will punch it in the face. Blegh. The performance was rocky, but we still killed it. Half of us are pretty much bedridden now because of how sick we were, a good amount of us were lip-syncing because we couldn't sing. Several of our soloists were down on Thursday and were ony barely able to sing on Saturday (it still went surprisingly well thank the stars), and I almost passed out a few times. I thought I'd have to leave the stage because I started overheating about 8 times earlier than I usually do (halfway through our first song. Usually, it happens during our ballad, aka our 4th song). One of our performers' capes came off during the third song, way before we're actually supposed to unsnap them, and it was a whole fiasco. And when we came on stage, we had to go back OFF stage because the announcers had announced us before our band was ready. Thankfully our band came in and was hella professional and started playing some of our pep band songs to keep the crowd occupied. This was probably, by far, our worst technical performance, but our energy was still good, we were still clean, and everything still went pretty okay. My director gave us an A+, which is a first (not cause we're bad or he's mean, but he rarely gives those out. It's basically a Paul Hollywood handshake, and if you don't know what that is I'm disappointed). So we still did good!

...well, okay. This was tough for all of us at my school, because we've been doing so well this season. But what with the performance times and the sickness and all the million technical issues, it was still a pretty good placement. My group (JV) got second in our division and did not make finals, unlike last week. Our treble group got third in their division, and our varsity group also got third in theirs (weird that they placed the varsity groups before finals, but whatever). They're not bad placements, but it just felt like such a way to fall after last week (first place in our JV division and then third in finals). A lot of really good groups were there, though, so we still decently held our ground and did alright, especially considering how sick we all were/are and all the kinks we ran into. Also, someone pulled the fire alarm during daytime awards, and we all had to evacuate just to come back inside lol. Luckily the comp was ahead of time, so we didn't fall behind!

Our varsity group's finals performance was insane. It was their best performance yet. Best energy, cleanest, loudest and quietest (AKA best phrasing and dynamics), and even more extreme extremes. Choral tone was more choral, character voices were more nasal and forward ("ugly", "young", or "whiny"), fortes were fortisimos and pianos were pianisimos. Overall it was super solid, not to mention emotional. This is our second to last comp! We're such a family, all three of our choirs. And even though we don't all know each other personally, we're so connected and so supportive of each other that that doesn't matter. During their ballad, there's this one part where this absolutely incredible girl that I've known forever has this GORGEOUS solo, and the two visual leads (the show is based off the Notebook, so Noah and Allie are the visual roles) slow dance in the front. It was extra emotional this time. The performers were holding each other so tight, foreheads and noses touching. The boy actually started to cry, and they hugged each other at the end of the solo. I literally burst into tears right then, and then she kissed him on the cheek and it was even more beautiful but even more sad. I don't want this to end! I don't want to leave these beautiful shows and connections and people behind. Good thing I have some high school left to go. I was crying all through the rest of their show and about 20 minutes after. Mascara was a disaster and I didn't even care. And then I hugged everyone and cried more. Anyways, it was a really beautiful experience and made me realize that this ISN'T ABOUT WINNING. I knew that before. And I never did it just to win. But... throughout last season and this one, too (undefeated last season, and my group was undefeated in our division until last night), I think I started to get a big head and lose sight of WHY I love competitions. It's not the winning. It's seeing each others' shows and cheering, screaming, crying for each other, being such a tight-knit family that it hurts to let go of it. And it's about cheering for our competition, seeing their incredible shows and being the student section for the schools who don't have one. It's a love thing. (that's actually our show choir program's motto ) It's all about love and connection.

Our varsity group place third in finals. No, it's not grand champs, and no, we didn't place as well as we'd hoped. But we performed better than we ever dreamed.

Lol so. Some of the boys in our show choir made an edit, and it was fine, but like... we figured we could do better (fun and games, ofc). So we filmed our own clips, including one of our director saying "[name} approves this message", sent it to my friend's sister who makes edits, and came out with an absolutely gorgeous edit. We then took them both to my director to determine which was better, but he wouldn't say who won (though he told us he liked ours better) until one of the boys unknowingly and accidentally insulted the director's mom. Oops, right?