Hillsdale Audition

I had several people ask how my audition at Hillsdale College went last weekend, so I thought that I would respond here. (As an aside, I am running a temperature right now, so please excuse me if I make no sense...)

I had a pretty good feeling before last weekend that I would like Hillsdale College. Now, after having seen the campus and met some people there, I would say that "like" is definitely a gross understatement. I LOVED IT!!! All the people from the school were very nice and helpful. All of the guys held doors for me and knew how to be polite in general (their mothers deserve BIG bouquets of flowers), and all of the girls that I talked to were very, very friendly. This is such a stark contrast to any of the schools that I looked at last year, with the exception of UMKC (the people there were quite friendly as well), and it was very refreshing. I didn't get a chance to walk around and explore the campus as much as I would have liked (it was pretty drizzly and gray out last weekend), but I did get a good look around the music building. I must say, it is very lovely. The practice rooms are quite nice! We drove around campus a bit before and after my audition, and I liked everything I saw. The campus is a nice, very manageable size. The town of Hillsdale is also very pretty and quaint, and I'm sure it will be even nicer once the leaves are on the trees and everything is green again.

My audition went about as well as it could have really. Of course there is a laundry list of things that I wish I could do over, but as a whole I felt like everything went really well. After coming out of my ballet audition at IU last year I felt like I wanted to cry and then maybe throw myself off a bridge. It was so nice to come out of this audition with much more positive feelings. After I finished I felt even more excited to go to school at Hillsdale than I did before. The faculty that were present for both my piano and viola auditions were very, very nice and they talked to me a good deal, which was a great relief before auditioning. The head of the music department talked to me the most, and he encouraged me to participate in the dance program at Hillsdale in addition to the music program. Providing that my knee ever gets better, I will certainly be as involved as I can in dance at Hillsdale. Their program looks like it has some neat things to offer!

I'm very, very grateful to finally have found the school for me! I came out of all of my auditions last year feeling like I didn't really fit at any of the schools. After visiting Hillsdale I had a very peaceful feeling, like I could really see myself there. I didn't have any feelings of dread about spending the next four years of my life there, nor any disappointment that it wasn't what I thought it would be. Everything I saw at Hillsdale I liked, and now I'm feeling extremely excited to be there next fall! I'm grateful that God interrupted my plans this year and sent me down a different road. I'm so excited for the fall! :)