Ready, set, school.

It seems every year the "Back to School" sale at Staples starts a week earlier than it had the last. The first time I heard such an announcement on NPR was sometime - I kid you not - in late July. Hearing the commercial was mildly annoying to me, who was trying to enjoy a long summer break between the end of my job in Concord and the beginning of grad school in New Haven.

But as I write today the spectre of early September looms, which means that those "Back to School" specials, and my sense that my return to school is imminent, are suddenly appropriate.

What does "back to school" mean at Yale's Institute of Sacred Music? From the name of the place one might guess that it was some combination of entrance exams and hymn singing, but so far I've been exempted from and not exposed to those aspects of the curriculum. I did, however, attend a "Bistro" last night at the Divinity School, at which was served some of the best food I've eaten in recent memory, as well as free drinks for us ~100 ISMers. From the look of the rest of the Orientation Week's schedule, it seems like fine wining and dining are the first through seventh courses in the official back to school plan.

At last I got to hang out with all of the students in the department (minus Kevin, who was in Boston watching the Sox play the Bluejays at Fenway - an event which would have upped Kevin's "coolness quotient" considerably, were he not there with his parents who, being from Canada, were cheering wildly for the Bluejays). As a group they seem very capable and self-deprecating. As the only new student who has studied conducting before at the graduate level before (the others are just beginning their MM degrees as I begin my MMA/DMA) I will be interested to see how we all take to the instruction that's headed our way in large amounts.

In lieu of a lengthy description of the curriculum, let me instead give you some quick facts about the life of a conductor before I bid you adieu for the time being:

-Number of hours singing in ensembles per week: 16
-Number of pages in Simon Carrington's Syllabus: 370
-A Yale education: priceless

-Nails