There was one thing I forgot to include in the last blog covering my senior year at CMU. I wrote an untitled classical piece for guitar and almost immediately recorded it in the fall (“Etude in E“).

At the end of my junior year, while registering for my senior year, I realized I needed two more credits to graduate (it didn’t matter what course I took). I could have taken something technical or a foreign language or even an art class, but I selected Harmony I as my free elective (3 credits). It is my one and only college music class and is usually taken by music majors in their freshman or sophomore year.

My thinking was that it shouldn’t take up too much of my bandwidth, was likely to be fun, and I was sure to learn SOMETHING. I was correct on all three expectations. (The TA was hot too. I’ll tell that story another time.)

As you’d image, I was the only upperclassman and the only engineering student in the class and I had a free hour immediately after the class to do the homework, so it never came home with me.

You may or may not know this, but I never write with a pencil (it stains my left hand), but the instructor and the TA wanted the homework to be done with pencil. Since I did the homework on campus between classes and it was pretty straightforward, I just did it in pen.

After being asked to use a pencil three times, the instructor threatened not to grade the next one if I did it in pen…so I did it in crayon.

It was very hard to read and she didn’t think it was funny.

I had to resubmit the assignment in pencil, admit to being a jerk and agree to do future homework assignments in pencil (although I may have written them with my right hand). It was a worthwhile concession, I LIKED this class.