08 July, 2007

Bec's Violin Exam

Yesterday Bec took her Grade 3 violin exam, she was totally stressed out by it and I knew that they only thing that would make her fail was her nerves, because to be honest she has practiced and practiced and practiced for it. She was nearly in tears in the car, she was so nervous.
I told her that if she didn't want to do it, then it was fine, it was no good her walking into her exam like she was, but she wanted to do it, so we carried on.

Kathryn (her teacher) went through all her pieces before she went in to the exam room and she sounded really great and I thought it would calm her down when she realised that she was doing it well. Kathryn had a chat with her and told her to just enjoy it and it would all come together.

Unfortunately, I couldn't hear her actual exam as it was in another part of the building, but Kathryn came back and told me that her pieces sounded really good so far. But it was a different story when Bec came out though, she told me that her scales went to pieces and she couldn't do the sight reading because her nerves just got to her. Unfortunately we won't hear if she's passed or not for about another month, sigh...

Personally, I'd like to believe that she has passed and that the examiner will take into account that she was nervous, because lets face it, she really knows her work or her teacher would never have put her in for the exam in the first place, right?

I've told her not to worry, it's not as if it's the end of the world or that this exam is life changing (gently, of course, I wasn't as blunt as that!) So it's the waiting game now, I'm afraid.

2 comments:

Michelle said...

Hi Nichola

When I took my Clarinet exams many moons ago some aspects of it were less than good. I was not a natural musician by any means, but even thought parts of it were less than perfect I still passed.
Also I think we get a bit of a distorted view of how we perform in exams of all kinds and we usually think it was worse than it was.
Fingers crossed but I am sure she will be fine when the results come out.

Anonymous said...

Aww poor thing. It's awful to be that nervous. I really hope she's passed.