Chai Tea Latte, Anyone?

Week Nine - In the upper floor of a university hall, adjacent to a major stairwell, lay a small collection of seats and tables. This is an area is perfect for a moments rest between classes, a short period of study, or a small gathering of students partaking in a noon lunch.

This week’s worth of notes begin early in the morning at the start of the week. Around 7a.m., before most college departments begin their classes or even begin to venture into productivity, the music hall is alive with sound. In this case, I’m seated in my regular alcove position, but joining me is a section of trumpet players. Their professor, who usually leads them in morning warm-up each weekday, is running late. Despite his absence, these students choose not to forfeit this time for relaxation, but instead to carry on business as usual, holding their own warm-up in their professor’s absence. This event, should the professor had been their, is usually held in one of the various practice rooms of the music hall. However, as no one was around to unlock the one of these rooms, the trumpet players instead held their practice in the open upstairs area of the hall. Naturally, trumpets are very loud instruments, yet this practice brought no disturbance to those in the hall, as most likely they had become accustom to hearing practice tones at all hours of the day.

During the practice, these students exhibited concentration fare exceeding that which I had seen of their peers in other departments of similar age. This concentration held up roughly until the point in which their professor finally entered the music hall. To my surprise, the professor did not immediately jump into critiquing the section of trumpet players, but instead he voiced his own tiredness, and offered to go buy Starbucks coffee for the section. As I was the only one sitting up in the alcove besides the section at the time, I was also offered Starbucks. If anything could be taken from this moment, it could be said that the professor was very generous, and that the majority of trumpet players in this section enjoy chai tea lattes as opposed to actual coffee.

When the professor had left to retrieve the coffee, the trumpet players continued to hold their practice devoid of distractions or unnecessary conversation. When the professor had finally returned, he held the group for approximately ten minutes to offer critiques on their last practice piece of music, before releasing them to go off to their next classes.

The remaining few hours I spent in the music hall offered little notable interactions, as it would seem that foot traffic and lingering does not increase to a substantial amount in that area until around 10a.m.