St. George’s College (WEEK 1) – Day #01

Date for Entry: (Monday 19 September 2022)

Actual Date of Online Entry: (Wednesday 5 October 2022)

Dear Diary,

    Today was my first day being an OJT trainee at St. George’s College. Daddy and I left the house at 6:45 in the morning and took a bus on the bus route to Barataria. I entered the compound at exactly 7:25 by security. Coming down the road to the school, I was worried because I forgot my identification card at home. 

    The lobby area was the corridor entering the administrative area and I met two other new persons come in that day. We got to see the morning assembly gather around the school. It was a completely different experience than Hillview’s morning assembly. This assembly was short and interesting. Many students sang and played different instruments.

    When the assembly was over, I waited and waited. The boy and girl with me had already met their supervisors and went on with them. Sometime after half nine, I met Miss Roberts. She had come to sign in the office and then took me to rest my bags in the music room.

    Upon entering the music room, it was like heaven. Something I wished Hillview could have had. They made it up like a classroom, with instruments and a really beautiful piano. I was not sure if they had a steelband.

    We had to leave the music room because there was a function to start in the hall soon and Miss Roberts had to wait with the students who had to perform. The national anthem was done, and a vocal piece was done by two girls at the end. The college song was also performed at the end of that function. I stood from the chairs they gave us and waited extremely patiently to hear what it would sound like.

    When it was over, I was amazed. I liked the melody a lot. I knew it was a different school altogether but the song comforted me. I began to wonder if there was a score for it. Unfortunately, just like Hillview and Vessigny, Miss Roberts told me that the school did not have the melody notated.

    On the other hand, Miss Roberts did manage to show me from her computer what she had “tried to write it out” over the summer vacation for the COVID-19 period. I went quickly to see what she did and I was happy because it was a good start to having something on paper. We had some technical difficulties when the computer spoiled the work she did.

    I decided to mentally plan over the entire college song as if it was to be a steelpan arrangement because it would be easy to write it out when I got back home. All day I thought of the rhythmic structure for the middle and back of the frontline pans.

    I told Miss Roberts that I would not disturb the notation that she worked so hard to do. I wanted to do my personal version before I ended up spoiling what she did. Some minutes after half-eight that night, I was able to complete the entire arrangement. A lot of gladness came to me. Miss Roberts messaged me back and she said that it was good enough for the steelband to use.

 

Link(s):

• College Song Recording. ** [For Request by Email.]
• St. George’s College Song – Journal Entry Link.

Daryl Zion M. Ali

(7:25am – 2:37pm)