I've always considered myself a fairly responsible and trustworthy person--i'm not usually late, i don't forget commitments, i take care of conflicts--but apparently my professor feels differently. Now, because I feel this way about myself, I react very negatively to lectures from said professor about my poor-decision making skills, especially when it is an obvious misunderstanding. I agreed to play in the orchestra concerts on Dec 6th and 8th, only to find out the next week that the 6th is also the night of our russian folk orchestra concert. Now, even though the RFO is a non-SOM group, I have been playing with them for three semesters and owe more responsibility to Victor than I do to the orchestra. Nevertheless, I have agreed to play these concerts, and they are low on trombones so my backing out would surely cause trouble. It's most likely that I can do both...the RFO gig is the CREECA christmas party and can be scheduled for earlier in the evening, which I told Bill and said that it would work out, I just had to confirm with Victor. So he angers me for jumping to conclusions and assuming that my doubts were an automatic failure to be responsible. This is on top of the fact that he just put me on the bass trombone part without asking---and hmm, let's see, if I remember correctly, we had a conversation about this way back when, oh yes, and I told Bill that I love playing bass but I am originally a tenor player. This means if he needs a bass player he should ask me, not just assume that I should do it ("because I have a horn"). I don't mind, just let me know! I'm not likely to say no, but I appreciate being consulted about which instrument I have to bring. He's done the same thing for some trombone choir stuff...which means at our concert in december I'm going to have to haul two (2) trombones up to the capital, warm up two (2) horns, and figure out logistics of placing and storing these two (2) horns. And then I again have to haul back two (2) horns to humanities. If I played the flute or something, that'd be fine. Dandy. No worries about tired hands or stessed tendons, easy. So he damn well better give one of my horns (and it's going to be Bernard 'cause there ain't no way I'm carrying his heavy ass half a mile) a ride to the concert. Well, anyway, he's just so adept at pissing me off. I'm not sure what I'm going to do to stay sane for the next three semesters. Maybe I'll take my out jury one semester early....

My basic concern here is:
It would be extremely easy for me to get out of the RFO concert. Victor's a pussycat...he has another contrabass player who is pretty solid on his notes and it's not like I'm all that great. But i don't want to back out. As long as I've been taking responsibility for my own shit, running into a conflict has meant that I give in to the commitment I'm more afraid of breaking rather than the one that is most important to me. And I always feel terrible about it. Well, learn from your mistakes! I don't want to give in this time. I will feel much better about my capability to be a functioning and responsible adult-type person.