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Michelle Pan
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Posts by Michelle Pan
State Champions? I think so!
Nov 11th
Category: AWESOME
The Dripping Springs Tiger Band has captured state! Yes folks, we are the 2009 UIL 4A Marching Band State Champions!
Mr. Lancaster’s first words to us on Wednesday morning were, “I don’t think you fully understand the magnitude of what happened last night.” He’s right… I didn’t get what was going on on Tuesday night and it’s still slowly sinking in for me (and I’m sure for all the other bandies as well). Tuesday went by in a blur. It started off as a normal school day. We got to school at 6:45 in the morning, took out our equipment and walked to the stadium for an hour and twenty minutes of morning practice. Except then, at 9:00, we didn’t go to school. We loaded the trailers and the buses and headed off to the state marching contest in San Antonio! When we were driving off, it seemed like the whole entire school was lined up on the side of Tiger Lane to send us off! It was so sweet 
When we got to the Alamodome, we unloaded, got dressed, and moved to warm-up for prelims. I felt like it was the brightest day ever! I could barely keep my eyes open for more than a minute without being blinded by the sun! The prelims performance went well and we came out second. Of course, we were only told by the directors that we placed within the top five. Now that I look back, we were on such a fine line that night before finals. When we figured out that we were second in prelims, we automatically assumed that we were beat by Poteet (that assumption turned out to be incorrect). The ironic thing was, we were scheduled to perform right after them. We watched all eight minutes of Poteet’s show on the TV screen from the entrance tunnel and by the time our turn came around we were ready to go.
Coming out of finals, we all had a feeling that something great had just been accomplished. I remember Mr. Lancaster saying after the performance that be believed that the DSHS band would one day become state champions. Maybe not this year, maybe it’ll be when you’ve all graduated, but it will happen. Who knew it would happen so soon?
So How’s Band Going for You?
Aug 30th
My most frequently asked question. Actually, I take that back, my second most frequently asked question, second only to “Michelle, what time is it?”
The first week of school is always interesting. Band rehearsals get cut down from 3 hours to 1 hour and 20 minutes in the morning, and this year, we’re staying inside during first period instead of going back outside and marching in the heat. That way, we can have a designated amount of time each day to work on music. Plus it gives us girls about 30 extra minutes to change. How can you not love that? Last week we cleaned the opener and the ballad (which, I’m proud to say, we have completely learned) for the first football game on Friday! We are now getting ready to start learning the closer, which I think already has 18 sets of drill.
Speaking of our very first football game… let me tell you how that went last Friday. We get ready to go on the field for the half-time performance and after a little confusion we manage to get to the opening set. Megan starts us off and we’re doing great until we get to chart 12. That’s when I (and I’m sure most of the band) realized that the left side of the band was going at one tempo and the right side was… well, not with the left side. Fortunately we managed to pull it together in the next couple of sets and finish marching the show, but I have to say, it was not one of our best performances. The good thing is that that was our first football game and we still have an entire season to fix the problem spots in the show. Hopefully, with some hard work, everything will start to improve
So I was reading Allie’s post before me and I thought it would be appropriate to introduce my flutes as well. My marching flute is Beth (get it? Mick and Beth… any Moonlight fans?) and my concert flute is named Coraline (pronounced Coralene, also from Moonlight). Allie and I also have names for our cars and phones and iPods and just about anything else that you can stick a name to, but I won’t get into that.
Hope everyone’s doing well and I’ll see you guys later!
Band Camp, Sleep, and a Four-Hour Morning Rehearsal
Aug 13th
Yes! I’m finally in my account! I attempted six or seven times (each with a different password) to login before I realized that I had my username wrong. Go figure.
Anyway, we just got back from band camp last week, and after a whole entire weekend of sleep, we were back outside marching on the parking lot this morning at 7:00 am! Talk about a quick turnaround! Band camp was abnormally hot this year and our rehearsals were extended by thirty minutes. In all, I think we spent eight hours a day rehearsing. It sounds like a lot (and it was), but the week flew by way faster than I expected. We got a lot accomplished, including 12 sets of drill marching and playing! I don’t remember ever getting that far at band camp during the years I have been in high school, so that was really impressive. And the best part is, the sets stuck with most of us during our weekend of sleep! When we came back this morning we were able to run the chunk a couple of times and move on to learn more drill! Speaking of which, during our four hour rehearsal this morning we put on five more sets of drill, which brings us to a grand total of 17 sets! That’s more than half of the opener already on the field!
We have two more weeks of rehearsals before school starts, so hopefully we’ll be able to get the opener and the ballad on the field by then!
Chapter 8: Africa and Islam
Oct 27th
** Please ignore the totally irrelevant title. Michelle is not good with titles and World Area Studies happens to be what she’s study for right now, so “Africa and Islam” is the best she can do. **
As Mr. Larson kindly pointed out to us, Capital City was the last time someone posted a blog on here, and let me tell you, a LOT has happened since then! Like… WESTLAKE marching festival. We swept captions and came in 1st place in our division, as well as 3rd overall going into finals (beating all of the 5A bands except Cedar Park and Bowie)! We came out 4th at the end of finals (Round Rock caught up), but it was still an amazing day! That was probably one of the most memorable contests I’ve been to, because we did so well, and because of this:
Mr. Woods: “We’re going to go into the stands to watch some bands perform.” *looks around* “Any questions?”
Connor Tester: “You wanna fight?”
Mr. Woods: “You wanna lose?”
Haha! Enough said. So anyway, we had the weekend after Westlake off because of UIL on the following Monday. I could have (and probably should have) used those two days to catch up on some sleep, but I went to the Austin Film Festival instead. They happened to have a panel for the movie Twilight that day, which was totally meant to be, if you ask me.
Anyway, this past week has been really tiring for everybody. It’s the second to last week of the 2008 marching season and the weekly schedule got flipped, switched, and tossed around. Like I said, we had UIL on Monday, which pushed our Monday-night rehearsals to Tuesday (hmm… would that make them Tuesday-night rehearsals instead?), which meant that we had to stay after for two days this week, plus sectionals. And this weekend we have USSBA State somewhere around San Antonio, two-hour bus ride… whoo! We’ve been working on cleaning the show to make it the best we can be for USSBA and Centennial next weekend. Apparently Poteet (the band who won state last year) is supposed to be there and everyone’s excited to see how we rank against them next week!
This is What I Do on Monday Nights Since We Don’t Have Tuesday Morning Rehearsals
Sep 30th
I am proud to annouce that, as of today (Monday, September 29, 2008), we have officially finished learning all of the drill for the show! All 92 sets of it!
Of course, a ton of cleaning has to be done before we can actually perform it at a game or contest! I’m willing to bet money that the last couple of sets are a blur of cloudy-greyness in half of the band’s minds, mine included. I’ll admit, the drill moves much faster this year and has crazy direction changes here and there, which means you’ve got to be 100% focused when learning sets or else it all goes out the window the next rehearsal. Last Monday night, we attempted to learn a few sets of the closer on the actual football field, without the handy-dandy yellow and orange dots. In my mind, that was not a very clever thing to do, but we only had so much time left, so it was our only option. Let me just say that you don’t truly appreciate the yellow dots on the parking lot until you’ve had to learn drill without them!
This past Saturday was the USSBA contest at Hendrickson, aka our first contest! We preformed the Opener, the Overture, Dada, and about half of the Closer. For a first contest, I thought we did pretty good. I’m just happy we didn’t get run over by a tornado again! I’m sure you’ve all heard that we came in second place in our division. Connally, who came in first, beat us (and everybody else) by a good number of points. 
But, like I said, it’s only the first contest, we definitely have a good chance of improving and coming out strong in the end!
Luling has good BBQ and Watermelons
Aug 30th
Yesterday was our first football game of the year! Whoo! And actually, it was the sophomore class’s first first football game since we got stuck in that tornado at Hutto last year. Gonzales is a little town two hours from DS out in the middle of nowhere. The thing I found interesting was the fact that their school colors seemed to be… orange and black. Halloween all year round, *sarcasm*yay Apaches!*sarcasm*
Anyway, at 3:09 pm yesterday all the band kids skipped 7th period and went to the band hall to get ready for the two-hour trip to Gonzales. We packed our stuff, loaded the trailer, got dressed in our (informal) uniforms, and listened to Mr. Lancaster give his speech about football game procedures. I must say, I prefer the polo shirts this year over the ones last year. Khaki on maroon is so much better than khaki on off-white/tan/cream. The two-hour bus ride to Gonzales was long and interesting. Our bus driver has Kiss FM on and Erin had a great time singing along to just about every single song they played. Allie and I even got her on video, it’s so going up on Facebook!
When we got to Gonzales and filed into the stands we went through the regular list of songs for the beginning of each football game. School song, fight song, star-spangled banner, etc. Then the game started, and just to save you from the terrifying suspense you’re going though (HA!) I’m just going to tell you that our team won in the end.
Half-time was our time to shine! We had been rehearsing for about a month and this was our first real public performance! We got to preform for a crowd of orange-wearing people (h-a-l-l-o-w-e-e-n) on a real grass field… which had a lot of dips and holes in it. I probably fell into every single one of them while marching last night, but we all got through the show! It was a great night, especially the stands tunes when we got back in the stands, those were fun!
We didn’t get back until midnight, and you could tell that everyone just wanted to go home and collapse on their beds, which I did when I got home 
I’m Not Totally Behind… Yet
Aug 24th
I’m blogging, I’m blogging, look Mr. Larson, I’m blogging! So I totally forgot that the whole blogging-ness was supposed to go on after band camp as well. Oops, my bad. Which is my excuse for why I haven’t been, uh, blogging. I’ll just leave it at that.
But to be honest, when I got home from band camp, I sat down on a couch and attempted to read Breaking Dawn and found myself asleep within 10 minutes. Then I woke up for dinner, and then I went back to sleep. And that’s basically how the weekend after camp went for me as well. Sleep, eat, sleep, sleep, eat, sleep… until we had to be back at school for rehearsals again on Monday morning. The week after band camp, we had rehearsals from 8-11am and 1-3pm and this week we had 6-9pm rehearsals, which means we get most of the day off! Or, if you’re like me, a couple hours… since I didn’t wake up until noon most of the time.
During our rehearsals, we’ve been working on putting the drill together for our show. At the end of Wednesday night’s rehearsal, we had managed to get the whole Opener on, plus 5 sets of the Overture! That’s comes to 35 sets total, now that’s impressive! Of course, it’s all very rough right now, and we’ll need tons of cleaning time before we can let the public see it, but nevertheless, it’s still 35 sets! I’ll admit, compared to last year’s drill, the drill this year is much for exciting! But along with all that excitement comes a lot more effort we have to put in to make everything look nice. Not only are there more sets to learn, but the drill itself is a little more complex as well. I think we can definitely make it work. I’m just excited to see the whole show on video for the first time, it’s going to be simply amazing!
I Think Kate’s on Something
Aug 8th
Last day of band camp! This is pretty sweet, I’m watching the drill from the front sidelines while I’m blogging If you think about it, we never really get to watch the marching show live, so this is pretty amazing! We got to set ten yesterday morning, which apparently is very good for band camp. Speaking of band camp, did I mention it’s the last day?
So much happened yesterday. Parents night, rehearsals, drama, and even though I wasn’t part of it, senior night. Speaking of which, it’s great to see all of the seniors to be dead tired and have to run and manage not to trip over their own feet *cough*Allie*cough*. I think they’re all on something, which would explain why they came running to our apartments at 5:45 this morning playing their instruments, screaming, and banging on our doors.
Well, gotta go!
Day 4: Everyone’s tired
Aug 7th
So we did the fitness gram test yesterday since it rained in the morning and we didn’t want to take time during the season to do it. Guess what we all found out about Mr. Briskey? He has Hannah Montana on his Zune… enough said.
Like I said, the “hurricane” (aka 5 minutes of rain) came yesterday and we spent the first half of our morning rehearsal inside a gym. The rain went away in the afternoon so we were back at the pavilion and field then. The good thing about that was that we got to learn more drill during. Whoo! I think everyone can already tell that the show is much more challenging than the start of last year’s show. We’ve got crazy direction changes, turns, and right foot step-off’s and we’re only seven sets in! This is looking to be one heck of a marching show!
After the night rehearsal yesterday, we did the band camp traditional drill down in the pool. I’ve finally figured out how tough it is to march in water. Unfortunately we saw lightning and they kicked us out of the pool before we got to the whirlpool Oh well, there’s always next year!
This morning was like any other morning of band camp. I got up and dragged my roommates along with me in my “section-leader-knocking-on-your-door-to-wake-you-up” routine. It was fun. I like knocking on doors. Anyway, then we marched to breakfast and we’re currently at the morning rehearsal for the day.
Change of subject, tonight is parents night and, I’ve got to admit, I’m pretty excited to see my parents again even though we are going home tomorrow afternoon See you all there!
Beanies, Orange Dots, and Hurricane Edouard
Aug 5th
Second day of band camp… and it looks like hurricane Edouard is coming (I think that’s what they’ve named it this time) We’re at the night practice and there’s no sun! No sun! No sun! It’s cloudy and windy, which makes it so much better to march in!
Yesterday was the first day of band camp, and although waking up at 5:30 in the morning was not the highlight of my day, I’ve got to admit, it was pretty exciting to be on the bus going to band camp as a Sophomore! No more beanies, that’s definitely a plus! But you should’ve seen some of the Freshman’s beanies this year… absolutely hilarious! The section leaders had a blast making them!
This morning we practiced basics from 8:00-10:30 and then went off to sectionals and practiced stands tunes until 11:00. Lunch was at 11:30 and I think the cafeteria served the same thing we had yesterday. But as long as you tell your mind to forget what you had yesterday, it’s all good! At 1:00 pm we met in this pavilion at the college and went through our show music. My feet don’t really like standing up for two and a half hours, but then again, who does? After that was over, it was dinner time! I don’t think I need to mention what we had for dinner, use your imagination…
Changing the subject! We get to start learning drill today! As I’m typing, the band directors are spraying orange dots on the feild for drill. But like I said, the hurricane’s supposed to be coming, so I don’t know how long those will last! But I’m still uber excited! Yay for drill! I have a feeling this is going to be another great marching season!