Fall Begins 2026
Hello all!
Summer has officially come to an end today with the beginning of Northwestern’s fall quarter- now the excitement of a new school year with a totally new role begins!
My summer was mostly boring- teaching about 10 voice lessons per week and otherwise doing a lot of course prep for the fall. But it was slow going… hard to feel motivated to do that very concentrated work.
Then, all of sudden, things got exciting!
You heard the beginning of the car saga. I am very happy to announce that I got a new-to-me car! The story is pretty amazing. It all started several years ago, when I got a random email about a class action lawsuit against a bunch of elite schools (Northwestern included) for not giving students enough financial aid. It seemed like a scam, but I googled in and it seemed legit. They also weren’t asking for sensitive information, so I must have given them some. My friend Maria concurred that she had gotten the same email. I figured the worst that could happen was they randomly send me a couple hundred dollars, or at least I help by adding my name to a list of those wanting to fight Universities running like big businesses. I had pretty much forgotten about this one day a couple months ago, when I logged into Paypal to transfer a student’s lesson payment and saw that there was nearly $4000 in my Paypal account! Turns out the lawsuit was legit!
Then, the car flooded. It was daunting searching for a replacement. Carmax was a good bet, but expensive, and I felt apprehensive about the car payment, when I don’t necessarily know what my income will be like for the next few years (only the next year…). Whenever I looked on Facebook marketplace, it seemed like there were a lot of scams. I didn’t want to have to go through all of this again before too long, so I decided that I wanted to get a Honda or Toyota and good gas mileage was important to me (for general eco-reasons). The options seemed like a desert. But I was having enough issues trying to finagle the flooded CIvic that finally I made an appointment to go to Carmax with Nick on the weekend. After two exhausting days of looking at cars online, I decided to check Facebook one more time before teaching.
I saw a Prius that had just been listed in Evanston for a higher price and by a person who looked very real. So I quickly sent a message and we organized a meeting that evening in a grocery store parking lot. The car looked good- very clean- and the owner told me it had only been used for trips to the museum (she and her husband are curators of the bird exhibit at the Field Museum!) and to and from hockey practice in Wichita (their son is a professional hockey player and was moving abroad, thus not needing the car anymore). We arranged to do an inspection later that week at a Toyota dealership.
The two of us spent the entire three hours of the inspection having a lovely conversation about our lives! By the end, it felt like we had each made a new friend. The following day we arranged to meet at their house to finalize all the paperwork.
Between the class action payout and the money Dad gave me to help get me started with the car buying process, I had exactly the asking price for the car and felt very good about buying from these folks, who even took it to the mechanic two blocks from my apartment (where I have since continued to bring it and thus met more good people).
That same week: I also got a job! My first adjunct professorship- at North Central College in Naperville (a SW suburb of Chicago). I got the job on a Thursday, sang in the faculty musicale on Sunday, and started teaching the following week! It has been a whirlwind, but over the last month, I have finally settled into the commute and getting to know my students and also learning a ton about teaching. It is a great experience! There has been so much onboarding and learning curve with new systems, new email, etc, etc. But I think that maybe now I am finally caught up…
I also had to start the semester by scheduling 3 make-up lessons for every student, partly because: Nick and I had a wonderful vacation in Nova Scotia visiting my friend, Mary! This had been planned months ago, so my students just had to deal with make-up lessons following their second week of classes.
It was a wonderful vacation! So wonderful that I realized I had needed it 3 months earlier, at the beginning of the summer rather than the end… You live and learn! I felt so revived and ready to work again after a week off and out of my normal routines and away from home. Mary is an amazing host and planned all these great adventures for the three of us- down to meal plans for packing lunches and whatnot (it’s good to have Mennonite friends!).
The first day we went to the beach and made an EPIC sandcastle! It had a few names, but I think our favorite was Scotiantinople- for both its Byzantine floor style and the Grecian Sand Artist who put the most construction time into it, and of course Canada’s Ocean Playground, where it was located. The water was very cold, but Mary and I ventured in for a bit. The man with Mediterranean blood could barely get his toes in. This dear and darling man also managed to get a pretty savage sunburn :-( But we only discovered that after eating a wonderful fried seafood dinner (Nick got a cheeseburger :-).
Another day, we got up early to drive out to Brier Island. We had to catch two ferries, perfectly timed, to make it for our 9:30am whale-watching experience! I had never been on a ferry in a car before, so that was kind of fun. The island itself was very beautiful, with a very Maine-esque landscape and lots of little light towers. The whale-watching was a cool experience! There were a whole bunch of humpback whales out and one (named Scream) went right under our boat and Nick caught this awesome video of it coming up next to us! Besides some sea-sickness, Nick left this excursion unscarred.
The following day we set out for a good long hike- one of my goals, which got us both out in nature and doing some hearty exercise. Following that, we had our lobster dinner!
We also spent some wonderful downtime in Wolfville, where Mary lives, enjoying the small town disconnected from our lives entirely. We enjoyed perusing shops, sipping coffee, cider or beer and even looking at flyers for local music. We ended up at a folk music show our last night there which was fun and conversation inspiring.
There was much wonderful catching up with Mary, as we realized that this summer was the tenth anniversary of when we met! Not to mention it had been two years since our last concert-based reason to get together. We also enjoyed several rousing games of Scrabble over the course of the week, as well as shared meal chores (Mary cooked and Marie and [mostly] Nick did the dishes).
Another one of my favorite parts of our vacation was being off of my phone and computer for a week! If only that could be a more regular occurrence. Forgive me, but since this vacation especially, I have become worse with electronic communication than ever. Ahhh! Just like the old days…
I am now preparing for what is sure to be a pretty intense fall semester/quarter. I will be teaching two brand new classes at Northwestern in addition to commuting twice per week to teach a studio of lessons (12 students!). I survived my first day today with one of the new classes today (Aural Skills! Which feels very full circle, as exactly 15 years ago, I started Aural Skills for the first time at Northwestern), and will begin my own designed class (Music and Comedy) tomorrow!
Be well!
Marie
