NASM
Every school of music is accredited - or not - by an organization called the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM). Once every 10 years NASM sends reviewers to visit us for a few days, observing what we do and how well we do it.
They were on campus Monday and Tuesday, meeting with faculty, students, the dean, and the provost. They also met with me for several extended sessions, with many questions about the academic side of our music programs.
I was asked things like, You cleared this student to graduate in Spring of 2007, yet she never took vocal pedagogy, a course required for her major. How do you justify this?
They were pretty intense, but it was still fun to talk with people I'd only just met, yet who understand my job better than almost anyone I know.
With impressively bad timing, while the reviewers were milling about, I received a visit from the student who sometimes cries and throws fits in my office. He's not enrolled in any classes this semester, so I was surprised to see him.
He said he'd just been to another office on campus, and they'd called the police on him. (He was vague as to why they did this.) The police escorted him off campus, but he returned and came to see me in my office.
He was very upset, crying and shouting things like "What the fuck is wrong with this school? This school sucks!" Not unusual behavior for him, and luckily the reviewers didn't witness it.
Unstable people have an entropic effect on their surroundings. What they touch becomes less organized.
They also have a form of radar. They seem to know the worst possible moment to make an entrance. It's almost a gift, like an extrasensory perception that draws them toward intense situations. They apparently have no control over their strong sense of timing. It uses them, they don't use it. And it uses them for evil, not good.
My mother's coronary catheterization came back negative, which is good news, and surprising. There's now talk of her being discharged/transferred to another facility closer to her home.
