Singing Assessments

I used to be absolutely horrified of singing assessments, especially my freshmen year. I would stress out about them days in advanced. Though the anxiety never really goes away, it has definitely improved. It’s all I used to think about, but now I don’t get nervous until we start the assessments in class. I’m not really sure where the anxiety comes from because I don’t know what I’m getting nervous about. I don’t think that I’m nervous to sing in front of the class because it’s my third year doing so. I guess it’s just like getting nervous before any big test in my other classes. I’m just anxious and want it to come so I can stop stressing about it. It’s stress over stressing! I think certain types of singing assessments make me more nervous than others. If the assessment is on a piece that we sang in concert, I don’t stress so much because I know the piece. On the other hand, if it’s an assessment on something like sight singing, I get nervous thinking about it because it’s so much harder and you don’t know the piece as well. Luckily, for our upcoming assessment, we go over the potential exercises in class, but there is anxiety over not knowing what exercise you could get—you could get one that is extremely more difficult than another. The thing is, Mr. Young wouldn’t assign you a hard piece if he didn’t think you could do it. I know that I just need to relax and know that it’s not a big deal. If I practice, it can only help.