Most of what happened this year aren't long enough to make a full chapter, so I'm just going to write one long one with all of the short stories I have.

We went to a different campsite this year that was a lot better than the last one. It still had a lot of gnats flying around, but other than that, it was significantly better that the previous.

The first day that we arrived and one of the staff members was telling us about some of the rules, he also mentioned that it was another staff member's birthday that same day.

That day at dinner, R-2 got a lot of birthday wishes. :)

Instead of having small groups assigned to cabins, each gender was seated into two large cabins with different sections like rooms for a group of bunk beds. Unfortunately, the walls between each section with bunk beds sucked at blocking sound. The section right next to me decided to have a lot dance party. Both nights of band camp. No matter how many times I complained, they'd stop the music, apologize, and then one whoever lectured then left, they'd go right back to partying. Everyone in my section was complaining. Drumline was up at 6 AM to practice both mornings, and all of the freshman at the dance party suffered from their 5-6 hours of sleep.

We had a freshman this year pick up the trombone in July. She's struggled a lot with it, and she still can't get it quite right. She tried to switch to baritone after band camp, but her mom wouldn't let her.

We tried to get the council vice president to swimming in the pool with us. We knew she was scared, but we didn't know how terrified she was until she freaked out and had a panic attack when she was nudged a little further into the water. I've had panic attacks, but it's a different experience watching someone else have a panic attack, and she kind of scared me. If you can imagine one of those puppies or cats trying to claw their way away from the water when you attempt to give them a bath, you can imagine her reaction to this little nudge. We didn't push her anymore. She stayed in the corner of the three-foot end next to the steps the entire time while her friends surrounded her and kept her happy.

We had our only sectional ever during the second day at band camp. We were supposed to go over the opening of the field show, but instead, we had a synergy, so we really never had a sectional at all this year. We just went around in a circle stating one thing we liked and hated about each other. Special emphasis on hate. One person didn't get to go, so he finished at senior night.

For trombone suicides, I think we did it at 140-180 bpm last year. We all picked it up really fast, which surprised our superiors, since it'd taken them longer to get it down at a slower tempo. This year, it was about 70-100 bpm. There was another sophomore this year that had played trombone in jazz band the previous year and was convinced to drop ROTC to do marching band. I challenged him to do suicides with me to Incantation (the faster tempo). This year, we did suicides for 10 measures (five counts of eight) and last year we did 8 measures (four counts of eight). He chickened out halfway through. Both years there was someone who couldn't get it right. Last year it was Jessica (read 25 or 6 to 4) and this year it was the freshman.