Personality shortcomings

When I'm offered a choice, I tend to defer the decision to the person offering me the choice.

"Whatever's most convenient for you" or "No me importa." And I'm nonchalant and easygoing about the situation. (If I do have a preference, I may speak up, but not always.)

At the same time, I am fiercely independent and stubborn. When I think I'm right, you better prove me otherwise. I have a (hopefully not too annoying) habit of automatically correcting mistakes I hear.

I hate being put on the spot. Perhaps it's due to my inherent shyness, which I'm continually striving to outgrow. Perhaps it's because I try to be prepared for everything and when something unexpected happens, I get annoyed because it's not in my grand plan.

Anyway ... tonight in my 20 minutes of leading rehearsal, I felt very vulnerable. Someone in the ensemble asked me a question about what we were doing 10 minutes after I'd already explained it. Apparently my explanation had not been clear enough (OK, that's fine; I need to know where I've got to improve) ... but that prompted other questions from other choristers ... and ... I felt a little lost. I kept looking to Mentor for reassurance, and she did help me out. She was very encouraging afterwards, but I was disappointed in how I'd led my portion of rehearsal this evening. Granted, the song material that we covered this week was more difficult ... but ... I felt like I was struggling. I felt like they were getting bored. I felt like they were humoring the novice conductor ... and while they remained respectful and they worked hard, I didn't feel in control of everything.

Mentor told me that the choir had been more successful in learning this challenging passage (the most challenging part of the piece) this evening than when the same group had sung the piece 7 years ago. So ... maybe I'm being unnecessarily hard on myself.

Or maybe I'm scared that my former cooperating teacher's words were true: "Estrella, you're similar to my daughter. She doesn't ask for help or guidance until she needs a lot of it, at the very last minute, and it's too late."