Have you ever walked into a room that was filled with static electricity? You can almost feel the energy in the air and in everything you touch. It truly is an “electric” atmosphere.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that static electricity happens when the outer layer of an atom (the positive layer) gets rubbed off. This incidental contact creates an imbalanced atom and leaves it negatively charged.

For instance, when you come in from the cold and remove your hat, the proton is transferred from your hair to your hat, thus leaving your hair with a negative static charge. When two objects with the same negative charge come into contact with one another, they try and repel each other with force. Hence, the shock you feel. Think of it as two negative attitudes looking for a fight.

Music rooms all over our country are experiencing this phenomenon on a grand scale. Whether it is the long nights and short days, the passing of Christmas, or the onslaught of the new semester, the result is the same. Our rehearsal halls are filled students charged up with negative energy. The result? Negative people looking to get as far away from each other as possible.

This could not come at a worse time. With registration right around the corner, the last thing we want to do is shock and repel people. We want to attract and retain them. But in order to do this, we have to turn the negative energy into positive energy.

Perhaps tomorrow you might teach a little less and smile a little more. Perhaps you might break through the cold with some warmth. Perhaps you might look a little harder for reasons to laugh and look the other way at the things that frustrate you. Perhaps you might scream triumphantly for the right notes and save the wrong ones for tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow’s one and only goal is to remove the static electricity from the room.

After all, losing electricity is way better than losing a student.

Have a “positive” day tomorrow.