Back to school for axed 'Idol' Malaya Watson

There's one big downside to getting eliminated early from American Idol when you're just 16 years old.

You've got to go back and finish the school year.

"It's going to be interesting," says Malaya Watson, the tuba-playing singer from Michigan, when asked about returning to her high school. "Yeaahhh, it's going to be real interesting."

Watson probably progressed more than any other singer during the course of the season, both in terms of her musical ability and her appearance, but it wasn't enough to keep her on the show. But her enthusiasm and eagerness to learn impressed the judges, particularly Harry Connick Jr., who regularly encouraged Watson to spend as much time as possible with the show's musicians and her vocal coaches.

Watson says she followed Connick's advice. "I worked with my vocal coaches, Dorian (Holley) and Michael (Orland), and they helped me a lot," she says. "I'll probably still work on it with my dad back at home."

Having now seen first-hand the demands placed on professional entertainers, she says she plans to practice more. "I used to just sing for about an hour every day, and that was about it," she says.

One could forgive someone in Watson's position for wishing she had finished in last place the previous week, when the judges decided to use their save and kept Sam Woolf around, but Watson insists she doesn't think like that. "Sam did deserve the save at the same time," she says. Everything happens for a reason.

"Maybe God didn't want me to win," she adds, with a touch of dark humor in her voice. "Or God wanted me to come in eighth place. You never know."

Watson doesn't have a clear vision of her path post-Idol. "Right now, I'm focusing on high school," she says. "I'm still debating on what's going to happen, because I don't know what's going to happen, like, right when I get home. I'll have to see what's in front of me and decide then. I don't know what's going to happen for this point on. But my main focus right now is just to graduate from high school.'

And if she has one take-away from the show?

"Singing really high and moving around is not as easy as it looks."