Resilience Through Musical Adaptability: A Personal Journey

Common Application Essay
Throughout my life, I have faced many setbacks, challenges, and have failed more times than I can count. Though each one has impacted me in a different way, this one in particular, has had the greatest effect on me.
While I have faced many problems, they have all helped me become the successful person I am today. Given many opportunities, I have been able to grow and progress. For several years now, I have been in a symphonic and marching band and every year I have been in band, I have played a different instrument. Learning each instrument has taken a lot of time and energy. Music is not easy to understand. Between learning to read the music or actually learning to play a specific instrument, it gives a person time to learn about themselves.

In these few years, I have faced multiple setbacks.

My sophomore year, I was ready to learn more and conquer bigger things; this being the piccolo. Our band- being very small- only had room for one piccolo, so that was me. I had played flute for about 6 years until that point so I did have a general idea of how things worked, but it was still new and scary. I had to finally man-up and learn to have the confidence to trust my knowledge and play what I knew how to play. Within the first couple weeks, I was given a very difficult solo but little did I know, this would be the moment I learned to appreciate the opportunities given to me by my teacher. After receiving the music, I spent endless hours listening to the President’s own Military Band performing “The Chimes of Liberty” hoping that one day I would be able to play it as well as

them.
We played this song almost every day in class and I still was unable to play it. I had approximately one month to learn before I had to play it in front of a decently large audience. Practicing nonstop did not help me like it would have any other person. This made things extremely stressful for me and for my band director. Now I did not have this solo down by the time of the performance. I had most of it, but there were just certain parts I could not put together. After having this embarrassment in front of friends and family, it helped me learn a new appreciation about music. I was spending too much time focusing on the notes and making things worse rather than trusting my instinct and just playing the music. This really helped me overcome my fear of performing in front of audiences, though. I have never been a confident player but getting up and making it seem like I knew what I was doing, seemed to have a positive effect of me.
With this experience, I had understood what I was in band for. I love making music. Of course, there were days where it upset me or made me want to quit, but that is a part of life. Not everything will satisfy you, but it is the little things that help you overcome your biggest battles.