“Again” my teacher said for the fifth time in a row.
“You have to play it louder.”
I pressed the keys once more, praying the melody would sound right this time. It didn’t. A wrong note here, a skipped beat there–no matter what I did, my recital piece refused to sound right. Why did he want me to perform a piece that was harder than any other I had played before? My frustration grew, as I thought of the hours of work I had ahead of me.
Piano has been a part of my life since losing my baby teeth every couple of months. My mom had told me that she wanted me to play an instrument, just like she had when she was a kid. She told me that I would be happy that she forced me to play when I was older, always saying, “Just think of your future self and how great it will be that you are able to play the piano.”
But playing the piano always felt like an uphill battle. Every time I started a new piece, the notes looked like hieroglyphics–impossible to decipher. I practiced the same line over and over, only to hit the same wrong note after half an hour of work. Somehow that same line looked different every single time: harder, easier, faster, slower. It took days to learn which notes to play; months to put them all together.
“Why are you making me do this?” I remember asking my mom, begging her to let me just quit.
She never gave in.
So there I was–sitting at the piano, with my teacher waiting expectantly. I willed my fingers to play the right notes, praying that I would not disappoint him. And by some miracle–it actually happened. My hands moved smoothly, falling in all the right places. For the first time, the music sounded the way it was supposed to.
Once I had finished, I looked up at my teacher. He was full of pride. I was bursting with excitement. It was euphoric.
These are the moments that make playing piano worth it–when everything clicks, and your mom listening from the other room says, “There you go! That’s the one!” All of a sudden the hours of practice wash away. The struggle ends up being worth it. It’s always worth it.
My mom ended up being right. I am happy to be able to play the piano, and proud of my past self for getting through the days when all I wanted to do was quit and never touch a piano again.
That feeling of finally succeeding is so rewarding that I stopped wanting to quit. My mom didn’t have to force me anymore.
To this day, I still hate practicing. But I learned that practice and patience is how I get to that euphoria. And so I do not ask my mom to let me quit anymore. I do not complain about the hours that go into any piano piece I have ever played. I accepted that it is just part of the process, and that the end result was always worth it.
This patience I have learned is one of my most valuable life lessons. It helps me persevere through difficult math problems, or get my tennis swing just right. I know college will bring along many tough challenges, but I am confident that I will be able to meet them head-on. I’ll approach each challenge like I approach the piano–with persistence, patience, and trust that in the end, the work will have paid off.
And when those moments of frustration come–when something doesn’t go right the first time, the third or even fifth–I’ll take a deep breath, and try again.
Here’s what Ms. Ledoux had to say about Ben’s Essay:
Ben’s essay is a classic example of an essay that has a specific topic – playing piano – but really it is about his attitude towards a task that took him time to see the value of. But by the end he is also emphasizing his understanding of patience and practice. All of these qualities that are revealed about him could be easily transferred to an academic understanding of him as a person. Colleges would love to accept students who demonstrate the perseverance, maturity and reflection that Ben reveals here.
When writing the essay, Ben had to work on the timing and perspective. It’s a great lesson for thinking about how you need to make choices about what to “zoom in” on with your essay. Ben has a long history of piano, as he mentions, so knowing this was going to be his topic, he needed to decide on what memories he would highlight in order to bring readers into a moment, rather than just summarizing everything. Originally he had a whole other section of the essay about a recital – but writing about the recital brought up descriptions of his nervousness performing, ultimately competing with his focus on the value of practice. Eventually Ben made the choice to highlight the tension in his everyday practicing, rather than the performance, and the essay ended up with effective reflections on the value of practicing that could have been overshadowed if he had included the performance details as well.
