● High School: Lakeside School
● Post-Graduation Plans: Northwestern University
● Course of Study: Civil Engineering
During this year full of senior activities, I’ve realized something about myself that some
might find a bit concerning: I care more about graduating from choir than about graduating from
high school. I mean, sure, I felt hopeful watching the sky during senior sunrise in September, I
liked seeing my class during our school’s prom bus trip, and I can’t fully believe that my friends
will all be moving to new places next year. But when I think of what I’ll really miss, I skip over
school straight to my afternoons. Choir is the community where I’ve truly made a difference, and
the community that has truly had an impact on me.
I have to remind myself occasionally that not everyone has this. Most people I know do
some extracurricular activity. But no one else I know has been with the same organization since
first grade or gotten so many insane opportunities through it. Seattle Girls Choir is something
kind of magical. I’ve been so lucky to be a part of this amazing place for so many years, a
scarily tight-knit community with such strong musical excellence.
To me, choir feels a bit like time travel. (You’re going to have to bear with me on the
simile here.) Each song we sing for an audience takes up an insignificant amount of time in its
final form, lasting only about five minutes of the performance, but it represents hours of work
shrunk down into one polished piece. I feel like that used to annoy me more in past concerts,
those eons of working on one chord all magically turned into two seconds of listening for the
audience. When we’d perform a piece worse than we had in rehearsals, I would feel like I’d
wasted all the good runthroughs of the days I worked on it, and even if we sang a piece really
well, I’d feel disappointed when the final note inevitably stopped ringing out, to see how so much
time had culminated in such a short moment of beauty. What I’ve really come to realize over the
past decade is that the five minutes that we “actually” sing each song aren’t the ones that count.
The days of preparation, rehearsal, and practice that each performance tries to show have such
a higher value, a value that is not wasted regardless of how well our final show goes. I’ve
learned that performance is really only for us, and with that, I’ve been able to feel music so
much more deeply by staying in the present.
Yet, despite my best efforts, my energy is still always a bit weird after a concert. I can
feel part of myself going over all of the mistakes, wishing I could go back and get one more
chance, stuck in the past season of rehearsals and trying to move back to the present. I think
that that’s what I’ve been fearing all year, that the same thing that happens after a performance
will happen after my time here is done. The past will suddenly become the past and I’ll be left
wondering what all the time I spent was for. Music is inherently intangible, and I struggle to
explain a note like I struggle to explain a feeling or a bond or a sense of place. But still, I remind
myself, this organization has had so many objective impacts on me.
Somehow, seemingly overnight, choir has changed great quantities of me completely. It’s
snuck into my room and filled my closet with concert-black-acceptable dresses. It’s stacked a
3-foot-tall pile of old sheet music on my floor. It’s given me practice with focus, like when I’m
driving on the highway to Tacoma or Bellingham while trying to ignore distracting karaoke belting from the backseat. It’s taught me the best parking spots near Seattle Center for when I’m
rushing to my Nutcracker call time. It’s granted me a connection to music, not just to the
classical pieces and carols that we sing for most of our rehearsals, but to every middling indie
rock song that I harmonize along to in my car. It’s given me my closest friendships, the people I
reach to call when something in my life goes horribly right or wrong. It’s also given me a
baseline bond with everyone in the whole choir level, and with everyone who has ever been in
SGC. Choir has introduced me to the most perfect, wonderful, completely different people who I
might never have met otherwise, this community united by effort and care. During long
Wednesday nights, I’ve learned how to identify intervals and coil microphone cables, yes, but
I’ve also learned how to push myself and how to show up for others, how to be proud and how
to grow. To some overly-dramatic parts of my teenage mind, choir feels like it’s been embedded
in my brain, and I worry that I’m going to lose some of who I am when I graduate. But I know,
just like when I’m practicing a song, that sometimes I have to step back and listen to the full
picture, trusting my muscle memory to guide me, knowing that I’ve learned the melody so well I
can feel it in my bones. Choir has given me so much: knowledge, friendships, a sense of myself
and of my purpose. I know that I won’t lose that easily. After the last concert of our tour, after the
last note stops ringing out in Paris, I know that I will still have so much to carry home, and I will
still be so grateful for all that SGC has taught me.