Underneath It All #BehindTheBlogger

Underneath It All: Behind the usually-upbeat exterior, I have my bad days and insecurities just like everyone else. Few things bring it out more so than medical school, but I like to think I’ve gotten a lot better! As with everything else, there’s always more room for improvement–I’m just gonna keep on truckin’!

I talked a lot about music in my last #BehindTheBlogger–this is kinda like my “Part 2!”

Oh em gee, you guys, I have a fan!!! (I’ve actually known of her existence for over 2 months, but…you know of my tendencies to write into the future.)

Back story: I used to work in the music library, which has all sorts of musical scores, external recordings, and the like, but it also houses a collection of pretty much the past 10 years’ worth of student recordings.

My friend was there earlier this year and apparently, I may have left a legacy?!? (His words, not mine!) There’s apparently a girl who went through the past decade’s worth of recordings and considers me to be the second-best pianist to ever walk those halls. (wut.)

Tis a high compliment indeed, and I’m super, super flattered because the person she considers to be the absolute best ended up going to USC for grad school in piano performance.

I’ve never really thought of myself as talented. I think that sort of mentality probably started in high school–I graduated with a weighted 4.0, was an editor of two newspapers, spent 4 years on the gymnastics team, had a 2100 SAT, and hundreds of hours of community service…but no matter how “good” I was, there was always someone better.

I drew, I wrote, I sang, but I never entered competitions (and am super thankful that my parents never pushed that) because I didn’t want to lose that joy and love that brought me to those hobbies to begin with, so I just strove to do better each day, to pursue the things that I loved, and to continually improve.

With my piano teacher at my senior recital!

My piano teacher in college = one of the nicest people ever, but I was initially terrified of even emailing her at the end of freshman year to ask if she thought I had any hope of being a performance major. (Hell, it even took some courage to audition for lessons when I first started.)

(I’m so glad I did though!! This was shortly before I found out that I passed my juries and was officially considered a music performance major!)

I attributed a lot of the not-being-as-good-as-I-could-be to a combination of never practicing, and always spreading myself way too thin. (I think I’ve gotten a lot better about that though. It was kinda hard to practice when I was worried I’d fail out of organic chemistry. :[ )

I remember 2 weeks before my senior recital, I made the mistake of going on YouTube to listen to recordings of one of the pieces I’d be playing and found one of a 13 year old playing it better than I could ever hope to play it. I don’t think I’d ever related to the quote, “Comparison is the thief of joy,” so well.

Not gonna lie, it was pretty devastating. I holed myself up in the music building late every evening, but my worry and stress just made each subsequent practice run worse.

One of my chamber ensemble coaches heard me stressing about it after rehearsal one day and asked a single question: “Are you playing to impress other people or to express yourself and the piece?”

That simple question made something click in my mind.

Hint: The answer should always be the latter. Play because you love it, and all else will follow. <3

Moral of the story?

You do you. Don’t pay attention to how much “better” other people are, and even if you do (e.g. for inspiration), don’t let it get you down. You don’t know their circumstances or their story. Just focus on being the best that you can be. :]

P.S. The girl in the video went to Colburn and is apparently now at Julliard. I chose someone pretty effing amazing to fangirl over, hahaha.

• Are you ever surprised by what others think of you?
• Who’s someone you really look up to? The most talented pianist I knew in the program was one of my co-workers, and also the one who recommended his teacher to me! You can check out excerpts of him playing piano/singing + his compositions on his instagram! :]

Thank you for reading a story from #BehindTheBlogger Hop. Every 2 weeks, a group of bloggers is given a writing prompt. These prompts are very open ended, so our bloggers can write about whatever they desire. The main rule is that their blog post directly relates to the topic of that week. The point of this hop is for our readers to get to know us on a personal level.

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