The Reflections unit at freestyle was about reflecting on your high school experience and who you are as a person. For film we had to make a 2 minute long video about an experience or topic that shaped us throughout high school. For english we had to write a personal essay about who we were and what we valued andwhat made me me. For digital media we recorded ourselves ranting about something that we had an opinion on to show topics that we cared about and how we wanted the world to change.

 

Personal Essay

For this project we had to answer the question “Who am I?” This required me to look deep into who I am to try and understand why I do the things I do. In english we got the book “College Essay Essentials” which gave us tips for brainstorming ideas and starting the personal essay. Through this process I figured out that when I grow up I want to be a teacher. Going back through my high school experience I realized that a lot of the stuff I did was all music which is why a huge part of this essay is music related because it was such a huge part of my life for so long.

When I first joined the marching band I thought it was going to be like the military: everyone acting all gung-ho, never drinking water, practicing every second of every single day. I thought that I would have to be perfect to be accepted, and that if I wasn’t good, I would not be liked or respected. As a Freshman, I was scared to join because I was terrible: I couldn’t play in time, march in time, and my marching technique was horrible. I was so bad that while marching I tripped and fell on top of my drum which ended up giving me a giant bruise shaped like North America across my entire left shoulder.

Even as one of the worst performers in the drumline, my fellow members welcomed me and treated me as an equal. They went above and beyond to make me feel welcomed and taken care of. One time at a rehearsal I was putting my drum on its harness and my finger got caught and started to bleed everywhere. I was experiencing unbearable pain and I didn’t know what to do. I rushed into the boy’s bathroom and tried to wash all the blood off while tears were streaming down my face. My section leader Zoe Hahn rushed into the bathroom and started taking care of my injured hand. My first thought was, “Zoe this is this boy’s bathroom – you can’t be in here!”  That was the first moment I realized the incredible bonds that people make through marching band, the community that people would do anything to take care of their fellow marchers.

As a section leader and as a person, Zoe inspired me to not just become better at playing but also become a more inclusive and happy person. She showed me how this community will take care of you, and she taught me that I also needed to contribute to the community. So as I continued through my seasons of marching band, I found myself spending more and more time with band people outside of the normal band hours. I would drum with my friend Reid at lunch, hang out with Sam writing a solo to show our instructors the next time we saw them, or taking private lessons with Colin Whitcomb. Colin didn’t push just my rudimental drumming skills; he would also push me mentally, having me practice grids and patterns to improve the mental aspect of drumming.

The more I drummed, the more that I wanted to get better and improve myself. Every day I would practice warm-up exercises and learn new licks from my favorite drum corps. Most every night I would stay up late, or whenever my parents yelled at me to go to bed, practicing on my drum pad and not stopping till I would get it right. I found myself drumming every possible moment I could, in between classes, during brunch and lunch, after school, after I finished my homework. If there was even a three-minute break, I would be drumming. The more I kept practicing, the more confident I felt in myself. I felt more comfortable in my own skin because I was constantly improving at something that I loved to do.

My high school’s marching band community helped me to fall in love with drumming and taught me to love myself more. People in leadership/teaching positions, like Zoe and Colin, were the people that I wanted to be like the most. They made me realize that there is nothing else I would rather be doing than drumming, and they inspired me to pursue education so that I can be a role model for others, just as they were role models for me.

 

Perspective Piece

For the perspective piece we had to rant about a topic that we were passionate about. My rant is about following your dreams and society and parents taking away your opportunities to do that. I wrote my piece shortly after I found out one of my good friends wasn’t allowed to do band anymore because their parents forced them to quit. That really inspired me to write this piece and I tried to extend that example to other parts of life such as schools not having enough funding to support students interests. It was fun using After Effects because it was the first time I had really used it so it was a lot of fun learning a new program.

This screenshot shows the After Effects project where I was keyframing the images so that they would move across the screen.

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Video Essay

For the video essay it was very similar to the personal essay piece. We had to analyze ourselves and talk about an activity or narrative that explains who we are or what we believe in. Since music was such a big part of my high school experience I decided to make the film about drumming. I used a 360 camera to get footage of my marching band show which was a lot of fun to use but was very annoying to render.

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