Orchestra Concert Report

Story #1 During Jr. High I learned how to play the violin through the orchestra program. During one of our bi-annual concerts, my section of violins came into the song too early, which ended up ruining the entire song. I remember how terribly lost the first violins sounded as we muddled our way through the song, the melody being several measures ahead of the rest of the orchestra. We all seemed to be relying on someone else’s proper timing to some degree. After that concert and the depressing and disappointing reaction from our teacher, I knew that I needed to learn how to count and rely on my own timing rather than thinking I could just rely on someone else. I still haven’t mastered this concept, but I certainly have gotten better since that catastrophe. Teamwork is like that, you all have to work together to produce the proper result, but you can’t replace cooperation with individual mastery through practice.

Story #2

Unfortunately, I was typically either the same age or younger than the majority of the customers. This impaired my credibility so that whenever I would ask customers to alter potentially dangerous behaviors, my words would often be dismissed dismissed. To try and overcome these differences, I tried to politely inform them about what specific behaviors weren’t allowed and then I would give them the reason behind why it wasn’t allowed, rather than just telling them to stop doing something. For instance, I would say that you weren’t allowed to give someone a running push because some people hit their heads on the pole or end up being flung off the swing. This helped a lot of customers to stop specific behaviors, though warning people multiple times wasn’t uncommon and there was always those who chose not to