In Which I Embark on a Four-Year Quest for Knowledge and Musical Adventure

I decided to come to college because I love to learn. In high school, I took AP classes and was an International Baccalaureate diploma candidate, all of my own free will. (Crazy, I know...) I slaved away at my classes and made decent grades, but did not enjoy my overall school experience. The students at the very first college I visited were all extremely smart and that intimidated me at first, but I realized that they were able to study subjects that they loved at a much, much deeper level than I could ever achieve during high school. When it was time for me to start applying to schools, I knew that I wanted to go straight to college instead of taking a gap year, because I could not wait to start learning at a whole new level and experiencing life on my own.

To be perfectly honest, I did not originally want to come to Converse at all, mostly because of two scary words: “women’s” and “college”. I did not want to have to deal with spending all of my waking hours with just girls, nor did I wish to have the last male faces I saw to be those of my fellow seniors. (Sorry, guys, but I had just spent four long years with you.) My mother did not share similar sentiments. She signed me up to stay overnight at Converse and, much to my vexation, did not even ask me if I wanted to go! I eventually got over my original bitterness towards the situation and packed my bags a few months later and headed down to Spartanburg. That visit sealed the deal. Converse was officially at the top of my list from that point on. My hostess, Lainie Sowell (who I guess is “responsible” for my coming to Converse in a way), and I had so much fun together and all of the girls I met were so sweet and eager to talk to me about how much they loved their school and even about how much they wanted me to go there too. Long story short, I picked Converse because not only did I receive generous financial aid (which had been a daunting barrier throughout my college search) but I felt like I truly belonged here and that people loved me and wanted me here as well.

Music has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. I began violin lessons at four and have not stopped since. But when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I had formulated an actual answer, my answer varied from a teacher, to a meteorologist, to an author, to a lawyer, and finally, after taking IB Psychology my junior year, a developmental and forensic psychologist. A life of working with children and busting criminals was all I thought I wanted until my violin teacher left me a voicemail that changed my life. She teaches Suzuki violin at a local school and some of her students’ parents had asked her if there was any way for their children to receive tutoring in violin over the summer. She referred them all to me. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was glad to be of service, both as a fellow pupil of the Suzuki method as well as someone eager to earn a little extra spending money. The first lessons were a bit awkward; I was not entirely sure of what I was supposed to do and was still a stranger to my students. I was not even sure that I wanted the opportunity any more because I felt that I was not meant for the job. My parents encouraged me to just throw myself into it, and if I still felt that giving lessons was not going to work out, I could stop. I took their advice, and, two years later, I am studying music education at Converse. I discovered that I absolutely love teaching and spending time with children, and although I still have a love for psychology, I will be perfectly content with reading books and enjoying the occasional episode of “Bones” or “Lie to Me*”.

Finally, I would just like to mention that Willy Wonka was the first person dead, alive or fictitious who taught me that using your imagination as you worked was a wonderful thing. In fact, you could even use your imagination to make work seem like play, create amazing things, and bring joy to other people on top of that. Work can seem at times like a place where people go to be vaguely miserable from nine in the morning to five or later at night just to earn their salary. Secondly, while I understand that not everyone has the privilege of the career path of his or her choice, I also know that Willy Wonka took the ordinary business of making candy and transformed it into something extraordinary. He decided that he was not happy with the current candy-making system and he made his own way, which proved to be far superior to that of his competitors’. I love teaching, and I love sharing the gift of learning with other people, but I also know that any teacher’s job is far from full of chocolate waterfalls and giant gummy bears. Thanks to Mr. Wonka, I now understand that I can put my (sometimes too) vivid imagination to work and get something useful out of it, as well as make other people’s lives better, just by using my brain. After all, if I want to change the world, really, “there’s nothing to it.”