For the average teenager, a random Wednesday night is fairly uneventful and uninteresting- generally spending the majority of the night working on schoolwork or going to a sports practice. It’s pretty much the same for me. My weeknights are spent worrying about getting homework done for the next day, and not much else besides the occasional break to go on a run. However, one Wednesday night in December, I had to perform in my first violin recital. I knew I was more than prepared-I had practiced for hours on end-but I was terrified. Performing in front of people is not my cup of tea because I don’t like having a ton of attention put on me; this night was sure to be an interesting one.

The ride to the church was nerve-racking.

“Lex, do you have your music?”
    
“Are you nervous?”
 
“Did you make sure to talk to your pianist about the change of tempo?”
        
“Make sure you thank grandma for coming.”

All these questions were being thrown at me. I was sitting in the hard back seat of the car, trying to keep my mind off of my performance by singing the words to my favorite One Direction songs-something that always seems to calm me down (even though the band was temporarily non-existent). I turned on my phone to my “Soft Songs” playlist and stared out the window at the bare fields, patting my hand on the window to the beat of the song, until we pulled into the parking lot of the small church.

Upon stepping through the doors, I saw my private violin teacher in her black skirt and blue shirt. She smiled at me and offered a “Good Luck,” before continuing on her way into the back of the sanctuary. A few seconds later, my family and I began to walk slowly into the large room and sat down in the pews toward the middle of the sanctuary.

My nerves got the best of me while I was waiting for my turn to perform, and I hardly paid any attention at all to the other violinists who were playing their pieces for the audience. The whole time, I was staring at the colorful stained glass windows on the side of the room. “What if my fingers get caught up in each other and I mess up? What if the pianist and I play at different speeds and end up not being together? What if I miss the key change and play a note that sticks out like a sore thumb?” All of these “what ifs” flooded my mind in the five minutes before my performance. My passion for playing my instrument definitely fueled my desire to play my heart out and not mess up. Finally, I looked down at the program and realized that the girl who was performing at that moment was the one who I would be following. I scrambled to gather my things together- violin, bow, music-  and moved forward on the cushion of my seat in order to stand up in the next few seconds. Once she had finished playing, the audience applauded her, and I stood up and walked briskly up to the stage-I just wanted to get this over with.
Following the couple seconds that I stood awkwardly in front of everyone while waiting for my pianist to gather her music, I glanced over at her as she gave me the planned couple of nods that would indicate the tempo prior to her starting to play. 1, 2, 3, and the sound of the piano introduction rang through the church. I could feel my arm shaking as I was getting ready to play, but I needed to get this over with to show myself that being in front of people isn’t that bad. 3 measures into the song, I quietly placed my bow on the string, making sure to not make any noise, and counted down the last couple beats that led up to my entrance. The result of practicing an instrument is that the muscles in your fingers remember the movements they are supposed to make, and that is exactly what happened when I began to play. As odd as this sounds, I was hardly paying attention to the music on the page, but I had placed my focus mainly on listening to the piano and making sure that we were together. Before I knew it, the first half of the song was over, and I was preparing for the much-practiced tempo change. I glanced over at the accompanist as she nodded her head three times to once again indicate the new tempo. Just like before, I placed my bow on the string and put my fingers on the fingerboard in the couple measures before I was supposed to start playing again. This time, however, I quickly pulled the bow across the string to make the first note instead of moving it slowly, because I needed to make the music sound happy and exciting. Like before, my fingers put themselves on the fingerboard where they needed to go, seemingly without me thinking about it. One page later, I found myself pushing my bow into the string to hold out the last fermata of the piece.

After hearing the last ringing note of the piano, I lifted the bow off the string and turned to the audience. Relieved that my performance was over, I took a bow and looked over toward my family before sitting back down in my seat. Every single one of them- my mom, dad, grandma, grandpa- had a huge smile plastered across their faces, and I felt really positive about my performance. I quickly sat down in my spot in the pew, while a smile slowly crept onto my face-I had succeeded in performing in my first violin recital despite my stage fright, and I couldn’t have left that church any prouder.