Throughout my high school experience, I constantly and consistently tried to explore all of my opportunities. I ended up joining Y.A.G, Key Club, S.T.E.P, Jazz Band, Chamber Orchestra, and research. I loved to fill up my schedule with activities and in my first two years of high school, these activities were geared towards what I thought I wanted to do in the future, but in my junior year I found myself leaning more towards a science field, mainly because I had gained experience as a researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Eventually though, I realized that my passion for music was my primary interest, because no matter what, I always found myself going back to practice one of my instruments at the end of the day. Initially, I didn’t want to accept that music was my passion because of a recurring fear that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t the best musician, and I wouldn’t be good enough to get into music school. Yet by December of my senior year, I found myself preparing my audition repertoire. I finally accepted that I have a chance and with dedication and motivation, I can prepare myself for music school. The motivation for this was not only my mentors and teachers, but also my audition with the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York, an orchestra which combines the best and most advanced student musicians from all over Long Island. Some people in my school were in MYO and would talk about how enjoyable and fun it is, so of course with my passion for music I wanted to join so badly, but to join I had to audition for placement and I wanted to audition for the principal orchestra. The only problem with this was that I always had a fear of playing in front of people, which is something I still work on to this day. Regardless of this fear, I decided I would audition anyway just to say at least I gathered the courage to audition. I had my doubts that I would get in, but once I played my last note and took a breath, Mr. Preddice (the conductor of the Principal Orchestra) said “Wow, what a lovely tone. Why don’t you join us?” It took me a second to realize that I made it in. I still doubt myself constantly but I definitely consider my MYO audition as one of the best examples of how with hard work and dedication I can achieve my goals. Once I was accepted into MYO, I began considering music as a serious future career, and I knew I would have to work incredibly hard to prepare, but I also knew that my MYO audition was my first step in my journey to a career in music and I was lucky enough to be accepted to the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and can now say I will be able to share the beauty of music with my students and community.