Growing in Confidence Music has always been a huge part of my life. It started when I was five years old and I became fascinated with piano. I started taking piano lessons once a week and instantly fell in love with the instrument. From that point on, I fell in love with music too. I began singing in choir as well as teaching myself guitar and ukulele. I only struggled with one thing. In the music world, fear of judgment and criticism can make any musician lose confidence. Since I was little, I would never perform in front of anyone and I still struggle to do it now. As I grew older, I realized that this fear of performing in front of others was something I needed to work on. I started in choir when I was in eighth grade and I have grown so much in confidence thanks to my teacher. She has helped me tremendously in gaining the confidence that I needed to perform in front of others. She knew that I had the vocal talent to perform and did everything to help me with this fear. When I first entered that choir class, I was very shy and made sure no one could hear me when we were singing. Since that first day, I am now able to do solos in the class with confidence. I realized that that fear of performing went away when I was with people I was comfortable with. I knew that my confidence could only grow with lots and lots of practice. I started voice lessons when I was in tenth grade outside of school. Since choir was typically only classical music, I started working on a completely different genre with my voice. I decided to shift to musical theater. This was a huge learning experience for me as the vocal technique is very different from classical training. I loved working on something new and expanding my vocal abilities. The only problem with singing musical theater was that I had no acting experience. That’s when I decided to join the school’s musical. I auditioned for the musical and ended up landing an understudy role for one of the leads and a spot in the ensemble. This was a shock for me as I had never had any experience with theater. I remember being very nervous because I realized that if I had to go onto stage as a lead that would mean that I would have to perform and sing in front of people. I had only ever sung in front of a class of around fifteen people. However, I knew that I could do it. I knew that I had gained so much confidence from my teacher and my friends. Although I never got to go on as a lead, I had the best experience being in the ensemble and getting to perform with a family. As I began thinking about what I wanted in the future, I realized that I loved the singing aspect of musical theater, but I wasn’t strong enough with my acting skills. I shifted my focus to wanting to do something with commercial music. I started thinking about how I could have a career in singing background vocals for someone or possibly producing music. I knew that this was exactly what I was looking for. Everyone’s musical journey is different and I’ve learned that I want to share my talent with others. I have grown so much in confidence through the years and I couldn't have done it without my amazing choir teacher and friends.