I have officially been at college for a little over a month now, and I can honestly say that I still feel like I am at an extended summer camp. I know it seems like this because I’m surrounded by all of these wonderful new people, and all of my classes are focused on what I love- music. Ever since I chose to attend Baylor and chose to major in music education, I’ve gotten these two questions repeatedly- Why Baylor? Why Music Education? I’ve been reflecting on both of those for a while, and since I’ve already discussed my reasons for choosing Baylor in a previous article, I’d like to just write about why I chose music in this one.

To explain why I chose to be a music major, I have to go back to the beginning and explain everything that music has done for me. If I’m truly starting from the beginning, then I guess I need to start with my three-year old self who started dance. From the very first day of class, I loved how I felt when I was just going crazy dancing around and singing to the music. As I grew up, I loved that I was able to express myself through my dances, but I also found a love for expressing my love of music through playing an instrument. In elementary school, I toyed around with piano, guitar, and voice lessons- all of which I loved, but I didn’t truly begin to fall in love with the power of music until I started playing the flute in sixth grade beginner band.

In sixth grade, I was a shy little girl with social and performance anxiety who always walked with her head down, so at the beginning of the year it was really hard for me to play in class as I was so afraid of being mocked and ridiculed by my peers if I wasn’t good enough. I even remember my teacher holding my head up for me, and my grade went from failing to a 100 because of it. I guess I didn’t really see much progress in my anxiety during my sixth grade year, but I did grow more in love with playing the flute. Seventh grade came along and I didn’t play much at all in band, and I missed my sectionals almost every week because I was so incredibly terrified to play in front of my band director and my peers. In eighth grade, I began to play a little more because I had to since I was in the top band, and our band had been selected as the 3A Honor Band and was going to perform at the Texas Music Educators Association Convention that year. Throughout high school my performance anxiety got a little better every year, but something like having an asthma attack or breaking down in tears during an audition would always bring me back to square one.

It wasn’t until my junior year that I really began to conquer my performance anxiety. I had some amazing band directors during my time in band who not only taught me how to play my instrument and to love music, but also taught me about life. I combined that with my childhood dream of a career that helped people, and I realized the only thing I could see myself doing was becoming a band director, so that I could be an influential person to future generations of musicians as my band directors were for me. When I told my lesson teacher this, we went to work- not only on improving my playing to a college level, but also on conquering my performance anxiety. As I began to overcome my performance anxiety, I realized that I was also conquering my social anxiety as well. I not only became a more confident musician, but I became a more confident person in general. Music was teaching me lessons that were solving so many years of anxiety, fear, and insecurities. Now, I’m not saying I’ve completely conquered my anxieties- social or performance- because there are still situations when I’m completely terrified, but the progress I’ve made is unbelievable. At the end of my senior year, I played a senior solo at my last band concert while battling near-pneumonia at that. Basically what that meant was that I played a solo on my flute with band accompaniment, and I had even less air than my normal struggling asthmatic lungs normally have. My sixth grade self could have never even imagined that scenario in my wildest dreams, and that is probably my proudest accomplishment to date- the fact that I was able to overcome all of that fear and anxiety and just play from my heart in front of all three of our high school’s concert band ensembles and their family and friends. In my last lesson with my private lesson teacher who I took lessons from sixth to twelfth grade, my lesson teacher told me that it was such an incredible experience for her to see me go from this shy little girl who would never talk to her to this confident young woman who shared almost everything with her, and I only have her, my band directors, and music to thank for that.

What I hope everyone gets out of my story is this:

• Music is incredible. It has such an incredible healing power, and it can help you in so many ways throughout your life, and you may not even realize it, so I highly encourage everyone to get involved in band, choir, orchestra, dance, or some type of musical activity where you have a chance to grow in confidence and express yourself in music, so that you can experience this for yourself.
• Whatever you chose to do with your life, I hope you love it because it would really be a shame to waste all the time and money that college consumes on something that you aren’t completely in love with doing.

So lastly, I’d like to thank every band director I’ve had through the years and my private lesson teacher, Peggy Russell, for instilling a love of music in me, teaching me so many valuable lessons, and for believing that the little girl with so much anxiety could overcome it and be a music major at an incredible university.

Nicole Matthys