I love my school. I love the values and Benedictine rule it follows. Throughout my first semester here, I’ve learned about their four key values (faith, reason, community, service) and how I can incorporate those values in my life. I love the small class sizes, the student/teacher relationships, and how easily it is to navigate on a smaller campus. I love the faculty and staff, and I love the friends that I’ve made in the first few months that I’ve been on campus. However, the college I attend doesn’t offer one of the most important things that I was looking for in my college search; a band. It doesn’t offer me, or any students, any kind of band program. It's lacking the appearance of a marching band, a concert band, and it has a rarely seen pep band. Curious to why this is important to me?

Before coming to SMU, I had played the trumpet for 8 years in concert band, played in pep band for 3 years, and my final year of band, I was the senior drum major for both bands at the high school I attended. Band taught me so much, and brought so many important people and values into my life.

To start, band brought me amazing friendships. The people involved in my band were the people I spent most of my high school time around. Because of all the time we spent together, we inevitably built relationships and friendships that I still cherish to this day. It’s said you make some of your best friends in band, and I can attest to that assumption. After spending so much time together, we have endless amounts of memories made from rehearsal, performances, even our travel to Florida last year. The memories we shared together every year, made me look forward to the next year of band rolling around. From sneaking into the band room when no one was in there, playing random tunes down the hallway when we were supposed to be “respecting others in class,” even eating the gum in our director’s desk, even though, to this day, we swear wasn’t us, band was the most unforgettable time I had in high school. This band wasn’t an hour of class every day, it was a family getting together doing something that we did the best, (don’t believe me? We got first place in our contest in Florida!). I don’t sound modest in that statement, but we practiced for a long time, performed our best, gave it our all, and I know some of us still get excited when we think back to the award ceremony last June.

Band gave me new opportunities and knowledge. Band really taught me alot about perseverance. Seating tests are nerve wracking, and if you don’t practice as much as you can, and give your best performance during that test, there’s no way that you’re getting that first chair spot. (To the people not in band, it’s like being the starting quarterback, except for your instrument section.) Even when you aren’t first chair, you learn more perseverance because you need to practice even more, so you can challenge yourself and move up in your section. You can also earn leadership positions and work on your leading skills. When I was the section leader my sophomore year, I learned to lead my section and encourage them, so that we could sound our best when it came to our public performances. When I was drum major my senior year, I learned to lead the entire band in a larger way. I learned to listen to opinions, change things to a more positive direction, and to have fun with the entire band. Perseverance and Leading are the two biggest things band taught me, values that everyone should have. In return, the band made me feel appreciated, which is a lot more I can say about some of my other leading positions I held in high school, especially the position I had where I was one of two students in a room full of adults.

Finally, band brings so many important people to your life, but one of the most important people it brings into your life is your band director. Your band director isn’t just a teacher, they soon become one of your greatest confidants. They become someone you can trust, and someone you can talk to about anything. Although I had four band directors in my band experience, I can say, without hesitation, that my last band director will forever be one of my greatest friends. They are there for advice, whether related to band or not. A few weeks ago, my old director, I mean friend, and I were snapchatting (friends, right?), when he gave me some wicked advice about “just doing me,” and although that’s a normal piece of advice, it’s different when it comes from an adult that you’re so appreciative of.

Now that you know why band is so important to me, you know why I’m so disappointed at the fact that Saint Martin’s University doesn’t have a band program. Band offers so many benefits, so why am I paying almost $50k in tuition a year at an institution that doesn’t offer such a great extracurricular?

My purpose for writing this article is to bring awareness to such a huge missing puzzle piece at SMU. Now, I know you’re thinking, “why are you at a school that doesn’t offer something you love?” Well, I can easily answer that. SMU offered me so much, a great education, a valued community, and yes, a great scholarship. Sometimes in life, you need to sacrifice things to see the bigger picture in the end. I had to sacrifice losing something that I loved, to go to a school with a lot of opportunity. SMU will not feel like the place for me until I’m able to join a band program. I know this sounds dramatic, but band wasn’t just an activity, it was a part of me.