Undergraduate / 'my school chorus' - common app essay [4]

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

The bond between me and the piano is indissoluble. With it I played, learned and enjoyed. In memory, I was lifted up onto the piano stool, with feet suspended, choosing to play it, not the violin, simply because I could sit during the performance. That year, I was four in kindergarten. The sable skin of that wooden giant beside me dazzled in sunlight, and I stared in confusion. How my five fingers can play the seven notes from 'do' to 'si', I barely understood. And my voyage out of ignorance and into the wonder thus began.

I played the children's tune cheerfully and unmindfully as any kid would do, not knowing its meaning. To me, it was the movement of fingers and its value only appeared when a teacher asked, "What are you good at?" And I would proudly claim, in my peers' admiration, "Piano!" It never dawned on me that this little trick would demand patience and pain to improve. Until one day, I signed up for a competition.

I would play for my school chorus, and my performance suddenly became not a demonstration of myself but a support to my friends' success. It left me no excuse for any slip. I went back home, seized a fistful of rice into a bowl and took one grain out after I practiced once. My plan was to get out all the grains until I achieved my excellence. When my hands were hot in perspiration, I cooled them in water and came steadily back. I didn't want to let others down.

I strived to keep trying, never knew that miracles would come. When the notes eventually blossomed harmonically upon my fingers, I seemed to understand why some people craved for music. It was like to set free a song locked inside. The notes danced and set up in me the hum of delight like summer dreams. Practice was no longer painful, not even noticeable, for I was lost in the feeling of the pages burst into music in my hands.

In the final, when the sound of the last note came to an end, I saw the judges smiled their approval. My friends pat on my shoulder, and I was enthralled by a harmony between myself and the people around me. With the songs still playing in my head, I was carried away by a sympathetic vibration between inside and outside. It was a surpassing joy.

As time passed by, music had provoked in me an answering vibration to life. What offers me joy might be a bird song or a Bach sonata or the purl of water over stone. It might be a line of poetry, the stroke of a painting, or a gentle smile on an old lady's face, yet in each case the same surge of gratitude and happiness wells up in me. I am thankful to the piano, my faithful companion, for the delight it brings. It reminds me to strive for my dreams of wonders, and spreads my happiness to the people around.

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