This I Believe

                This I Believe...

               When I began to think about what I believed in, I really couldn’t come up with a topic that I could write an essay about. It is easy to list things that I believe in- friendship, God, family, etc.- but none of those things I could write about wihtout making it cheesy. I had been over analyzing the assignment to create an essay with super-deep meaning. The answer as to what to write about had been there all along. Band.

                I, like everyone else, started school band in the sixth grade. We picked our instruments about a month into school. I picked to play the alto saxophone, not knowing that it would affect my life in high school three years later. The reason I originally took band was because my brother and sister both took band, and all of my friends were going to take it. I don’t know what I would have done without it.

                It is sad the number of people that actually join high band. There are those who join because it is something that they really want to do, and there are those who’s parents make them do it. The ones who are forced, always end up liking it by the first football game. My friend, Kyle, played sax with me in middle school band, and his parents forced him to try it in high school for at least one year. Now he loves band and would never miss a marching season.  Our annual eighth grade night is this Friday. It is a football game where the eighth graders from our school district join us in the stands and play with us. This is an attemt to recruit them to join high school band. Unfortunately, of the seventy-two eighth graders coming, we will be lucky to have fifteen or twenty join next year. If we could manage to get all of them to try it for at least one year, none of them would quit, and we would have a giant band.

                If I hadn’t taken band in middle school, I would have come to high school without many of my good friends. One of my friends is a senior in the saxophone section this year, and if I hadn’t chosen to play saxophone in middle school I would have never been as close to him as I am.  Being part of band gives you a certain feeling of accomplishment, one that you can’t necissarily get from anything else. Most people believe that band is social suicide. It happens to be the complete opposite. The band starts practicing three weeks before school starts, and when school started my freshmen year I already new thirty or forty upper classmen, that would talk to me in the hall and hang out with me. With the marching band being one giant family, no one feels left out. Suprisingly, students (at hoggard at least) like the band and don’t make fun of us.

                Band programs in high school help you academically and socially. Without band many high schoolers wouldn’t know as many people. My belief is that everyone should try band in high school, because of its social benefits and the impact that It can have on your high school career.

I believe in being with the marching band, with my church praise band, and with my piano teacher playing   music.

 I believe in working hard in school and in life whether I receive a reward or not.

I believe in Backpacking with my family for four days in the woods, sleeping in tents, and messing around     in the river.

I believe in spending all day on the lake casting a worm into the water waiting for a fish to take the bobber   under.

I believe in being there for your friends and being the person that they can always rely on.

I believe in going on mission trips with my youth group to help less fortunate people in the country.

I believe in doing what I say I am going to do- in keeping promises.

I believe that if you can’t be on time, be early.

I believe that a good education is priceless.

I believe that everything happens for a reason.

http://thisibelieve.org/essay/89028/  -- Favorite Essay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0lRBTsKL0A  -- Favorite Video Essay