My Memory Vignette

I had been waiting to walk through the doors of Denver School of the Arts ever since I received that letter in the mail. It came about two months after the audition and as soon as I opened the envelope and found out that I had been accepted, I knew this was the beginning of a long musical career. My backpack was filled with school supplies and I had just bought new reeds for my saxophone. But what I didn’t know was that as soon as I walked into that band room, I was going to be in for the surprise of my life.

I had a student model saxophone and had only been taking lessons for a few months. The kids in that room had thousand dollar professional horns and were all sitting around comparing stories from the summer. They all looked up when I walked in and gave me a look that made me cringe and want to walk away. All my life, I had always been the best saxophone player everywhere I played. But suddenly, in this group of musicians, I was the ugly duckling and I was worried that I would never grow into a beautiful swan.

That first day was the most disorienting I ever experienced at Denver School of the Arts. I was thrown into a situation that was completely foreign to me, and I feared I would always be the odd woman out. Luckily, as time went by, I learned a lot of skills from the people who looked at me funny that day. And best of all, the next year I got to see the next batch of ugly ducklings hatch out of their shells. Only this time, I got to be the beautiful swan who took them under my wing.