A Challenge in My Life - Essay Example

A Challenge in My Life Since my early childhood I am found of music. I enjoyed playing piano, violin and oboe, and since my school times I wanted to join some ensemble or orchestra in order to satisfy my ambitions and to develop as a musician. An old friend of mine arranged a meeting for me with the concertmaster of a string orchestra, which was formed from students and former students of Music College in my city. I have passed the trial and soon became a new member of this orchestra, though I had never been a student of the College.

I was very happy and optimistic, because I got such a great opportunity for my personal growth. I decided to make every effort in order to advance in this orchestra before I finish my high school. In the beginning, I decided to develop my own skills and abilities as a musician. That is why I started working very hard on improving my technique and performing skills, but within some first months there was no proper result and I was still sitting somewhere deep behind the second violins.Soon I have noticed that the majority of the musicians do not take their work in the orchestra seriously, that is why we could not reach some success.

The musicians used to come to rehearsals to spend some time, to have some fun or to fulfill their duties. Such situation started bringing real discomfort to me, because if something deserves to be dome, it has to be done well! Thinking about it, one day I decided to change my strategy and to use some completely new approach. I decided to direct my efforts not on my own improvement, but on improvement of the level of the whole orchestra. I created an improvised strategic plan in my mind, and started moving along this new way.

First of all, I made friends with two double-bass players. They were very nice guys and we proved to have a lot of common interests. I tired to do my best to motivate them for personal progress as a contribution for our collective success, and they seemed to be positively reacting on my attempts. Also, I got closer with other musicians of the orchestra, in particular, with one of our violists, Zoltan. He was totally crazy about modern classic music, especially surrealism in it, so we found many common points.

Soon he showed me some compositions of his own, and I was really overwhelmed with their maturity. I got some courage and one day asked for a talk with our conductor. I brought Zoltan to that meeting and we played the best works of his to our orchestra leader. He liked those pieces very much and expressed desire to play Zoltan's works. We had some pleasant talk; I showed my playing piano and managed to impress our conductor. Besides, he praised me for my efforts and positive influence on the whole group, and I was extremely honored.

Very soon he introduced two compositions of Zoltan to our orchestra. After some first rehearsals it became clear that they brought extra motivation to our musicians. Fortunately, I received the score and the place among the other first violins, and it was real victory for me! We started spending more and more time together with my friends from the orchestra, sometimes having practicing sessions together. It reflected on our collaborative work very fast. Soon we could demonstrate much better performance, than it was before.

The peak of my work in the orchestra happened, when our concertmaster offered me to play solo part in a new composition for piano and string orchestra. The most incredible thing was: I was offered to play piano! This was a sign of enormous trust and confidence of our leaders in my abilities, and I will never forget the feelings I had during our concert performances. Those were the days of my life!I do not plan to continue my music career, because now I am extremely interested in management and economy, which are directly connected with my study and current job.

Nevertheless, the above mentioned experience became very useful and priceless for me. I have learnt how to set up a goal and to achieve it, improved my communication skills, developed some personal qualities of leader, experienced the need of courage and devotion when achieving goals, and learnt how to create motivation for making team-work better.