A fruitless audition, a lesson learned

My daughter Natalie is a musician. She plays the violin, and she has a beautiful singing voice. Last March, she sang in an all-county choir. The sheer beauty of that group’s sound brought tears to my eyes. When we are in church, she loves to belt out the Mass hymns in her lovely voice. Next to her, the idiot, tone-deaf dad “sings” way off key and it makes her laugh.

Anyway, about the violin: Natalie loves to play, and she practices it on a regular basis. About a month ago, she decided she wanted to try out for the all-county orchestra. This involved learning a new and somewhat complicated piece of music; and A LOT of practice. For her all-county choir last year, she was chosen to participate – an honor, to be sure, one that she earned through hard work in her elementary school music classes. For this one, she had to pass muster at a county-wide audition, at a middle school a half hour away.

Every day in our living room, our favorite sixth-grader worked on that new song. Sure, we had to prod her every once in a while to play for a few minutes. But mostly, she took the initiative to work at it and practice it. The original audition date was postponed a week due to the snowstorm, so she had a bonus week to practice. Most athletes I’ve coached know the two talking points I preach above all others are preparation and effort. Probably, they get weary of hearing it. Similar messages are shared at home. My oldest son, Joey, is at the “rolling of the eyes, yeah I’ve heard that dad” stage when it comes to receiving that message. So it was gratifying to see that Natalie sort of gets the preparation thing.

As audition day approached last Saturday, Natalie admitted to the butterflies in the stomach feeling. At the audition, there were middle school kids from all over the county vying for the same spots as Natalie and her friends. The warm-up room was filled with the cacophony of hard-working kids like Natalie and her orchestral friends. We arrived extra early (my kind of kid!) to the audition so she could warm up and practice. Her wonderful and caring music teacher took time out of her weekend to help her students and assuage their frazzled nerve endings as they had to take the walk down the long hallway to the audition room. The teacher said Natalie’s audition went well. She said she was not perfect, but was she composed under pressure, and that she will benefit from the high-stakes experience for an 11-year-old.

On Monday, Natalie found out that no one from her school that auditioned had made the all-county. This did not come as a surprise. It is highly competitive. In addition, her teacher pointed out that many other districts start their students a year earlier than our district and practice daily, as opposed to the 2-3 times a week regimen in our district. Hey. This is no excuse. Just facts. We try not to feel sorry for ourselves when, week in and week out, we compete against track and cross country programs equipped with access to great facilities or better on-campus facilities of their own (anything is better than nothing) and more athletic aid than we have. Preparation and effort. It’s all we can control.

Natalie was bummed out about not making it, but she took the news in stride and did not feel sorry for herself. I’m sure it helps to have peers in her class going through the same experience. It is an excellent lesson for our children to learn. Prepare to the best of your ability, give it your best effort. But that guarantees nothing. Sometimes (a lot of times), you can do all that stuff right, and the end result is not always favorable. In the “good job, good job” mentality that our kids grow up in – where praise is heaped upon them from a very early age, sometimes too often and too unwarranted – that lesson is a good one to learn.