Seventh Stage Fright Essay

I’ve always had bad stage fright. Ever since I was young, performing or even speaking in front of an audience has been incredibly hard for me. In seventh grade, I let this fear have power over me. Before performing the piece we’ve been practicing in front of Solo & Ensemble judges, each year we have an orchestra recital in front of our parents to help us prepare. The purpose is to allow us to adjust to playing for other people and to give our teachers an idea of how ready we are. When I was in seventh grade, I had never done this before. My trio wasn’t as good as I had hoped and I was so afraid of sounding bad in front of all my friends and their families. The day of the recital, my nervousness started to grow and grow until I felt like there was no possible way I could go to this recital and be okay. I became absolutely certain that it would be horrible …show more content…
Whenever I thought about it, what bothered me the most was that it was a completely avoidable B that I got from running away from my problems and being too afraid to try. I realized that by being scared of failing, I had failed—failed to prove to myself that I could perform well if I just tried. This taught me that the only way I am guaranteed to not succeed is if I give up. I decided that I would show to my orchestra teachers, my classmates and myself that I could play cello. My stage fright didn’t go away, and I still had trouble finding the courage to play in front of people, but I kept doing it. Each year since then I have prepared solo, small ensemble, and large ensemble pieces for the contest and participated in the pre-contest recital. I’ve continued to improve at cello and learned to manage my fear better. This year for our winter concert, I’m a featured player and I’m dong a solo. My seventh grade experience devastated me at the time, but it taught me a really valuable lesson that has made me more successful in all areas of my