Reflective Essay: How Marching Band Changed My Life

My life has been full of many opportunities to participate in things that I love and these opportunities have taught me fabulous lessons. Through my persistent hard work in the Clark high school marching band I have been very fortunate to learn important lessons about positivity, service and respect. Being in my high school’s marching band has drastically changed my life for the better. I would not have made it through all the curve-balls that school has thrown at me had it not been for the marching band, which taught me to find the positive in any and every situation. Working out and making countless mistakes in the scorching Texas heat does not seem like the ideal place to learn about positivity, however that is exactly what it is. Having

Of course I was not lacking respect before marching band, I respected my parents, my teachers, and many others, but marching band changed my idea of respect for the better. In the band, like I explained before there is a copious amount of student leaders, and these leaders are constantly criticizing your marching, your playing, and anything they can in order to make you better. At first this criticism is very hard to take, everyone feels like they are doing their best, but then someone, only two years older than you, is coming around telling them that they are not good enough. It is very arduous to appreciate and respect that criticism however, that is something band teaches people. I never before believed that respect and criticism would go together, but now I understand know several ways that they do. First, leaders need to respect the efforts of others in order to criticise them in an effective way, and secondly, when receiving criticism people need to respect that there are changes that need to be made in order to be better.
Overall the marching band has taught me many lessons that I will carry with me throughout my life, and the three that stand out to me are having the ability to display positivity to help make it through anything, how to serve others as a leader and when it won’t be seen, and respecting things other than people, for example, the efforts of others and criticism. I consider these three lessons to all help build up my character, which was also greatly shaped by band, and will never be the