Cantare Con Vivo: My Key of Life

by: DR

Unlike most kids', my middle school years were easy. I think they were easy because I had a lot of experience with kids that age, so I guess I was used to the kind of behavior of these kind of students. I think it was also easy because the year before I had just attended my first few months of choir (Cantare Con Vivo) with teens that were at least two to three years older than me. I guess my experiences with choir have prepared me for my years of middle school.

When I first started choir I thought that the kids were going to be mean. Instead of trying to get to know them, I made a fool of myself acting out. This made it hard to get along with some of the kids in my choir. It took me three and a half months just to get along with them because of the way I acted in my first week. I realized that the people in my choir were not as mean as I thought they would be, so I guess I was judging a book by its cover.

When I started going to Claremont I acted the same so I guess I had not yet learned from my mistakes. I was acting as if I was better than everyone so I had problems with my first days of school. I had to ask my choir director for advice about fitting in, and she told me, “Don't act out. Just be yourself.” These experiences with choir have helped me improve in 6th and 7th grade.

Everything changed that summer, because I was being careless and irresponsible and got myself hit by a car. I had very few physical injuries, but I was diagnosed with amnesia. My mom took me home and I didn't remember anything, so I was afraid of everything around me. This all went away after a week because I started to remember my siblings that came to visit to help jog my memories. After that summer my life meant nothing to me because I felt like everything was going to fast so I just stopped trying. My life felt like it was going too fast so I stopped working in school.

Then I started choir again and it got easier. They helped me understand that life is going fast but that does not mean that I have to stop working hard just because I'm growing up. So now, in the end of the year I am trying my hardest just to succeed so that I don't have to stay in the 8th grade for another year. My choir has helped me a lot as a person and as a singer. Cantare Con Vivo's motto is “Cantare Con Vivo: In the key of life.” It turns out that it really was the key to life for me.