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Minnesota Piano Contest Research Paper

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For the second time, I tried to advance to the finals of the Minnesota Piano Contest. This year, I finally achieved my goal. Early this year, I competed against other people in my age category. There are two rounds involved in the Piano Contest, a preliminary round, and a Final Contest round. If you make it past the Final Contest round, you get to participate in the Honors Concert. This year, I should have been in the Junior B level (11 - 12 year olds), but instead, I ended up in the Intermediate A level (13 - 14 year olds). This was because the previous year, I had made it past preliminaries, and to the Final round, so I had to be moved up to the higher level. This was a challenge for me, because the music that I had to learn was above …show more content…

It got to the point where I wanted to drop out. I considered it for about a week before I brought it up to my mom. My mom, of course, said that if I didn’t really want to participate in Contest, that she wouldn't force me to do it, but that I should talk to my piano teacher first, to see if she could help me. The next week at my lesson, I discussed with my teacher that I was having trouble with the piece and that I didn’t feel that I could play it. We went back to the beginning, she walked me through it, and wrote some notes in my music. Instead of having me work on two sections of the piece like I normally would, she had me focus on the first section. We did the same with the other two sections of the piece. It was a lot easier to learn, but I was still having a lot of trouble with it, and I was not …show more content…

I learned that you should not underestimate yourself, because you are capable of so much more than you realize. I also learned not to jump to conclusions. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that I wouldn’t make it past the preliminaries, but with hard work and determination I was able to make it to the Honors Recital for the first time. The third and most important lesson that I learned was to not give up. To give up is to lose before you even start. You cheat yourself out of what you could have accomplished. Growing up, I’ve always been told not to give up. Sometimes these words are easy to say, but hard to accomplish. This experience has shown me what can happen if you apply yourself and work hard. Had I given up, I wouldn’t have gotten to experience the once in a lifetime opportunity of the Honors Recital. Whenever I’m in a situation where I’m ready to give up, I will just remember how I chose to keep going during those difficult months to help me get through it. Don’t ever assume that you know that a situation is going to turn out bad, because sometimes, you just never

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