It's really funny when you exist in your own tiny community where you think you live at the top of the world. You're the best looking girl in school, the smartest student in class, the most talented performer in church or the funniest person in your group of friends. But when you step out of your school, classroom, house, or imagination and realize you're NOT the best,  it can be devastating. And it could be equally heart breaking when someone better than you steps inot what you thought was YOUR world.

My junior year in high school I audition for SCVA Honor Choir. This is a choir for which hundreds of students throughtout all of Southern California audition for. It is a rather demanding audition that requires various musical skills. By some chance of luck, I was accepted into this choir.

Back at Valley High School, I was one of the most knowledgeable musicians: intervals, chords, arpeggiated  chords, transposing music into a different key. But being with these new Southern California faces and musicians, I quickly realized that, though I may be the most knowledgeable in my music theory class of 30 or 20 something students, there was an entirely different world outside of building 16-1...a world where there are millions of musician better than me. Realizing this was refreshing but somewhat of a blow.

And having someone else, someone better, step into your perfect little world can be just as hard to deal with. After a year of being at the top with art song, SCVA Honor Choir, private voice lessons, and the lead of the musical, it was hard to see a better singer step into this world of mine. I discovered that all the talent I thought I had was nothing more than herd work, experience, and seniority, traits that will just not cut it in music. A new student came into our choir/ musical theater class. What took me three years of work took her less than a semester to accomplish. Everything I once had was then all hers.

In the world there is always someone better than you and that's a fact of life we all have to face.

I'm not perfect, not even in a single area of life. I'm only 18 and I have a lot of growing to do. There is a world outside MY world; when I finally explore this world and I know how to deal when I discover someone who is better than me, I know I will be the best inspiration for a student I have yet to teach, the perfect wife for the love I have yet to marry, and the best mother I can be for a child that has yet to be created.