Take Chances, Make Mistakes, Get Messy!

I believe in taking chances, making mistakes, and getting messy. All throughout elementary school, science teachers loved showing us episodes of The Magic School Bus. It was intended to help us learn lessons and stay interested, but let's be honest, they would show us it because it was the only thing to keep us quiet for an extended amount of time. While that may have been the case, I did take a lesson from the show that the science teachers may not have been expecting. "Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy," is the legendary quote from the legendary Ms. Frizzle. She taught me that the only way to learn was to take chances, make mistakes, and perhaps get messy. This is the lesson that stuck with me.

After 8th grade, I was planning on quitting band. It had lost it's interest to me. The only reason I stayed in 8th grade was so I could go on the trip to Carowinds- after that, I was 100% sure that I was quitting. But I took a chance and I decided to stay in band. My whole reasoning behind it was "Well, I need something to do in high school besides work!" That was true. I didn't do much else in my freshman year besides band. So, I stayed in band. That year, my freshman year, band had begun to gain some of its appeal back, but it wasn't enough to keep me away from possibility of quitting. Marching band was fun, as was concert band but I just wanted something else to do. I wanted to quit, but yet again I stayed.

Sophomore year of band was much better than freshman year. I knew what I was doing and I liked band. The appeal was back. I made mistakes, but I knew how to pick myself back up from them. I found out what made band so irritating my freshman year, and I distanced myself from them. Long story short, I am in my junior year, 3rd year of marching band, and I am now the section leader. I never thought I'd get to this point. I often think about how I was going to quit and now I have a leadership position. If I hadn't taken the chance, if I hadn't made the mistake, if I hadn't gotten messy, I would have never gotten to this point. 

So to my science teachers who showed me The Magic School Bus and Ms. Frizzle who said the iconic quote, I thank you. And I will always "take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!"