| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | My most memorable experience from childhood was earning the role of principal percussionist in my region's Area-All State concert band. I scored 100 on my audition solo during my sophomore year of high school, and getting to perform with the best student-musicians my age at the time was a totally new experience for me. That was really a catalyst for my love of practicing and performing music, which continues to this day. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | I'm definitely closest with my sister. She is only a couple years younger than me, so we shared a very similar childhood, and can relate and reminisce on the experiences we've had. I have a great relationship with both my parents as well, but I talk to my sister the most frequently. Though we live in different states, we talk almost every day, often over a video game, when we can just share what's going on in our lives. I believe we have the same personality type, though it can often show in very different ways, and we always seem to know exactly how the other feels about any given topic. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | There are obviously a lot of characteristics I admire in people. If I had to choose a few that stand out to me, I'd have to say empathy, emotional intelligence, compassion, self-discipline, and dedication (whether to an art, profession, hobby, or anything else.) These are some traits that I consider to have a good amount of of myself, (though I'm working on dialing in my self-discipline,) so I feel like I can especially relate to, and learn from those who also display them, or are working towards it. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | This may not sound so funny at first, but the way my friends and I remember it is. When I was in 7th grade, I was in a minor accident in which I was thrown from an ATV I was driving. My helmet flew off of my head and I wound up fracturing the orbital floor of my left eye socket. I was completely fine and healed fully in a couple of weeks, though I always double-checked that my helmet was tightly secured prior to riding any time after that. What’s funny, looking back at the incident, is that it happened during the peak of the first major stage of puberty for me, when I was going through some of the most drastic physical changes to my appearance. When I returned to school after 2 weeks, I explained to my friends what had happened by saying that I had “broken my face.” Beginning later in high school, and continuing to this day, my friends refer to the accident as something that made me look better. I think it’s a combination of the goofy haircut I rocked in 6th grade and my very young-looking face at the time, compared with a more sensible haircut and some more pronounced bone structure in my later middle school years, but because this accident happened at around this transitional period, the incident is now known to myself, family, and friends, as the time I “remodeled” my face. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | If money TRULY wasn’t an issue then I’d choose to travel to space - perhaps to the moon. Before settling on my music major and physics minor in college, I majored in astronomy and physics. I’ve always had an intense interest in space and the cosmos, and I’d absolutely love the chance to get a small taste of just how massive the universe (and even our solar system) is. As a more reasonable choice, I would love to visit Pompeii. I definitely plan to visit Italy at some point regardless, and I’m enthralled by the idea of a millenia-old city, preserved just how it was during the time of Ancient Rome. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | When I have children of my own, I hope to inspire them to embrace their own passions, and to understand others. I've mentioned before that emotional intelligence is something that's important to me, and I’m confident that this is something I’ll pass on to my future children. I can’t think of anything more important than the ability to innately relate to one's peers. I also hope for them to have something they’re as passionate about as I am about something like music. |
