Before, after, and why it worked.

I always hated the word tacet.

Why? Composers use tacets—a kind of elongated rest—to instruct musicians to not play for an entire movement or section of music. To me, this felt like the musical equivalent of shoving me into a corner and telling me I was in time-out. As a trombonist, the audacious oxymoron of 'playing rests' was something I simply never understood.

When I started playing the trombone in sixth grade, I saw mastering the instrument as a challenge; I was motivated by the prospect of playing increasingly difficult music. In the band room, I embraced the stereotypical boisterousness of other trombonists, but in the practice rooms, I found happy, lonesome solace— just me and my trombone.

My quick progression soon whisked me away from wind ensembles into the uncharted territory of advanced, audition-based symphony orchestras. But I couldn't evade the dreaded tacets! Although I understood the necessity of rests in music, it was still difficult to bring myself to have to sit through three hours of rehearsal just to play for twenty minutes.

Tacet. Tacet. Tacet. They seemed to follow me everywhere, like determined ghosts. I took my professionalism too seriously to allow myself to get distracted, and so in rehearsals my devotion to the music left me perched uncomfortably on my stool, glaring silently at the tacet written on the second movement of Gounod's ballet suite.

Then, that five-letter word seemed to leap off the page into my very life. When the pandemic lockdown began, I received email after email of music cancellations. The band room, my magical sanctuary, was out of reach, and my music friends fell out of touch. Virtual playing wasn't the same. In the silence of the lockdown, I felt the boisterous, energetic trombonist within me slipping away, being replaced by a quiet, tacet shadow.

As I was hopelessly surrounded by darkness, a flame of hope appeared.

Every musician in the Bay Area dreams of joining the prestigious San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, and I was no exception. Coached by San Francisco Symphony musicians and rehearsing in the magnificent Davies Symphony Hall, the orchestra, with its global reputation in youth symphonies, boasted the highest level of musicianship accessible to me. With my heart in one hand and my trombone in the other, I began the audition process.

After hours spent recording and constantly refreshing my inbox, I was overjoyed to receive an acceptance letter, although I wasn't able to actually play in Davies Hall until over a year later.

It didn't matter; this accomplishment rekindled my spirit and gave me a new home. I quickly became a part of the active online community of SF Youth musicians, playing games together, writing bizarre fan-fiction, and having unforgettable late-night chats. Filled with an invaluable sense of belonging, I found my authentic self emerging from the tacet shadow.

Joining the orchestra's second concert cycle last spring, I was the assistant principal for Gustav Holst's The Planets. Although tacet for four entire movements—34 minutes—sitting in such a pristine concert hall with my favorite people and playing one of my favorite pieces, I found comfort in my silence.

The concert's most memorable part was in the sixth movement: Uranus, The Magician. I joined the section in projecting four colossal, ringing notes across the hall, each played with the utmost charisma. As I counted through my rests, my ears perked up at the bassoons' playful skipping and downward scales from the trumpets, building into the brilliant French horn soli that shook my soul to the core. The timpani's thunderous rolls brought the whole orchestra to a raging gallop as I blasted out two climactic, gut-wrenching notes.

Tacet helped me transcend ink on a page to understand the beauty behind silence, and my newfound friends reignited my passion. I may have only played 14 of the 159 notes in the score—but for the first time, I finally played my rests.

My image of a successful college experience is filled with community engagement as I gain an education to serve others. I'll apply my learning experience to business projects, volunteering, and student organizations by switching between classroom and industry.

The Tepper School of Business attracts me with its encouragement for startups through alumni connections and its Innovation & Entrepreneurship minor. I admire Tepper's flexibility in providing concentrations like Global Economics and Business. Giving students time to explore and narrow down their interests provides me an opportunity to specialize and succeed in my passions. I'm eager to take hands-on courses on acquiring venture funding and pushing out prototypes. As I build on those foundations, I can create a venture meaningful to others, such as addressing food insecurity through new farm distribution channels or an organization aiding nonprofit funding campaigns.

Project Olympus incubator and Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship forward my goal to actively turn my ideas into reality by helping me identify markets and network with investors with opportunities like the Maker Workshop. I'm drawn to CMU's student organizations like the Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Association and Scottie Ventures, which provide networking bootcamps and investment workshops.

The Dietrich College Institute for Politics and Strategy intrigues me with courses like ECO 73427 Sustainability, Energy, and Environmental Economics, and 84-605 The Future of Warfare. Outside of classes, opportunities like the Meeting the Minds Symposium give me a venue to be inspired by campus research and innovations, gaining new perspectives on how others use research to investigate. By facilitating transparency of information, more social progress can be made.

From my classes, I'll apply what I learn as a volunteer or intern for local nonprofits like Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh. With a fulfilling college career, my perspective on entrepreneurship, civil engagement, and social sciences will be expanded.

Perplexion was an emotion I simply couldn't wipe off of my face. Having just moved to America, the learning environment was absolutely overwhelming—I didn't understand a single thing others said to me, and I had no clue how to ask for help. I accepted defeat, resigning to the idea that my English couldn't improve much more, and tried to not speak it as much as I could manage.

But in the English Language Development (ELD) class, I found myself surrounded by students like me, speaking with stutters and heavy accents. Thanks to my English classes in China that put me relatively ahead, I felt for once that I wasn't the weakest link, extending a helping hand to correct their pronunciation mistakes and grammar assignments. Eventually, their accents seemed to dissipate, and their test scores improved. I couldn't help but smile—my efforts paid off in others' improvement.

Knowing that I was able to help others, I figured there's no way I couldn't help myself. With my efforts, I soon envisioned myself becoming just as good as any native English speaker. My afternoons became filled with vocabulary memorization, and my evenings with grammar studies. Something that I never would've even considered, reading books, became a regular and enjoyable usage of my free time. My once-hesitant demeanor in holding conversations turned into that of confidence. To my pleasure, I was out of ELD before even completing middle school.

In my sophomore year, I eagerly joined my school's Speech and Debate team—I hoped that my casual conversational support for watermelon being the best fruit could amount to something greater. After vigorous preparation for the first debate tournament, I was ecstatic when the judge declared my team the winner. But I knew I wasn't done yet.

I spent countless hours practicing, honing my skills of rebuttal and counterargument, and soon found myself promoted to varsity. Whether faced with tough questions during the infamous phase of cross-examination or life in general, a confident smile triumphs over my once-perplexed expression.