It was on November 2nd in the early afternoon when I realized that I was completely and utterly screwed.

Okay, let me back it up. I’d known this was coming for about three months, after my admissions counselor for Coe College, told me that I’d been accepted into the school, and had the opportunity to audition in order to receive scholarship money. Ever since then, the date of November 2nd had been permanently seared into my brain. I’d dreamt of the day of the audition, and had become increasingly more stressed as the date inevitably approached. And finally, it was here. And I was terrified.

I took my seat on the stage of the Marquis Music Building, hands trembling so badly that it took me multiple tries to turn to the correct page of my sheet music. All too soon, the pianist began the introduction to my first song. The beginning was like a jubilant shout, followed by a slower, sadder section. The sound came out clear, confident, and perfect.

But in the interlude, a small section where the pianist played and I did not, I heard her speeding up, faster than I’d anticipated. And I knew that my fingers would not be able to keep up with the multiple runs that I would have to play.

In that moment, I saw my life flash before my eyes. I had been preparing for this day for months, and it was all about to fall apart. My eyes stung with angry tears; I was no longer nervous or scared anymore, I was pissed. That, after countless hours of practice, I was about to be usurped by some seventy-year-old pianist who couldn’t keep a steady beat. That all the hours of lessons, practice, and rehearsals had been for nothing. I began the next section hesitantly, and just as I’d worried, it was too fast. My fingers stumbled in an attempt to keep up, palms sweaty, barely hanging on, and I finished my audition with no real sense of accomplishment. Face burning, I exited the auditorium, trying to decide if I wanted to scream, cry, or throw up, and in what order.

Five days later, the audition was a black hole in my memory. I’d simply refused to think about it; chose instead to lock it away somewhere in my brain along with my two years of Latin knowledge and memories of all the embarrassing things I did as a child. It was not until my cello teacher asked, “Well, how did the audition go?” that I forced myself to relive those moments. The panic, anger, and utter humiliation. But recounting it to my teacher made it sound trivial, and I’ve finally realized why:

I could not control the pianist, or how she had chosen to play, I could only control with how I’d dealt with the situation. I was worrying about things that were no longer in my control, which was only adding unnecessary stress to my life. My teacher reassured me that the audition judges would not hold me accountable for a rushing pianist’s mistakes when considering my position at the school. For the last time, I breathed in the memory of the audition; all of the humiliation, anger, and guilt I’d been carrying with me for the following days, and exhaled.