I can’t remember a time when I haven’t loved to sing. When I was little, I would make my little brother put on “performances” with me of Aladdin’s “A Whole New World” or Ace of Base’s “I Saw the Sign.” This love for singing and performing continued when I sang “Tomorrow” from Annie with an elementary school friend for our talent show and then in middle school when I was part of The Supremes in our school musical. My choir teachers always seemed to like me and encouraged me to continue with my singing. That is, until I got to high school.

When I signed up for Concert Choir, which was also the freshman choir, I felt like I had made it. On the first day, I sat in the back row with my two choir friends in the soprano section. Our choir director seemed nice at first. He was funny and joked openly about his baldness and his first time in choir as a squeaky tenor. He taught intensely and passionately, making us hold hands when we sang and sometimes close our eyes, which I know sounds corny, but it did seem to help us connect.

Early into the semester, though, his intensity turned into aggression. He would threaten to send students to the principal’s office for saying one word or for asking to go to the bathroom or for being too shy to sing solos in class. He would turn down the temperature of the room to 60 degrees because he thought it made us focus more, when all it made us focus on was how we could keep our feet warm with flip-flops on. Because I sat next to two of my friends, I got ridiculed a lot for talking, even though we would usually only be talking about how my partner or I were singing a note wrong.

The spring of my sophomore year, I went to state to compete in solo voice competitions and received a 1­—the highest rating. My choir teacher congratulated me, but I always felt he doubted my singing. I tried out for Chamber Choir, the elite small-group choir, later that spring. After being rejected, I went in to get my evaluation that he had promised us in order to improve for next year’s audition. After asking for it three times during a period of two weeks, he started yelling at me and told me that he never said I could have it. The fall of the following year, I tried out for the high school musical and didn’t even make the Chorus. When the audition for Chamber Choir came around again, my confidence was shot, and I was doomed to fail. I wanted to know how I could improve, but I began to think that it was more personal than anything else. The more I tried to figure it out, the further away I got from that goal, and the more I started to resent him. His tear-filled pep talks made me laugh and his arrogance made me roll my eyes. I started to make fake doctor’s appointments to avoid the class and thus avoid getting yelled at for getting a drink of water.

At the end of our junior year, we were told that we would get to go to Europe with the choir for spring break the following year. Being the typical high school student, I was reluctant to go on a school trip for my senior spring break. Most of my friends were going to Puerto Vallerta, Mexico. I preferred to partake in the nonstop tequila-sun-ocean fest that I knew I would miss out on if I went to Europe. My parents, however, pressured me into going on the choir trip because they loved the fact that they wouldn’t have to worry about their firstborn drinking herself into a coma.

With little explanation, my choir teacher decided to make me travel Europe with all of the juniors and sophomores on the trip instead of with my senior class. It felt like a punishment. Stubborn person that I am, though, I made the best of it and made friends with all of the underclassmen. Then, a couple days into the trip, I got caught drinking with some of them at an English pub. We were not allowed to sing for the next two concerts, and we had to be chaperoned wherever we went for two days.

At first, I didn’t think I’d care about not being able to sing for a couple of concerts, but as my fellow drinking buddies and I watched our peers from the audience, knowing every word and every part of every song, I regretted not being able to sing. My first concert back was in Cologne, Germany at a massive stone cathedral that had the best acoustics that our choir had ever experienced. The last song we sang was a piece of gospel music called “The Battle of Jericho.” At the end of that song is a long pause where every section of the choir loudly held a different note. Our director made us hold that note for what seemed like forever. Our unified sound echoed throughout the entire cathedral, bouncing in and out of every corner for about 45 seconds. We had sung that song 1,000 times before, but it was at that moment that I knew I was happy to be on the trip and to be a part of the choir.

I learned that day that I needed to be responsible for my actions and to stop being stubborn. I surprisingly became mad at myself for always blaming my teacher for taking the “fun” out of singing for me. I realized it wasn’t just him. It was me. At some point, I stopped caring about singing and choir. I was disappointed in myself for letting my resentment get in the way of what mattered. A choir is about the group, and I realized that my relationship with the director had overshadowed that experience. I was in Europe, worrying about the one person who had held me back, instead of focusing on the opportunity that our choir was had.

From that day on, I started to like choir again, and I ended up leaving high school appreciating not necessarily the director, but the people in that choir. I had sung with lots of the students in that class for at least four years and grew into myself as a singer and as a person because of them. Freshman year of college, I signed up for choir again. This time, my choir director was everything that my high school director wasn’t. He rarely yelled, and when he did, we deserved it. I only stayed in choir for a year, but I’ve continued to sing in a band, and even just sing for my friends, because it’s what keeps me happy.