When I first arrived in August, I expected 7th grade to be a little harder than 6th grade.

I soon realized that 7th grade was a huge transition! I had to adjust to my classes, the new lunch time, and the most painful, the amount of homework. Homework was devastating. I had homework every day in almost every single class. The amount of time I spent on my math homework was about and hour or so. I spent so much of my free time on homework. Three hours per day, and many more hours over the weekends.

Although, by October I was back in the groove. I adapted to where my classes were and the lunch time, but I had not adapted to the large amounts of homework. I still had hours and hours of homework and I would always stay up until 10:30 to 11:15 (and yes I know for some people this isn’t late). I had adapted to everything except homework.

Eventually, I learned I had to be a diligent worker and part of that was turning my work in on time. I also learned I have to put my name on all of my papers or face consequences. Now, the school year is coming to a close and I have learned a lot.

In seventh grade, I’ve learned to conjugate Spanish verbs and solve equations with negative exponents.

I walk into the piano store, not knowing what to expect. I see only a few other kids standing in line. I sit on one of the several piano seats in the store. A man comes up to my mom and I asking for our music. I give him my sheets of music and he says, “I’m sorry, but you can’t compete in the competition. You must have a book, not sheets. The judges are very strict about this. It’s not your fault, your teacher should’ve known this.” Of course I don’t blame my teacher. In fact I probably forgot what my teacher said about the competition. I still got to play in front of a judge and that made me happy.

As I sat on the small piano bench, I listened to all of the other people play. They were all 1 million times better than me. My mom said that they practice for 5 hours a day. You see, I only practice for 30 minutes and only on the weekends. In a way I’m lucky my mom doesn’t make me practice for 5 hours a day.

Finally, after the longest and most complicated piano song I’ve ever heard was over, it was my turn. I headed into the room. The room was fairly vacant. There were only a few chairs and at the end of a the room sat a piano in front of a sky back-round. I gave my judge my 3 sheets of music and shakily climbed up the very few steps. I sat at the piano hoping for nothing but a good performance and let my fingers fall onto the keys.

I played throughout my first song and hit accurate notes. There were only a few mistakes. Then came the next song. Still a little shaky from my first song, I played. Yet again I only made a few mistakes. I climbed down the stairs and my judge said, “That was short and sweet.”

That was it. That’s all he said. No advice or critiquing. I’m still not sure if that was a good sign or a bad sign, but all I know is that I did ok. I hope I get to be as advanced as the kids who played before me.