Guitar Troubles by Jonathan

Guitar Troubles by Jonathan - August 2026 Scholarship Essay

A time in my life where I had to learn from feedback happened during my junior year guitar class. In this class, we had four days to write and perform an original song for our final exam, with the option to work in groups. However, at the same time we were instructed to write our songs, we had an ensemble piece we needed to memorize. I collaborated with a group of three other classmates, and we decided to first tackle memorizing the ensemble piece. We figured if we took the first two classes to memorize the song, we would have the remaining two classes to write lyrics and chords for our original piece and wouldn't need to work on our final outside of school hours. We were able to meet our goal of memorizing the ensemble piece, however, on the day of the third class two of my partners had gotten sick, leaving us only one day to complete a completely new song from scratch.

On the day of the final, we had to scramble to find a chord progression online and had to improvise lyrics, which was definitely more stressful than necessary. The feedback we received from our guitar teacher was that the song "felt rushed" and "lacked character". While, thankfully, we were able to rewrite the song and perform once more after class, that feedback helped reinforce to me how important paper time management is. Had we set aside time to work on our song outside of class, our song would have been much better. As I continue to grow in my personal life, I will make a conscious effort to remember feedback such as that from my guitar teacher and better prioritize time-sensitive tasks.