By the end of the first week of school, I was ready for another three month vacation. I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt that way. Between the homework given every day from the second day on, my brother’s two and a half hour football practices, and my own music lessons, it was crazy busy. Not to mention the looming prospect of the two full days of ‘Orchestra Welcome Weekend’ that was in a few weeks. Also, this had to have been one of the first years where one group of people didn’t stick together throughout most of the academic classes. For the past eight years, I have had some of the same people in all of my classes, which was very much a source of comfort to me. This year, though, it seems like the administration put all of our names in a ‘Wheel of Fortune’ spinner and let that choose who was in what class.

However, I realized something when I sat at one of my brother’s football practices. I had been listening to music on my phone when the song “Move Along”, by The All-American Rejects, came on.

            When all you got to keep is strong

            Move along, move along like I know you do

            And even when your hope is gone

            Move along, move along just to make it through

Now, my hope wasn’t completely gone, but the refrain really spoke to me. Sure, things seemed hard, and I felt like there was no end in sight when it came to the heaping mounds of work given out. If I kept moving on, though, as the song said, then I would eventually make it through this tough spot and get to something better.

So, the next day, I headed to school with the mantra of ‘move along, move along’ running through my mind. I have to say that since then, things have seemed to be a bit easier to get through. Math homework? Easy. Just work through it. Running laps in P.E.? More like run along. Social Studies quiz? Pssshhh. I studied the heck out of this material.

There’s one more thing that came out of my musical ponderings. I realized that listening to music was very, very helpful as a coping mechanism. It can help you to deal with the not-so-good stuff in life, and if you play music yourself, then that’s even better. Playing an instrument is a really good way to get all of your tension and emotions out in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone else. Well, unless you’re using someone’s head as a practice pad for percussion.