Royals 6

During my freshman year of high school, after being recognized for my stellar musicianship and my involvement as a student at Harmony Project KC, I was offered the opportunity to lead a competitive fundraising chamber music group called The Honors Quartet. Harmony Project KC is a free after-school music program dedicated to serving underprivileged families in the Historic Northeast community of Kansas City, Missouri by giving the gift of music. I have been a participant in Harmony Project KC for 8 years, nearly half of my life. I first started attending when I was 9 years old, back when my favorite shoes were a pair of sparkly light-up pink tennis sketchers my mother had gifted me and my favorite food was chocolate cake with sweet strawberry filling. Since then not only my style and my taste have changed but also my outlook on my life and my goals, thanks to my community and Harmony Project KC. Over the years, Harmony Project KC has become my second home and has allowed me to meet countless individuals who have become mentors and lifelong friends. This organization positively impacts the community by providing not only free music education, but also community services such as family assistance funding, bilingual-family advocate services, and college preparation. With the help, encouragement, and guidance I have received from Harmony Project KC, I have been able to learn what true leadership looks like. Being selected as leader of HPKC’s Honors Quartet has allowed me to learn several key qualities of excellent leadership.

Harmony Project’s Honors Quartet is most importantly tasked with demonstrating the music skill level and the impact of HPKC on the community, and especially the impact of music on students in the program. Therefore, our duties as Honor Quartet members consisted of performing for several events such as fundraising and collaborating with several organizations such as Soundwave Academy and the Kansas City Symphony. As lead violinist of Harmony Project’s Honors Quartet, my responsibilities consisted of scheduling rehearsals, being aware of musical techniques such as music phrasing and vibrato usage, and striving for excellence in my group’s performances. I spent a great deal of time with my peers in Honor’s quartet and we became tightly knit. Though I did my best at balancing being both a role model and a friend to my quartet members, I remember struggling to encourage them to continue striving for their own improvement. A common problem that musicians face is burnout, a lack of motivation because of a mental state of frequent stress and anxiety. The repeating rehearsals and concerts caused us to enter a state of burnout and momentarily caused our musicality to remain stagnant. I acknowledged that neither my group nor I was improving because of the nonstop rehearsals, events, and stress that came along with them. I expressed my concerns to my teammates and we took time to reflect on our situation. We came together and agreed that we needed to focus on balancing our rehearsal and our break time. If I had not communicated my concerns with my group then we would have stayed stagnant and lost more of our motivation. 

Through my time as lead violinist of Harmony Project’s Honors Quartet I learned the critical importance of communication and building strong relationships with those around me in order to tackle important issues and challenges. The lessons I have learned through this leadership experience have fueled my desire to continue striving for excellence in both my community and myself. I will do my best to incorporate and highlight the importance of the key components of leadership, communication, and teamwork, in everything that I may accomplish, including my higher education and career goals, regardless of what barriers may stand in my way. 

My community, the Historic Northeast, is said to be one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in Kansas City, Missouri. Though often praised for its architecture and colorful past, some parts are almost always overlooked. The issues of high crime rates and lack of affordable housing directly affect low-income families with mixed status. Undocumented individuals are cut off from critical resources such as government assistance and medicare due to language and citizenship barriers. As a child of undocumented parents, I am inspired by their experiences because I witness the impacts of these challenges firsthand. In my higher education, I have goals of giving back to the community that once helped me in the form of a nonprofit organization that increases the accessibility to critical services for underprivileged individuals in my community. My leadership experiences at Harmony Project KC have impacted the way I view the complexities of my community and have inspired my approach to how to solve these critical issues in both my academic and career path by using a collaborative lens. I have seen how a multitude of factors, such as the systemic barriers against low-income people of color, have contributed to the problems in my community and I have goals of solving these issues in my future career and higher education. I will be attending Washington University in St. Louis and I will major in Urban Studies, an interdisciplinary major that examines both the strategies for dealing with social challenges affecting urban regions and how diverse populations thrive in such environments. I have decided on also majoring in Spanish, and by doing so, I can further develop my language skills to communicate with Spanish-speaking individuals in my community. After my undergraduate years, I hope to go on to law school at WashU in order to become an immigration attorney, becoming one step closer to my ultimate goals. My leadership experiences during my time as the lead violinist of Harmony Project’s Honors Quartet have ingrained in me the values of leadership and have inspired my desire to give back to my community. I am truly grateful for the leadership qualities I have learned and the enormous impact it has had on my current and future self.