From Private to Providence by TiOluwani

From Private to Providence by TiOluwani - May 2018 Scholarship Essay

My Dad has always been somewhat unconventional in a variety of ways. In 2010, for Christmas, he volunteered my sister and it to play piano at a nursing home. I was 9 years old at the time, and my sister was even younger; needless to say that playing music for the elderly was not our idea of a great time or a Christmas present.
A couple weeks into 2011, we started going to the nursing home and playing pieces that we learned from our piano teacher. In the beginning we were very very bad, and the residents could tell; our crowds were pretty stagnant with a grand total of 7. Eventually we got better, our pieces longer, our performances more grandiose and the audience responded accordingly. Going to the nursing home became truly enjoyable as the music we banged out became more palatable for the residents.

One day, after 7 years of playing and running various activities and events at the nursing home, a resident pulled me aside. Our conversation that day changed the way I looked at volunteering, and community service in general.

She was admitted to the nursing home in 2014, after having a stroke leaving her unable to walk or move her right arm. Cynthia told me all about her career as a piano teacher and how she loved watching our progress over time, then she became more sober in demeanor. She started crying. Cynthia explained how the hardest part of the stroke and subsequent recovery was her inability to play piano, and make music again. She told me of how she went back to her room sobbing when she first heard me play Clementi's first Sonatina, how she loved listening to duets my sister and I sometimes did, and most of all how she could feel the music through us.

The feelings I was able to give to that woman, were worth the years of practice. That's truly what community service is about, not what yo get out of it but what you're able to give other people. I hope I never lose sight of that.