I’m gonna start off by saying that being a music therapy major is hard. And hard is capitalized, bolded, underlined, and italicized. Even that doesn’t describe how hard it is. Just to give you a taste, here’s my class load for this semester, the fall of my freshman year. I’m taking 14 hours and 11 classes. I have one class that isn’t worth any credits and 3 that are one credit hour. Then add on getting clinical hours to that. So yeah, it’s hard.

And this is one of the easy years! But it’s been a hard semester, a lot of classes, a lot of homework and a lot of new things. There are hours of piano and vocal practice, theory homework, planning activities for my clinical hours. But, this past week something reminded me that it’s all worth it. So, for my clinical hours I work with a group called Creative Expressions. Creative Expressions is a partnership between Georgia College, specifically the Health Science majors, and the Life Enrichment Center, which is a center for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Every Monday at 10 am, I work with Creative Expressions, and my specific group is the Harmonettes Handbell Choir. In our group, we have 21 people, a mixture of students and clients from the center and throughout the semester our goal has been to rehearse and put together two pieces of music to perform at the Creative Expressions concert with all the other groups. Our songs were, “Don’t You Forget About Me,” and “My Heart Will Go On.” It was so rewarding during our sessions but throughout the semester I often found myself not focusing on those moments and questioning, “Is all this classwork worth it?”, “Are 3 years of fall, summer and spring classes plus a 6-month internship too much?”.

But at the Creative Expressions concert and during every session that our group meets, I remembered why I’m doing this and that it is worth it. The smiles and how excited all the people from the Life Enrichment Center get when they play music and preform is amazing. These people are just people, we’re more alike than different. They love music, they love people and they love each other. The relationships they have together, with the people who work at the center and with the music therapy students is amazing to watch. Some of the people from the center and the GC students have known each other and played together for years, there are bonds and relationships that have formed. But what melts my heart and fills my eyes with tears every time, is to watch them come out of their shells.

Music helps them be more than a handicap or disability. They aren’t limited, and can express themselves in a way that is special to music. Music therapy is more than just a major or a future job to me, it’s what I’m passionate about. It’s indescribable to see the joy, and it makes the long hours, stress and the upcoming 3 straight years of school and an internship worth it.