Music and Me

HI :)

My name is Jennifer Garcia-Cruz. I am a freshman here at Converse hoping to earn my BA in Biochemistry and to be exposed to new ideas, interests, people, and mindsets. At the moment I don't really have a life outside of my textbooks but I do love to dedicate and prioritize time for my family and friends. They are my driving force and without them I don't know what would be of me. I would really like to single out the newest additions to my family which are my 2 nieces, who have expanded my understanding and capacity of love and my dog, who has taught me about patience and responsibility. Around them, I light up <3

Anywayssss... A little bit about music and me is that like most if not all of us, music has been with me my whole life. I have very early memories of me sitting on my dad's lap next to our computer listening to Alan Jackson and Tim McGraw's My Little Girl to coming home from school to loud music playing while my mom cleaned. 

My musical journey took off in the 4th grade when the middle school orchestra came to play at my elementary school to recruit new players. As soon as I heard the violins play Dynamite I felt a calling towards the violin. I loved it so much yet had a love-hate relationship with it all throughout middle and highschool (practicing is no joke). I’ve met the most amazing people and my best friend because of the orchestra and made memories I’ll carry with me for years.

 I actually applied to Converse because of having taken private lessons from 2 seniors in the symphony. I would come to the music building almost weekly for 2 school years wanting to improve and challenge myself. I liked the environment and felt comfortable—eventually leading me to commit to Converse. So here we are now, however, no longer as a musician. 

But today music is still a big part of my life. I currently sing in my church choir and whenever I have free time I try to teach myself guitar. I listen to music everyday and I’ve used it for several years now to get me through difficult times. I genuinely cannot imagine a world without music nor would I want to. We form our world and self with music. It is an insight to who a person is so here is a little glimpse into my world.

My current go to song at the moment is one from an artist born in Mexico. Lately I've realized how much I struggle with speaking Spanish so in an effort to try to speak it and practice it more, I've listened to more songs in Spanish from new artists and genres. The end goal is to read a book in Spanish from start to finish so I’m using music as a type of warm up.

This next song is weirdly meaningful to me and I say that because before having to write about it now, I’ve never actually listened to the whole song. I had only listened to  maybe 30 seconds of the song. It went viral on tiktok with people creating videos with it to show how they went from having a dream to living their dream. This snippet of the song CARRIED me through my junior year of high school. There was too much to handle but this song served as a reminder for me to keep going.

Lastly, a genre of music that I've never felt the need to listen to is K-pop. I've had some friends who were the most obsessed with it but I just don't get it. To be fair, I haven't tried to give it a chance. With a few songs I had listened to I  completely ruled it out. 

Bonus: This is a piece that I've countlessly searched the score for but have never found. I love it like words cannot describe and this piece was all I could think of for some time. It was a dream of mine to perform it one day. Realistically I knew it was beyond me but hey it doesn't hurt to dream.

Well, that's it for me :)