My family moved to Perth, Australia from "small-town" USA when I was 14, exposing me to a whole world full of possibilities. It was a total shock to go to school and find myself, the American, the most popular girl in my class. Everything I did, said, wore . . . was valued and copied. Everyone wanted to sit by me, eat lunch with me, be my friend. They even fought over me!
At first it was terrifying, but it gradually gave me a deeper perspective on finding my place in the world and convinced me that I had significant contributions to make and that I wasn't locked into criticism or judgment. A grade school teacher had berated me for trying out to sing in the Christmas program, saying, "I don't know why you tried out; you can't sing." I was totally devastated, and from then on, I only sang in church; I figured God didn't care what I sounded like, but people obviously did! And this shattered my self-confidence in many areas of my life.
A year later, when I was a sophomore,we moved to Seattle, where I attended a large high school (1500 students in grades 10-12) . . . and I only ended up in the music program by default; I needed one more credit and chose Chorus over Girls' Auto Shop, thinking I could get lost in 100+ students. The Chorus director challenged me to try out for the Choir . . . and no one was more flabbergasted than me when my name was listed on the roster for both Choir (40 members) and Swing Choir (16 members). We travelled all over the Northwest giving 52 performances my senior year with 3 costume changes per show, and we took first place in the NW Swing Choir contest in Portland.
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