GDS Magazine | 47 North Carolina State University Northeastern University Occidental College Ohio Wesleyan University Pace University Parsons School of Design Pennsylvania State University Purdue University Randolph-Macon College Reed College Ringling College of Art and Design Roanoke College Rockingham Community College Sacramento City College Santa Clara University Sarah Lawrence College Savannah College of Art and Design Seton Hall University Southern Methodist University Swarthmore College Syracuse University Texas A&M University The College of Wooster The Ohio State University University of Alabama University of California, Berkeley University of California, Davis University of California, Los Angeles University of California, San Diego University of California, Santa Barbara University of Central Florida University of Colorado at Boulder University of Florida University of Georgia University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University of Kentucky University of Maryland University of Massachusetts, Amherst University of Miami University of Mississippi University of Nebraska at Lincoln University of North Carolina at Asheville University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of North Carolina at Charlotte University of North Carolina at Greensboro University of North Carolina at Wilmington University of North Carolina School of the Arts University of Richmond University of Rochester University of South Carolina University of Southern California University of Tennessee, Knoxville University of Tampa University of Vermont University of Virginia University of Washington University of Wisconsin, Madison Vanderbilt University Villanova University Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Wake Forest University West Virginia University Western Carolina University Wingate University Wittenberg University Wofford College During the Cum Laude Society Induction Ceremony each year, seniors share speeches with the audience. Enjoy the speech of Rubing Zhang as she reflected on learning the piano as a child. Rubing Zhang ’18 W hen I was little, my parents forced me to go to piano class. I hated it, for the opportunity cost for that one hour on Saturday morning was so high—I could have had an extra hour of sleep, or gone out with friends, or played video games—time for doing everything fun. Instead, I was forced to sit in front of that giant instrument under the gaze of my teacher, practicing over and over again some etudes with no melodies whatsoever, and be ready to have my hands knocked for any mistake I made, all the while staring at the bruises on my hands and thinking about all the fun I was missing. Inside my head I would always shout: what is all this for? So I fought: I protested, pretended to have a headache, and hid my scores some place where my parents could not find them. Well, none of the tricks worked. I always ended up sitting in front of my teacher and practicing with tears. At this point, you probably think this speech is about how I surmounted all my hatred about playing piano and eventually became an awesome pianist with all my willpower and diligence, but you are wrong. I quit— after five years of torture, I eventually succeeded in quitting piano at the age of 10. Ironically, my experience with piano did not end there. The emancipated me who eventually got to breathe the air of freedom on Saturday mornings never imagined that I would miss playing the piano years later, when I could really appreciate the beauty of it. So I picked it up again 5 years later. That’s my love and hate story with piano. Through those 15 years, I made two decisions, one of which set me free from its “torture”, while the other brought me back to its beauty. Yet, if I got to ride a time machine back to the time when I tried to make the first decision, I probably would come to the same conclusion. After all, I would not be able to appreciate piano as I do now if I hadn’t quit for a while. Outside expectations never brought me an inch closer to the fun of playing piano, but my own internal drive did. Sometimes we are like boats in a current, heading toward a direction without knowing why. That’s the time to double check if we are going in the direction that we wish to go. If we indeed are, awesome, go faster; if not, it is always not too late to turn around. We ourselves should be the ones who steer the boat, not the current. Cum Laude Society