Essays That Worked!

Cheshire Schanker '08
Park-Tudor School,  Indianapolis, IN

Squeeeeeeaaaakk. Mis-si-ssip-pi. Squeeeeeeaaaakk. Mis-si-ssip-pi. In crew I like the squeaky seat. There is always at least one squeaky seat in the old fiberglass-bottomed boats, but you can never tell if you have it until the rowing starts.

"One foot in," screams the coxswain early Saturday morning, "and down. Tie-in, girls!"

I reach over my legs and tie my feet into the rowing shoes bolted to the boat. I am covered in goose bumps, but I know that I will soon be sweating from the labor of our long races across the lake.

Sweating from athletic exertion is a sensation to which I am unaccustomed. The only other sport I have ever participated in is swimming, which involves a lot of work and determination but not apparent sweating. I joined the swim team my freshman year. Despite feeling that I was out of my element, I stuck with it for two seasons. Senior year, I found where I belonged - not in the water but on top of it.

Crew makes sense to me; crew is music. In the world of sports I feel strange and alien, but with music I am comfortable and confident. I cannot remember a time when music was not a part of my life. When I was two, I sat on my mother's lap and watched older kids take music lessons at the Third Street Settlement Music School in New York City. At six, I started violin. During crew practice, the rhythm and harmony that have been ingrained in me come alive.

The slow recovery and then the swift and hard pull through: half note and quarter note, a perfect waltz. The stroke, the lead rower in the boat, guides the waltz. She places her blistered hand on the waist of the boat and we glide away. Rowing in a boat is just like playing in an orchestra; just as a sole trumpeter cannot produce the sounds of an orchestra, the smooth, constant motion for which we strive in crew cannot be accomplished if there are simply eight people rowing - there needs to be a team rowing. The complementary, harmonious motion that could lull a colicky baby to sleep is the product of the sweating labors of all the rowers working as one. The coxswain, our noble conductor, binds our strokes together, keeping us in time.

Squeeeaaaak. Mis-si-ssip-pi. Then there is the melody. On the best boats, the melody is the hard breathing of the teammates, a unison song. On our fiberglass wonder, the squeaky seat, sometimes accompanied by the noisy oarlock, adds a jazz impromptu to the steady waltz-time. When I decided two years ago that I did not want a career in music, I worried that all my music lessons would be of no avail. Now, I find music all around me. Or maybe it is not so much in everything, but in me-in the joy I find in the rhythm and melody of the things that I love, like crew. So I rejoice in the squeaky seat, forgo the oil, and listen for my music.

Last Modified: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 16:15