That Awkward Moment When Your Mind Turns Off

     Marching band has been the event of the day for the past two days with Fundamentals Camp.  Now, during this camp, Corps placement is evaluated.  Today, part of this corps placement involved a memorization test of the music.  This "Fundies" camp also contained a lot of structured improvement through group discussions about effort, attitude and equality.  So, Mrs. Binder walks over to the trombone section.  She was my middle school band teacher and was very proud of me, my hard work, and my accomplishments.  Unfortunately, today was a bad day for me.  I decided to take a leap of faith and go to the play test second.  The first thing Mrs. Binder says to me is "Congratulations on making CYSO!", so I replied with thanks.  She then instructs me how the play test will work.  She counts me off, and already I knew that my mind was wandering.  I wasn't focused!  The notes didn't come out, and I just stopped.  She counted me off again and I got a little further, but I just stopped again.  My mind just stopped working and I had to ask for a re test!
     It was hard to cope with my weird problem of failure.  I knew Mrs. Binder was disappointed in me, and for some reason it made me feel uneasy.  Her assumptions were that I didn't work on the music and therefore was unprepared.  This was the cause of my discomfort, but then I looked towards the effort versus achievement conversation Mr. Lauff had with us.  He talked about how achievement is easily measurable, but effort is not.  Effort is much harder to put forth than it is to achieve something good.  Mrs. Binder assumed from my lack of achievement in the playing test that I didn't put in effort, but this assumption was completely wrong.  I practiced the night before, and worked during sectionals to make sure I knew the part.  I played the entire march by memory the moment before my test with Mrs. Binder, but for some reason my mind just turned off at the worst possible time.  Tomorrow, I hope that Mrs. Binder can watch my Box Drill which I hope will go very very well.  Afterwards I want to let her know about what happened yesterday just so she knows that I didn't put in the work.  Only I can know the effort I put in.  Only me.