As a music education major, I had the fortune of participating in a choral ensemble almost every semester at Longwood. What started as a three-semester requirement, eventually turned into a great love for making music with other singers. My first semester of choir was in Spring 2017 where I sang with the Women’s Choir. This was a non-auditioned group and a great way for me to start to get to know the world of ensemble singing. By the time the semester ended, I was looking for a greater challenge. I went on to sing with Chamber Singers, an auditioned smaller women’s choir, for one semester and with Camerata Singers, a larger auditioned ensemble of men and women, for four semesters. Singing in a college choral ensemble is not like other traditional classes. In addition to our class meetings several times a week, we rehearse outside of class time throughout the semester, perform for several concerts, and go on tour to perform for audiences outside of Farmville, and sometimes out of the state. There is certainly a huge commitment associated with joining any musical ensemble, but I would not have traded my experiences with the Longwood choral ensembles for anything. Singing with others took me out of my musical comfort zone, and in the process, I gained a new means of creating music, better aural skills, and a greater sense of persistence and what it means to work with a team.

At the end of every semester, we write reflections on our experiences with that semester of choir. These reflections are an opportunity for us to think about the music we learned, the improvements we made (both individually and group-wise), and the ways the class could be better. The traditional surveys that students fill out at the end of every class at Longwood are not necessarily applicable to being in a musical ensemble, so these reflections work better at acknowledging the uniqueness of our class.