Q: What’s a little bit of background information you could tell me about yourself?

A: I was born in China and I was there for 17 months.  I have one brother and one sister, one is 10 and the other is 19.

Q: If you were stranded on an island, and you could only have one fruit that grew on that island, what fruit would you choose and why?

A: Pineapple.  It’s the first fruit that came to mind.

Q: What genre of music do you find yourself listening to the most?

A: Honestly, I listen to a bit of everything, 90% of the time I don’t listen to country music though.

Q: What is your favorite kind of food/restaurant?

A: I love Italian food, but I don’t have a favorite restaurant, I’m too indecisive to choose.

Q: What is your favorite dessert?

A: Chocolate, just plain chocolate. Not white chocolate though and as long as it’s not trash. But just chocolate.

Q: What is your favorite thing about playing your clarinet?

A: I just like the way it sounds, it’s very nice.

Q: What was your reasoning for choosing clarinet when you first entered band?

A: I didn’t actually pick the clarinet, I picked flute. They gave me [the] clarinet and I just went with it. You know, you fill out the form when you pick out the instrument you want, and then they sent out the lists later. My name was on the list for clarinet. And I was like, my name is under here, so I’ll just go with it because that was what I was told.

Q: Could you see yourself playing the flute? What about any other instruments?

A: I can play the flute.  I can play the clarinet, and the saxophone.  I don’t know all of the ins and outs of it, but the basics, I can do.

Q: How do you like the competitive band’s show this year? 

A: I like it. It’s a lot better than last year. It’s interesting, I mean, last year’s show was good- we won second place at state- but I feel like this year we have a stronger theme, a more obvious theme, because last year I felt like people were like ‘what the heck is this show,’ but it’s much more like ‘oh this makes sense’ for this year.

Q: So what would you say your favorite part of competitive marching band is?

A: The people and the memories for sure.

Q: What would you say your top three memories from band or competitive band are?

A: Well, band is literally my life, so pretty much everything from the past six years really. Honestly, it’s just like every time we hang out, whether it’s eating together as a group, or just hanging out, it’s a lot of the time, but those times where we are laughing together and dying on the floor- it’s great. Football games are also very fun. It’s really hype and we make a lot of memories at the games together. 

Q: Do you have any certain traditions in your section? 

A: Oh yeah, we have a lot. After we warm up [at a competition], we go into section tuning and then after section tuning, we always huddle up and pray, and then we do our clarinet chant. And then we do ‘taps for good luck,’ where you just tap everyone on the butt and say ‘taps for good luck.’

Q: Do you have any section pass-downs?

A: We have a bell. It’s just a metal bell, and I think it’s like a Regions Bank bell or something like that. It’s really random, but every year the section leader or whoever has it decides who [they want to pass it down to] and they sign it and date it.

Q: What are you looking forward to most for the rest of your high school career?

A: I should probably be looking forward to the classes and getting educated, but honestly, school is school and I’m looking forward to just the people because people are great.

Q: What is one thing you would like to accomplish or achieve before you graduate?

A: There’s a few things.  Band wise, I would like to win state at least once, hopefully this year or even both years [that I have left].  I would also like to make all-region and all-state and all of that good stuff, as well as staying in Wind Symphony my senior year because that would suck if I didn’t. Academically, I would like to keep my 4.0 GPA and also, as much as it doesn’t really do anything for you in the long run, I would like to graduate with Distinguished High Honors. But also just graduating, of course, because getting out of high school would be cool.