It’s nearing the end of summer break, and for my school that means one thing: band camp is coming up. Band camp is a week of twelve hour practices that prepare our marching band for the upcoming year. This is when we learn most of our sheet music and most of our drill (the formations that we will march on the fields). Though it is a bit grueling at times, band camp has always been a fun experience for me.

Marching band is an ensemble where bands make formations on a football field while playing their instruments. It is more physically strenuous than other music ensembles, which makes it a challenge. The wind instrumentalists (those who play instruments that you blow), color guard (also called flag girls), and drum line (those who march with drums) have to march and play around a football field in boiling hot weather. Even pit percussion, which features stationary instruments such as keyboards, has to work hard to move their heavy instruments.

Usually, the practice starts on Monday morning at 8 a.m. sharp . From then, the morning consists of warming up and beginning to learn our music and drill. I was in pit percussion, so thankfully, all we had to worry about was learning our music while other members had to first learn where to go on the marching field. However, the downside to being in pit was that we had to move our instruments at least 3 times during a morning session. And let me tell you, moving a marimba (a large percussion instrument similar to a xylophone) is no joke.

At about 12 o’clock, the band takes a break and we have lunch. This is usually a relief for all of us, as it’s a time to chill out with friends and to relax in the air conditioning. This is also when we get up to some of our crazy antics . In American culture, there are many stereotypes about band members being crazy, and I’m here to say that most of them are true. We end up running around playing tag , playing musical renditions of our favorite songs, and just having a good time. In our band, we have a motto “work hard, play hard”. When we are practicing, we work hard but we manage to have a lot of fun during our breaks. Not to mention, enjoying the thrill of performing after finally putting our show together.

We continue in the afternoon, until dinner time, when we take another break (cue another round of the craziness). Then, we keep going until 8 o’clock p.m. when the day is finally over. Battered, tired, drenched, filthy, and sun burnt, each of us head home to rest up before repeating the process the next day.

Even though marching band is a lot of work, the bonds between us and the memories we share make it really special. For the rest of my life, I’ll always have the memories I made at band camp. I’ll remember the time my friend Daniel had the entire water cooler poured over him on his birthday (soaking someone on their birthday is now a tradition), the foam sword war that happened between pit and drum line, and how it feels stepping off a football field after an amazing performance. I may be romanticizing the experience, as we’ve all shed blood, sweat, and tears to make our performances as amazing as possible, but I will say that all of the hard work was worth it in the end.