Earlier than any class I woke up for this past semester, I scrambled from my childhood bedroom onto Highway 17, zooming by The Starving Musician, where I used to fix instruments, the cafe I played my first open mic at, and of course, the secondhand store that sold me my first guitar.
Thankfully, the music follows.
On Sundays, I am in Berkeley, teaching “Chopsticks†on dusty piano benches, crooked and crammed in houses lined alongside Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way. Through my job, I have been able to explore Berkeley and its people through a completely different lens than that of a typical university student. I've worked with a 75-year-old woman learning piano to work her mind post brain surgery, children of musicians whose parents join in and jam for the last few minutes, fourth graders perfecting a Taylor Swift song in pursuit of impressing their crush at their school's talent show.
Teaching music isn't just about notes and scales; it's about initial dry conversation that later blossoms into a consistent, unlikely friendship. Sure, the conversation in question meanders between the typical “How was your day at school?†and “What's your favorite animal?†Sometimes, I am teaching someone far older than me, and our small talk consists of the academic rigor at UC Berkeley, what the hell I'm going to do with a political science degree and their intense shock to learn of my knowledge of any musician above the age of 35. Yet, slowly and surely, they each spend 30 minutes to an hour of their week with me, fumbling on keys, playing the same measures over and over, trying to perfect every aspect and hopefully gain a new friend in the process.
Though my students practice in preparation for long-awaited fall and winter recitals, I've realized that learning music is not about the end result. It's the little things. The stumble, the fall and, most importantly, the resilience. As a teacher, I learn to provide patience in the midst of their frustration.
Progress rarely arrives in dramatic breakthroughs. More often, it appears quietly — a rhythm that finally clicks after weeks of repetitive drills, a child who walks into a lesson excited to show me what they practiced that week, a student who ends the piece with their head held a lot higher than before. The victories are small enough to be overlooked, but meaningful enough to keep people coming back.
Every Sunday, I make the same drive from the home that introduced me to musicianship to the neighborhoods where I now pass it on. Somewhere between the stoplights and freeway exits, I have stopped thinking of music as purely a performance. It is no longer just the open mics, recitals or polished recorded product. Instead, it is now born in living rooms cluttered with sheet music, in nervous mistakes, in laughter after a wrong note and in the determination to always try again.
What surprises me most is how much teaching has taught me and the way it has reshaped how I view success. In Berkeley, where achievement often feels measured by grades, internships and future plans, teaching music offers a different metric. Success can be as simple as showing up each week, embracing discomfort and trusting that improvement will come. It is found in the willingness to be bad at something in pursuit of becoming better, persistence rather than perfection, the payoff of finally completing a piece, only to flip the page and start over on a completely new song.
By the time I drive back down Highway 17 at the end of the day, the landmarks are the same, but my perspective has changed. I used to think that I was simply bringing music with me across the Bay.
Instead, I have found myself carrying pieces of the people I meet — a teenager discovering confidence through a guitar riff, the same way I did, a retiree finally learning the instrument they never had time for and houses that become homes, as they are now filled with music. The music that once connected me to a guitar shop or open mic now connects me to dozens of people whose lives briefly intersect with mine each week.
Thankfully, the music follows. More importantly, so do the people.
