School started at the end of August, unusually early for a private school. Marching season was, of course, already in full swing. Everything seemed to be going smoothly—that is, until our first Tuesday night practice when we formally met Mr. Wilson as one of our staff members.

Mr. Wilson had a very different way of handling rehearsals. He tended to focus a lot more on fundamentals than Mr. Gunter had. His philosophy was that if you couldn't play a simple scale, for example, you couldn't play a song in that key. He also had very high expectations for our program, which some people failed to meet. Take me, for example. I'd only been playing brass for a month, but he didn't know that. He expected me to be able to do lip slurs and many other things I hadn't even thought about. All I wanted to do was get the notes out.

On our first night with Mr. Wilson, he talked for an hour at the beginning of rehearsal about how we could become a better band. "You guys have a reputation," he told us. "You know what it is. It's up to you to make that reputation what you want."

Then he had Mike, one of the drummers, stand up. "I'm going to push you," he informed us as we sat silently on the risers. He pushed Mike backward. "I may push you beyond your comfort zone, but as soon as you get comfortable again, I'm going to push you again." He pushed Mike again. "At some point you're going to push back." Mike pushed Mr. Wilson. "But I'm going to push you again. And I'm just going to keep pushing and pushing until you achieve your full potential." He also had our drum major, Caitlyn, write several quotes on the whiteboard. They said things like, "The greater the difficulty the greater the glory," and "If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first six sharpening the axe." My friends and I sat in almost stunned silence as he went on and on.

Finally at 7:00 we picked up our instruments and began to work on very basic principles like breathing and posture. Everything he said for the next hour was very useful and legitimate. But we were all frustrated when we didn't play a single note of our field show until 8:00, half an hour before rehearsal ended. We also received a mini speech at the end of rehearsal about having our music memorized. Mr. Wilson didn't hesitate to inform us of the position of his former school. "Live Oak has all their music memorized," he told us. "They have already done a public performance of their opener. You guys are way behind." That was enough to get me seething. I disliked the fact that he was comparing us to Live Oak, and I also disliked the fact that Mr. Gunter was joining in and taking Mr. Wilson's side. I think Mr. Gunter sensed that we were offended, because he said at the very end of rehearsal as we stood at attention, "If you have any doubts that Mr. Wilson and I are on the same page, get over it and get over it quick." I left practice very unhappy that night.

The next day in 5th period, Mr. Gunter opened it up for discussion as he liked to do if he felt something needed to be discussed. To my surprise and dismay, just about everyone said that they liked Mr. Wilson's style of instruction. We were all agreed on one thing, however: we didn't like being compared to Live Oak.

"You have to understand," Mr. Gunter reprimanded us gently, "that the Live Oak band has been Mr. Wilson's life since he was fourteen years old. He marched in it, worked with it when he went to college, and then became their director. It's the program he's familiar with. It's hard for him to leave after so many years and come work for us, a very different program."

We all accepted that, but the fact remained that I felt like he was trying to turn us into the Live Oak marching band. Or even if he wasn't, he was trying to change the way our program was run. I did not like that at all. I'd been very devoted to marching band for half of my high school life, and I'd gotten very used to the way it worked, and now Mr. Wilson was just coming in, taking over, and changing everything we were used to. This was definitely not ok.