I learned a few curious things last week. Clichés are around for a good reason. When I was on stage performing in the HOSCARS, my heart, going at a million miles an hour, actually did feel like it was about to beat out of my chest. My mouth truly did feel like sawdust, and I wanted nothing more than to disappear.

That moment when the curtains opened on me was honestly the scariest in my life. I wanted to run, I wanted to hide, I wanted to smack myself on the head with my flute and make myself unconscious so that I didn’t have to play in front of seven hundred of my peers. I was going to fail, I could feel it.

But let’s backtrack for a minute. How did I end up on that stage, subjecting myself to what I initially thought was a horrible experience?

It started three years ago, when I watched my first flute-boxing video, a high-speed rendition of the Super Mario Bros. theme song, performed by Greg Pattillo. The flute took on a whole other meaning for me. It was relevant, and it sure wasn’t Mozart.

When I went to a Beatboxing 101 tutorial two summers ago, and saw Mr. Pattillo for the first time, I could definitely understand why his videos went viral. The fluteboxer had such stage presence and confidence, and he channeled his addictive energy to us novices.

But, though I would eventually listen to all of his YouTube videos, I could never bring myself to try the art form. I would look silly, I thought. Who am I to try to beatbox? I belong in the world of Mozart and symphonies, not that.

And trust me, I did look like an idiot for the first month I started to tackle the Three Beats for Beatbox Flute. Practically every sound that came out of my mouth was an embarrassing raspberry sound that I hadn’t made since the second grade. I’d practice for hours trying to get the punchy kick-drum sound, the “B” that was so essential to beatboxing.

I asked my peers for help. More than half of the 126,000 views on the “Beatbox Flute 101” YouTube video are probably mine. I was lucky enough to have a flute community that was as enthusiastic about intermingling the sounds of a drum and a flute, and incredibly willing to help me.

So I had put in the hours, and made my recording to submit to a competition, but what was I going to do next? It looked like fluteboxing was going to be shoved to some sad corner of my lyrical artillery, never to be seen again except as a parlor trick.

A couple of weeks later, my English class suggested that I bring my flute to class for our weekly presentations, and I was really grateful to see that they loved the idea of fluteboxing. I decided to audition for the HOSCARS at the urging of my class (shoutout to Dr. Douglas’s period two!), and, well, here I am. Though I was scared to the bone, another completely true cliché, I managed to grit my teeth, set my feet, and expose an incredibly fun art form to our community.