Musical dreams
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ALICIA PETSKA / News Virginian
Published: August 1, 2007
"I used to say I wanted to be able to play every instrument," recalled the 18-year-old, who's studied the art of the violin, piano, flute and guitar. "It [music] is just a part of me. I can't really describe it."
A home-schooled student raised in the rural outskirts of Waynesboro, Carol has the beanpole build of a much younger girl but carries herself with an almost uncanny degree of poise, particularly when the subject at hand is music.
A bona fide prodigy on the violin - she started playing with the Waynesboro Symphony Orchestra at the age of 7 and left at 11 to pursue more challenging projects - she discusses the skill of other famous players past and present with a clear passion, omitting any of the "ums," "likes" and "you knows" common to others her age.
A love of music pulses through the veins of her entire family, passed from her mother down to her and her three older siblings.
In fact, it was Carol's older brother, nine years her senior, who first introduced her to the violin, she said.
"My brother took violin lessons and I attended every single one of them, since I was a baby," she said. "I would actually hum along with the music. His teacher had to ask me to be quiet."
Asked who the superior artiste is, Carol diplomatically gives the title to her brother. Her mother, however, pokes her head out of the kitchen and points at her daughter.
While other kids were dragged kicking and screaming to their music lessons, Carol begged for a chance to try out the violin, an early born passion she expects will stick with her the rest of her life.
And these days she doesn't just study the instrument. Twice a week, she steps to the other side of the music stand and assumes the role of teacher, guiding around 10 students as young as 6 and as old as 14 through the squeaks and scrapes of beginning violin.
Her first lessons coincided roughly with the year she got her driver's license.
"Working with a student and seeing them finally get it, seeing that look on their face, it's so amazing," she said. "And some of the students obviously love the violin."
With college looming ahead of her this fall - she'll be attending Blue Ridge Community College in order to stay close to home - Carol does seem unsure about one thing: just what exactly it is the future holds for her.
"I have no idea," she said with a smile, noting she doesn't plan to study music when her college life starts.
"Music is my life," she explained, "but studying it, working and writing reports about it; I'm not sure I would enjoy that."
Whatever twists and turns her path might take, Carol does know one thing, with absolute certainty. She won't be thinking small.
"I want to do things no one else has done before," she said.
Contact Alicia Petska at 932-3561.
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