” I feel like marching band really teaches you a lot about how to work well with the people around you, how to really build leadership skills, and how to understand how to be responsible, because you have to be responsible for your spot on the field. You need to know your parts, memorize them. You can’t come in and just wing it, you have to know what you’re doing and be able to execute it well. That way, the entire band can do well. Competing was a lot different than what I expected. It ended up being, well, I wouldn’t say stressful, but there was definitely an air of authority to everything, like ‘Okay, this is what counts. This is what we’ve been working towards.’ so you can’t really go in and just wing it. Like I’ve said before, you have to really pay attention, get your head in the game and everything. But other than that, it was just super fun to be around the people I love and being able to hang out with them, and try to accomplish something with all the hard work we’ve done,” Schmidt said.