(January 21, 2004) — By day, senior Arpine Alaverdyan is an artist—a drawer and painter. By night, she is a pianist. At Clark, Alaverdyan is known as an artist whose work decorates the school halls. Before my senior year, I thought she was quiet and reserved, but it is often the quiet ones who possess something great. There is more to this senior than just the paintings and sketches featured on art teacher Judith Craemer’s bulletin boards. During a break from our economics project at her house, a few of the group members went into her garage to shoot pool while Alaverdyan and I sat at her piano. I asked her to play something. Her fingers moved so naturally along the white keys and hardly stumbled over the black keys. When she finished, she set her hands down on her lap and sighed while I simply sat there, staring in awe. Alaverdyan, who has been playing piano for eight years, said that she feels “many do not realize the work that goes into playing classical piano.” From the minute she gets home from school to the time she sleeps, her schedule is packed with family chores, homework, an ROP class in graphic arts, piano lessons at the Lark Conservatory in Glendale and approximately eight hours of practice a week. Furthermore, with an instructor from the conservatory as her mentor, Alaverdyan has composed three classical pieces with a few more in queue. Although she comes from a musical family in which her father has been playing the guitar since he was a teen, she needed a push in this direction. According to Alaverdyan, what began as an afterschool activity turned into a passion and emotional outlet. She began taking lessons when she was nine years old and continued lessons at the Lark Conservatory. Alaverdyan likes to play romantic and dramatic pieces that have “more melody.” Her favorite composers are Johannes Brahms and Sergei Rachmaninov. She compares playing the piano to acting, where she can become “a different person” who can “talk to people about [her] inner emotions without saying anything.”