College Admissions Essay: The Joy Of Ballroom Dance

Since birth, I’ve been ridiculously shy, insecure, and unable to step out of my comfort zone. Ironically enough, I’ve also been a dancer since the age of four. In any kind of dance, you have to be confident and willing to put yourself out there, and I just couldn’t, but for some reason I stuck with it. It was the hardest thing I’ve done, and I felt very out of place on stage. Until my junior year, when my coach helped me realize that I was wrong. As a four-year-old, I dreamed of being a ballerina. At the age of seven, it turned out that that wasn’t going to work out too much. My knees couldn’t take the constant work, and I had to drop out. When we moved to Rexburg, everyone I knew did ballroom dance, which I had never heard of. But I wanted

Over the summer, I’d gotten a job teaching piano, which I did every Wednesday from 4-7. When school started again, I continued teaching. Somehow I thought I was going to be capable of balancing school, work, and extracurriculars. One evening, team lists for ballroom came out. They were perfect - except for the fact that my team had practice on Wednesdays from 4-6:30. I was freaking out - there was no way this could work out. But, when the head coach had heard about my dilemma, she offered me a spot on the team above me, Senior Gold. Honestly, I was just going to drop ballroom. I didn’t want to dance without my friends or the coach I’d had since sixth grade. My mom was the one who finally convinced me to just try it. If I didn’t like it - I could

But I was still wary. All our teammates were seniors, and we barely knew our coach. As the year progressed, I became friends with a few of the other dancers. I wasn’t comfortable though, that’s for sure. I felt out of place. Everyone was so much better than me, and I felt incapable of catching up. It was a challenge to come every week and practice hard when I felt I was below average. But practice was what I needed. My coach was there with me every step of the way, encouraging me, pushing me, and answering my questions. We became friends about halfway through the season. That boosted my morale even more. He taught me to be confident, and to feel comfortable in front of people - whether it be an audience of thousands, or a team of twenty. Towards the end of the year, I learned that I had been doing much better than I thought I was. But I hadn’t seen it until my coach helped me. The team did extremely well the entire year, but the majority of the work paid off at our last competition. The moment that our placement was read off is one of the happiest times of my life. Our team placed first in our division by a landslide with a highly impressive