College Admissions Essay: Passion Over Pain

Passion Over Pain

Many little girls have dreams of growing up and becoming a beautiful ballerina. I was no exception to this cliché dream. As I became older, my life revolved around dance. Every waking moment I was thinking about how I could challenge myself and become a better dancer, and an even better performer. I was in the studio every single day for thirty plus hours per week, trying to perfect my technique. My dream was to become an award winning dancer. I wanted to perform on a variety of stages across the country, and later become a part of the competition circuit which I had grown up in. However, with every dream, there will always be a setback that’s bound to happen. I had no idea that my soon to be setback actually had been building

But as time went on, we gave up and decided to just hold private lessons in my room. My room was equipped with ballet barres and a full length mirror to accommodate these rehearsals. I spent months expanding on my technique and learning new dances for the upcoming year. After convincing the woman who gave me the private lessons to open a studio, I finally had to chance to learn more than ever. My dance teacher would take me to attend classes in New Jersey, New York, and numerous local conventions. Hours upon hours I spent in the studio and at conventions, and with those hours of work my injuries became more prominent. It became difficult for me to complete simple task such as bending my knees, walking distances, or even just standing up. At one competition, I was doing my dance. And near the end of the piece, I felt excruciating pain shoot through my leg which left me in tears on the side of the stage. That is when my mom decided it was time to get me checked out before I became incapable of dancing at all. The doctor concluded that I had grown so much over the year, that I ended up with a case of osgood-schlatters disease in both of my knees, resulting in me having to be contained in a full length knee immobilizer for six months- for each knee. After an agonizing year of being sidelined, I jumped back into my regular routine without hesitation. The pain returned after a few weeks, but this time with vengeance. We visited a different orthopedist, and this time we came back with a different result. This time the doctor came back and told us that because I had grown so much and stretched my ligaments to their limits, I would now suffer with inflammatory diseases. That was when they finally decided surgery was needed in order to fix one of the issues of plica. In a span of a month, I had arthroscopy on both my knees, with a recovery time of three months. I never anticipated the battle I would have to endure in order