Walking into the studio, I’m greeted with a crowd of faces that I haven’t seen since June, along with the familiar smells of hairspray, sweat, and fast food. I’m back at Performing Arts Centre for the last time.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with dancing ever since I started when I was five. I was fully convinced that I was going to be a famous ballerina/pop star someday, and nothing could change my mind. Now, twelve years later, a lot has changed.

Believe it or not, I no longer want to be a pop star. But through it all, I’ve always been a dancer. Yes, there have been days when the thought of putting on tights and slicking down my hair sounded like torture to me. Still, on other days, I’d rather be dancing than anything else in the world.

Entering my last year of dancing, I’m realizing all of things that it has taught me.

Two things that stick out are determination and perseverence. The feeling you get the first time you do something is incomparable to anything else.

Dancing has taught me that through my hard work and determination to get better, I can persevere to become the best I can be. Perhaps the most important thing it’s taught me though, is confidence.

Yes, I still have some insecurities, but that’s because I’m human. Being in dance, I’ve learned to appear confident in everything I do in life.

I couldn’t have learned any of that if it weren’t for my dance teachers, though, who helped me be the person I am today.

Still, with the memories and lessons that dance has given me, I won’t be pursuing it after high school.

Dancing has been a huge part of my life that will leave with me things that I never could have learned anywhere else, and I don’t regret a minute of it from the past twelve years. And I as I go through college and the rest of my life, I will always be a dancer.