'the first day of practice for the summer' - UC prompt#2

Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution, or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

It was the first day of practice for the summer. We had just finished up our season of gymnastics and we were going to start learning our new routines for the next level. I was so proud of myself from the previous year because all of the routines just came so easy to me so I spent the entire year perfecting it for competition. After a year of doing the same routine over and over, I was ready to get a new routine. I knew this year was going to be a piece of cake just like last year.

When I got there I walked in with my head high with confidence unlike a lot of my team mates who were scared and nervous. After we warmed up we were going to start learning our new routines for all of the events. First we started on floor and beam; I thought they were going to be really easy because we were only learned the new dance moves. When my coach started teaching us the dance moves they were a little more complicated than I thought they would have been. As the time passed I thought I was going to be able to pull it all together but the routine just got harder and harder and I felt myself falling behind. I kept falling over or rolling my ankles and at one point I was about to give up. I tried to stick it out till we were done but we were not even close to being done with practice. Next we went to bars.

Bars was my favorite event and it always came easy to me so I thought for sure this would be better. At first I was surprised at how good I was starting off; but just like floor and beam it got complicated. It seemed so easy when some of the older girls did it but for some reason I just could not grasp anything. Every time I tried to do one of the new tricks I would fall and I tried over and over again but with no change. I was sore, sweaty, and covered in chalk; all I wanted to do was go home.

The next day was more of the same thing and it went on for a couple weeks. I still could not figure out what I was doing wrong. Finally I realized that not everything was just going to happen without giving all of my effort. I decided I was going to try to pay full attention to each trick and find a different way to do that trick that would actually work. The next day things started to improve a lot from before even though they were not even close to being perfect. I discovered that not everything will come easy to me so I need to work particularly hard at those things.

Now I am the type of person who will not give up on anything even if it seems impossible. I am proud that through this experience with gymnastics, I can now look at things differently in a better way. This reflects the person that I am because I pay attention to everything that I do but I work especially hard at the things that I find difficult.

its a little too long so any suggestions about how to make it shorter would be great!

I think the storytelling is not concise and it seems a little bit digressed. Maybe you should focus more on your spirit instead of using a lot of words depicting how difficult the work is .

Nice idea,though.