I hated ballet- Common App Essay

I hated ballet; everything from the scratchy dance costumes to my fellow dancers cracking under the pressure and crying on stage so after giving the sport my best effort I decided to hang up my tutu and retire. For the next six years, I went to gymnastics class once a week where I excelled at the beam and despaired of ever accomplishing anything on the bars. I loved the sport and enjoyed every aspect of it, even bars. Before I knew it, many of my friends had started gymnastics as well. Some even got on teams and competed including my best friend. I didnt want to be left behind so I did my absolute best to improve and dedicated myself to advancing to the advanced class so that we'd share classes but no matter what I did it never happened.

Over the course of a year I developed habits that resulted in me training constantly. I learned stretches I could do while I was laying in bed to improve my splits; I would work on conditioning while doing my homework on the floor of my bedroom; and I would dedicate hours a day to practicing handstands, cartwheels, and round offs in the playroom either on the floor or on a practice beam. Gymnastics took over my life and I was convinced that if I could hold my handstand a little longer, or do so many more push ups without stopping that I would be able to pass the gym's test and advance. Every time I took that test, I would get a few more checkboxes under beam, floor, and vault, but I was never able to get even one check under bars and that was my weakness. I took that test as often as I was allowed and eventually my coach approached me and said that it was okay if I could not do bars and that I was not the first girl who could not nor would I be the last.

Some girls just can not develop the upper arm strength to compete on bars and no matter how good someone is on the other events if one cannot compete on bars they will never be able to compete. I quit gymnastics right after that conversation because she was right. Sometimes you just can not win and no matter how hard you try you can not be the best in everything. Through no fault of my own, I was unable to be a successful gymnast, and that was okay. It did not matter that my friends were competing and that I was not because I was doing things that they were not. Just because we were not attached at the hip did not make me a bad friend, it just meant that we were different people with different strengths, and I believe that this lesson could not have come at a better time. I was ten years old and just discovering that I was my own person and this experience hastened that discovery and led to me becoming an independent young woman who is capable of making her own decisions and able to go in my own direction.

Megan, while you need to learn to use commas when discussing successive activities in one sentence such as you did in your introduction, and you need some grammar her in some places, this is a very solid piece of writing that is worthy of submitting for consideration. My only apprehension is that I do not know what the prompt you are trying to answer for this common app is. I am sure that once you let us know what the question being answered is, we will be able to better advice you regarding content and editing of the essay. Don't be discouraged. This is a very good piece of work. You obviously applied a lot of thought to answering the question and you most likely did that very well. Our job here though is to look for the errors that you may have not seen while writing this. We can only look for the tiniest errors you made if we know what we are looking for :-) So please send us the common app prompt as soon as you can :-) Thanks.

Thank you so much for the quick response! The prompt is: Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?

Megan, the story that you told was an excellent choice for answering this prompt. It showed a side of your personality and character development that would not have been touched upon by the other common app questions. The lessons that you revealed to have learned as a part of the learning experience totally shows the reader that you are capable of learning from your mistakes, weaknesses, and shortcomings. However, that is not to say that you do not know how to turn those negative aspects into a positive one. Sharing the lessons you have learned proves that you have been able to learn how to handle yourself independently and that you know how to find satisfaction and happiness in who you are, even though you cannot always achieve what you ambition for. This essay depicts a highly capable person who can be relied upon to make the right decisions even though it will mean quitting, but not necessarily failing. I really cannot find anything to ask you to correct or delete in this essay because you did such a good job at writing it. You should pat yourself on the back for such an accomplishment :-) Good luck with your application.

Thank you! You're comment seriously made me tear up. I feel very confident in submitting this essay, thank you once again.