Yesterday, I was a Different Person Then

I want to start this project with blatant honesty. I have lied in the last three projects, and to give myself credit, I did a really good job. In a class that is rooted in finding your intellectual identity, I was not transparent in who I am. I wrote as if I had my life together and had a purpose, but really my perception of my world was falling apart. I wrote as if dance was my everything and the one thing that gave me purpose, but really I have never felt more relieved to not have to do it for the next year. I definitely don’t have it all together. But, I am starting to learn I don’t have to, not right now or ever. Through this course and through the process of writing I have found that its okay to fall apart, its okay to make mistakes, and its okay to change your mind because we are ever-changing humans with an identity that extends way beyond our knowledge now.

In high school, I was never really the student to do a rough draft. I don’t want to give away my secrets to my other other single drafters, but commonly I would just mix of the sections of my paragraphs to submit a rough draft, then unscramble them back to the original form to submit my “final draft.” My brain just didn’t work that way. I always felt my first ideas and draft was the most cohesive and intellectual my essays were going to get. And, in the public school system, this worked- I would always get A’s as the ideas appeared to be written with depth and my analysis seemed proficient. But in the course, things changed.

I couldn’t just write ideas and hope they formed a cohesive piece, because, to be honest, no part of my brain was cohesive after engaging in this class. Through discussions, posts, and readings, I always felt as if I was on the verge of an intellectual breakthrough, but I never had quite enough knowledge to understand what in the world I was breaking through. The topics we uncovered in class forced us to take a look at our own identity, and I think that was what made the difference. I no longer had to analyze the themes of Into the Wild or right an argumentative essay on dress code, but I had to write about me. And, as all humans have, there was undiscovered territory to my identity and depth of my individuality that I didn’t know existed, and that possibility scared the hell out of me.

I was no longer writing an essay as a performative task, something to get the grade, but the act of writing became a process of self discovery. And on a self-discovery journey, you enter a process where you surprise yourself, confuse yourself, and expose yourself of your mistakes. So, for the first time, I was allowing myself the opportunity to write something a bit subpar, a bit messy, because it was apart of my journey.

When writing WP1, I tried to write a beautiful single and final draft, but I soon learned I could no longer do that. Moving into WP2, I gave myself grace. I allowed myself to write with mistakes- and I am not talking about little grammar mistakes, but whole pages of ideas that made absolutely no sense and contradicted each other. But often in these first steps of nonsense, I would find a little phrase or few words that was my golden nugget- the idea that shaped the rest of my paper. I learned to rewrite, throw out ideas, take a break to refreshen my mind, revise, revise, revise. But most importantly, I learned that it was okay to change my mind. It was okay for me to write a brilliant idea one day, and the next day have contradicting thoughts and erase part of it. It was okay for me to change as an author.

And as I learned it was okay for me to change as an author in this process of self discovery through my writing, I started realize that it is okay for me to change as a human too.

In January, I took a really fall in ballet class, my knee dislocated inwards while landing a jump then dislocated again outwards on my way into the doctors office. I ended up tearing my ACL, MCL, PCL, meniscus, and fracturing my femur bone. The combination of injuries was extremely rare, and my doctor referred to this as the “perfect storm”- everything just lined flawlessly to create the most catastrophic injuries. (If you’re thinking “damn that sounds like it hurts”, you are right.) So, I got an invasive knee surgery, and would be out of dancing for an about a year. When the doctor told me this 98% of me was devastated, I stated crying and felt my heart sink in my stomach. But, that other 2% was relieved. Relieved that for once I got to be a normal kid.

You see, I had been a dancer from the day I was born- my mom was a dancer, my sister a dancer, and my dad a musician. And by the age of 9 we found out that I was naturally just really good. And I don’t want to sound stuck up, but there was something about me and dance- I had the dancer’s body, the dancer’s mind, and it just clicked. So, I became the child prodigy of the town, the girl that was going to have her name in lights one day. And, don’t get me wrong, this was amazing, BUT dance quickly became my everything. It was all I knew.

So when I was asked to write about my identity in this class, my mind immediately went to how dance shaped my life. But, I was no longer a dancer, at least I didn’t feel like it, as I could’t even walk for the first 6 weeks after surgery. On the inside, I was rejecting the idea of continuing a career in dance, I absolutely hated it. I wanted this injury to put a end to my dancing career, and I wanted to just live a normal college life. (I think this was my way of coping with the traumatic injury, but I am still unsure.) But on the outside, and if you read any of my essays, it appeared that being a dancer was at the root of my identity and was the only thing I wanted to pursue. So here began the identity crisis.

As I was forced to research more of my intellectual identity in this class, I realized that, although I hate to admit it, dance really was at the root of my identity. But, I also realized was that dance wasn’t my whole identity. Being an artist has shaped the person I am today, but there is also so much more to my identity than just being a dancer.

Going through my healing process, I have learned that dance doesn’t have to be my everything. Changing my career path as my intellectual identity develops is part of growing up and being in college, but no matter what I choose to do dance will always be part of my life. This became evident when I took an interest in physical therapy as part of my recovery after surgery. At the beginning, I was focused on the therapy to get back to everyday activities and dancing a soon as possible. But, after a bit, I realized that I am very interested in the mechanics of the body as a science and started to research the biomechanics and healing processes for dancers specifically. I even got an internship with an athlete-specific physical therapist for the summer. And, as I uncover this new interest of mine, I began to understand that maybe everything does happen for a reason. Yes, without dance I wouldn’t be hurt…. but without dance I wouldn’t have been introduced to kinesiology, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to get a USC education, I wouldn’t have taken interest in the human body, and I certainly would not be he intellect I am today.

So, this year, I have learned it is okay to change my mind, and it is okay if I don’t want dance to be my whole life anymore. But I have to acknowledge the influence dance had in my life, because dance is that little golden nugget that I find in the nonsense writing I start with when constructing a paper- it is the foundation for the story of my life. Dance has given me the platform to find who I am, to research ideas, to write the rest of my life, but it is only a piece of me. A big piece of me, but only a piece, and that is okay.