Dancing your heart and stress away by Karla

Dancing your heart and stress away by Karla - September 2019 Scholarship Essay

Growing up in a very humble country, such as Guatemala located in Central American, you witness different types of stress, fear, delinquency, poverty, and struggle. I was born in a community that is surrounded by dangerous gangs, where stores have to pay a certain amount to those gang members In order to keep their business running. During those years, dancing was my safe place. My mom didn’t have enough money to put me in dancing school, but I was a cheerleader in school and that was my happiest time of the day. I also joined my neighborhoods annual show to raise funds and choreographed my own dance every year. I came to the United States at the age of 6 and immediately found better opportunities. My mom was able to put me in dance school for a couple of years until it began to be too much for her again. Nevertheless, those 2-3 years were the upmost beautiful years.
In dancing school, I was able to express myself. I was able to meet various people whom shared the same passion as me. It didn’t matter what race, ethnicity or background we came from; we were all one. When I got to stage, I would forget the troubles we were having at home, I would forget my dad leaving home or his alcohol addiction. It was as if I was in another world full of freedom, opportunities, equality and hope. It was always my safe place.
Once I got to high school, I stopped attending dance school and found out there was no dance club at school either. It was hard for me to balance my stress, schoolwork and social life without having my safe place. I joined drama club which incorporated some dance and that made everything much better for me. I looked forward to being on stage because even though I didn’t sing or act, I always had some dancing to do.
My high school only focused on having clubs related to STEM and not the arts. We only had drama club that related to the arts and we had to fund ourselves. If I could, I would include dance as an extracurricular back at my high school. I think STEM extracurricular are imperative in a person’s education because it can reinforce everything we learn in regular class and make it fun. In addition to this, I also think that students need an extracurricular that has to do with the arts. Students need to be able to express themselves, whether it be painting, acting or dancing. Students should be able to release some of the stress that comes with school and be able to have their own safe place isn’t graded upon or doesn’t have strict rules or formulas to it as well. Dance for me was my “safe place” and I would love if students could get the opportunity to have their own and maybe find it in a dancing extracurricular.