Many times in my life, I’ve felt like a “normal person”, someone who didn’t stand out in any way. In every activity that I tried, I thought that I was merely mediocre. Perhaps everyone feels this way to a certain extent, but eventually they find where they belong, right? For me, though, I believed that I was searching and had been searching for a considerably long time. I tried activities from swimming and gymnastics to art and music, but I thought that I didn’t really belong anywhere, and it was that fear that always held me back from pursuing those things.

Recently, though, I’ve branched out toward pursuing anything that I have even the slightest interest in and found that I needed to give myself a chance. Dance was the first thing that I dove into by joining color guard my freshman year and taking a class at a local studio, but because dance is an activity that many people start practicing very young, I quickly became intimidated by those who had been turning and leaping for years. Part of this feeling must have stemmed from the way that I viewed those dancers. At the time, I had been so absorbed by society’s focus on talent and prodigies that I often felt discouraged that I wasn’t a natural. Yet, the more time I spent with the dancers, I watched them stay after class, practice endlessly in the mirror, and repeatedly analyze videos of themselves. It was then that I felt the word “talent” seemed to disintegrate into a social construct that, instead of being a compliment, was used to disregard the sheer amount of effort that they put into their work. This is the push that drove me to believe that my skill was not so limited, and I wanted to find out how much further I could possibly take myself.

In my junior year, I felt that this effort was rewarded when I was accepted into Orchesis Dance Company, but it became the beginning of many new struggles. I was afraid of humiliating myself in front of people whom I respected, and honestly, I often did. However, once I decided to stop focusing on all of the times I fell or turned the wrong way and actually tried to start fixing things, I improved much faster and became more open-minded. Through experimenting with different styles and techniques, I discovered that my previous, albeit short, experience in gymnastics and performing in general had given me some assets in acrobatics, artistry, and for some reason, even hula. Although my technique is still shaky and there is much more that I must work on, I realized the meaning behind the phrase “don’t compare yourself to others”. It wasn’t that I was bad; it was that I was simply different because of the strange accumulation of skills from the past. Never did I think that this could make me stand out, but because I didn’t have the experience of a young ballerina, I found a unique way to “play to my strengths”.

Before I knew it, the resilience that I learned from dance began to seep into the rest of my life. It had given me the courage to pursue different things that I wouldn’t have before. Writing is one of those things, and while improving with these activities everyday, I wondered if anything would have changed if I went back now and tried an old hobby such as drawing. However, when I picked up my pencil to try to sketch a poppy flower, I couldn’t move my hand to make a single mark on the white paper. It was then that I realized that I was scared again. It was not so much by others, but I was afraid of seeing my own ability and being disappointed by it. Many times, art has a feeling of permanence, and most people, growing up with the pressure to be perfect, have difficulty overcoming blank page syndrome. When trying anything, It’s okay to be disappointed, but I don’t wish for you not to try because of that fear. After all, once you know what you can do, you’ll understand where you should go from there. So even though I ended up drawing the most lopsided poppy flower that ever existed, it was something that I had made, and that was just another step toward furthering my skills.

In a speech to the graduating class of Stanford University in 2005, Steve Jobs once said, “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” In the context of the commencement speech, he opened up about his many failures and small successes that eventually lead to the creation of Apple Inc, and it was because of his accumulation of abilities due to simple curiosity that he was able to make such a successful company. In one instance, he took a calligraphy class at Reed College, and in the future, he found that the new skill he learned became useful for designing the typeface for Macintosh computers. So if there is one thing that I’ve found that late learners are good at, it’s starting over and over again in many different, sometimes unexpected places, succeeding sometimes, failing many more, and packing up what they learned to apply it to everything that they do now. It’s okay to be afraid but keep trying! Join clubs, or take a class! Learn to open yourself to all kinds of possibilities! After all, there are so many things that you don’t know, and I don’t wish for you to be content with not knowing. So go and do what you want to do, and figure out what it means to be who you are.