Dance Doctor Admission Essay

Dancing doctor: This was my response when I was first asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. My high school life can only be described as a precisely-choreographed “pas de deux”, a ballet term for a “dance for two”, between my passions of ballet and medicine. I used to think of the arts and sciences as almost polar opposites, but as I gained more experience in them, I realized that ballet could be considered an exact science similar to how medicine could be considered an art, and that they were actually quite similar.

The foundation of ballet rests on the five basic positions. As ballet training becomes more intricate, these positions hold together complicated choreography, just as my commitment to my two passions hold together the balance

As I grew older, my commitment to ballet grew with me, and I worked my way up to dancing fifteen hours a week. I would burn through through pointe shoes, blisters, and muscle pulls from long rehearsals in preparation for performances, but it was worth it to me when I was able to show off my hard work in front of an audience. To continue my journey into the field of science, I took challenging science classes in school and participated in science-related programs. Taking on the persona of a surgeon during dissections in anatomy class and associating firsthand with patients in a hospital led to my connection with the field of medicine,

Ballet was becoming harder for me, and I faced a plateau in my progress. I was always out of breath by the end of class, but I wasn’t seeing myself improve. My teacher explained to me that I had to isolate my mental energy into fixing specific corrections in order to see a difference. After that, I came to class every day holding my développés higher, pointing my toes harder, and deepening my pliés, hoping to prove my capabilities. I began noticing that the same issue I had in ballet class was being paralleled in my school life. No matter how much I studied, I would keep receiving mediocre grades. I decided to work with my teachers to pinpoint what exactly I needed to improve on, and I even used my ballet teacher’s advice to try new methods of studying to see what worked