second-to-last-day-of-class thoughts

Dear Paulette:

I wanted to thank you for your class. I will be brutally honest... I hated it. But the reason I hated it was because it was the class I needed the most this semester, and it was the one that forced me to grow and step outside of my comfort zone.

I had a rough semester. I had been looking forward to it because I had all theater classes, plus this modern dance class. I had thought it would be a really fun semester. What actually happened though was that theater classes take up more time than a normal class, and they began to compete with each other for my time, and for most of the semester, I was getting below-appropriate amounts of sleep. Which is why I always came to class either late or looking like I was drugged on something. I didn't understand why we had to pretend we were starfish, or stretching dogs, or any of the other strange analogies you used. I thought, "this is a dance class, why can't we just dance?" As the semester continued, three different plays (two of them required, one of them a REALLY good idea for a resume) began to take up my time, to the point where I was backstage so often that I had no time to buy the vegetables and proteins I knew my body needed. My muscles and joints rebelled, as they really had a right to do, which made me groan a lot in the dance classes (as well as in jujitsu). One day, I even came to class with my eyes red and puffy because I'd spent the hour before crying. Luckily, we watched a video that day, otherwise I'm not sure I would have made it through the class.

But despite the groaning, I did a lot of growing too. I discovered that if you don't give 100% of yourself to anything you do, it isn't worth it. I found that if I focused my mind completely on the dance class, I stopped hurting, I stopped feeling dizzy, I stopped feeling lethargic. I began to apply that to other areas of my life. They've always said similar things in jujitsu, but I had stopped trying to follow that, so my techniques really went downhill. The day I focused 100% of my energy on jujitsu was one of the best workouts I had all semester. Despite not liking the shows I was required to work on, I thought about the endurance and perseverance I learned from your class and the shows stopped feeling like such a nuisance and waste of time.

Originally, I had no intentions of taking another modern dance class, but now that the class is over, I feel like I have been sufficiently prepared, that even if modern 2 is difficult, I now know how to persevere and overcome, should I manage to fit it into my schedule. I am grateful that the class is over, because I hope it means I've taken from it as much as I could absorb and am now ready to continue looking up and moving on.

Finally, I wanted to thank you for the patience it must have taken to work with a lethargic student who sometimes didn't care about starfish and mollusks and dogs.

Sincerely,
~~~~~~

Ok there it is... should I send it?

On another note... I've been comparing modern dance with jujitsu a lot lately. To top things off, Paulette had us grappling today. Or at least a modern dance version of grappling. How interesting.

Anyhow... any comments?