My tiny eight-year-old legs shook with excitement as my eyes glistened with the chill of the rink. My first competition was upon me; I was to skate to “Defying Gravity” from the musical Wicked. Speed is your friend, I reminded myself. My name echoed through the vast arena, and my coach put me on the ice. The music exhilarated me, and I skated as fast as I could. Approaching my first jumping pass, I skidded on the entry, causing me to crash before my blades even left the ice. I kept my chin up, but for the remainder of the program, my spins traveled and my footwork was sloppy. As I scrolled down the placement results, my eyes welled with disappointment. Speed had just mercilessly stabbed me in the back.

The feeling of flying is something I crave in everything I do. When I learn a new language, I want to achieve proficiency quickly. Throughout junior high and ninth grade, I took German at school. When I moved somewhere that didn’t offer German, I chose to take French and continue teaching myself German via Duolingo, conversing with German boarding students, and a translated version of the Harry Potter series. My previous experience with the language learning process directly informed my swift absorption of the basics of French, and I whizzed through the class. A comparable matter arose when I was offered the opportunity to take AP Biology; though I had taken biology in ninth grade, my engagement had been limited by Zoom. I was ecstatic at the thought of cruising through my favorite subject’s material so that we could maximize our content’s quantity. Challenge accepted. 

I soon realized, however, that I have to be able to retain the nuances of elaborate information if I want to excel. As a choir member, it was necessary to foster an attention to detail. Once on stage, our director cued us into the most intricate and fast-paced piece any of us had ever learned. I wasn’t nervous at all; I was excited to feel the rush once we started gliding through the chorus. We split into nine parts, weaving a tapestry of billowing harmonies that moved at what felt like 90 miles per hour. Once we finished singing, my face burst into a grin and I noticed the choir was in agreement: we just killed that. That was the first time I’d gotten to encounter the pure wonder of choral music, and it was because we rehearsed so nit-pickily that our performance yielded a cohesive whole. Recursive, relentless practice is an element of diligence that valuably countered my need for speed.

In choir, particularity is of the utmost importance, ensuring that a performance does its composition justice. In academics, haste for the sake of learning more doesn’t work. Slowing down is a skill that I developed to combat my tendency to overlook vital components, permitting my pool of knowledge to deepen and widen simultaneously. Across years of consistent skating, my edge quality grew and I learned how to control my accelerated movements with power and flow.

I’m back on the ice, but this time is different. I’m nearly a decade older, but the familiar tune of Defying Gravity swells throughout the arena, and my new rendition is waiting to be exhibited. My chest rises and falls with determination, and though I begin slowly, my sophisticated footwork pattern requires exactitude. My first jumping pass nears, and I control my entry. I execute the following elements with confidence, and before I know it, I’ve skated a clean program. Flight manifested itself as a weakness in me until I coupled it with practice and precision. This new balance allows me to nit-pick my way through training, rehearsals, and study sessions so that my potential in performance soars. Indeed, I see myself flying high in all my future endeavors.