Since it is close to the halfway point in the semester, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on my time with ballroom dancing. Before this class, I didn’t think, know, or realize just how much movement is involved in each dance and how complicated the steps seem. I remember thinking before the lessons started, “Oh, how many calories does ballroom dancing actually burn. I mean, come on, how hard can it be? People make it look easy on shows like Dancing with the Stars and America’s Got Talent.” Well, after the first day, when we started with the Salsa, it definitely changed how I thought about how I need to reassess my way of thinking to make sure I did everything right to earn a satisfying grade: enjoy learning about the dances and being able to do all the steps right. This information is important to my well-being, because it academically and physically challenged me in a way I haven’t been challenged before: the academic aspect of actually learning formal dancing and, the physical aspect, learning the basic steps that go with each, instead of the typical “jumping up and down while waving my hands” and “casual, middle-school type sway to slow songs” dancing. Changing from that “loose” dancing style frame of mind to more of a “formal” dancing style mind frame almost forced me to wipe the metaphorical whiteboard and start fresh again from scratch.

A skill that I learned in this class is how important it is to keep a proper frame when dancing. The reason it is so important to keep a proper and tight frame is that it helps the leaders clearly initiate what they want to followers do, and another reason is that it can be used as a foundation to go back to for the pair to gather their bearings together if a step didn’t go as well they’d hoped. Now, this is skill is important to my well-being in metaphorical sense, because I know I have two left feet sometimes and holding a proper frame allows me, as a follower, forces me to focus on keeping up with the steps and/or combination, instead me dwelling on if I did that step perfectly or not, and it also helps when the leader can clearly initiate turns and such, instead of it generally feeling loose and go-with-the-flow.

One of the pieces of wisdom I have learned in this class is that in order to be a good follower, I needed to actually let my partner lead; my reasoning for taking on the role of a follower is that dancing, formal dancing specifically, is almost like a foreign language to me. To the average person that might sound a little obvious, but for me, this was and continues to be a challenge for me. All my life I’ve always felt the need to take control because I don’t trust the other person to take initiative. What I found is that when I let go some control and trusted my partner, it felt as if some weight had lifted off my shoulders and completed the steps well. This class improved or, at the very least, helped my emotional wellness in that learning to let go of a little control will help me feel less stressed and weighted down. Another piece of wisdom I have learned from this class is something I previously knew but this class reinforced it: having confidence in myself. I constantly doubt myself and believe that since it wasn’t up to my exceedingly high standards, it wasn’t good enough. Gradually, I felt more and more comfortable in the steps I took that I was doing well. This will help my emotional wellness in the future by reinforcing me to have confidence in myself and my actions.