The majority of my childhood was spent with my toes pointing, my legs turning out, and my hands holding the barre. I've learned that many dancers share similar experiences, and so I've compiled a few for our enjoyment.

1. Bobby pins

You will lose roughly 473,925 of these in your life time. And, for every one you lose, you'll find three in a remote area. Bobby pins are like the plague, and they never truly leave you. They are absolutely necessary for creating and maintaining the perfect ballet bun, but they manage to find their way into every crack and crevice in your home. You can find them in your car, in your sofa, in your carpet, in your pillow. When I say everywhere, I mean it.

2. Glitter

Along the same lines as bobby pins, glittery costumes were sorta the antichrist. They looked pretty, but they spilled glitter everywhere. If you so much as brushed your tutu with your fingertip, your whole body would be consumed by glitter. You could try to get away from it, but you would never truly be glitter-free.

3. Costumes

Did anyone ever get a costume that fit them perfectly? Or a costume that looked just as fabulous in real life as it did in the catalog? Because I certainly did not, and I spent many hours fixing, sewing, and reworking costumes in order to make them picture-perfect and recital-ready.

4. Buns

Nothing will teach you how to put your hair in a bun like having to put it up multiple times a week for years and years. People always asked me how I did it. I told them it’s ballet magic. (Really it’s just lots and lots of bobby pins. See above).

5. Splits

When you're flexible, non-dancers think you are some sort of circus show. Yes, I can do a split. Yes, I can put my leg behind my head. Yes, I can bend my whole body in half. No, I’m not going to show you right now. Maybe later. (Read: never).

6. Jumps

Maybe you liked them, but I certainly did not. Nothing about thirty-two precisely enacted jumps screamed fun to me, and I pretty much always dreaded this portion of class. When I was younger, my teacher regularly made us do 32 changement followed by 32 crunches, over and over again. My body screamed, but I did learn discipline (and gained a pretty decent core).

7. Recitals

The end of the year performance was, for me, the most nerve wracking experience. Although I became less anxious as I grew older, I still constantly worried that something wouldn’t go right, that I would forget the dance, that I would get sick, etc.

8. “That’s not a real sport.”

Okay, but can you turn gracefully on one leg? Can you leap into a split mid-air? Probably not. Dance might not require a ball, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable of an activity. You’d be hard-pressed to find a dancer who would tell you that dance is easy because, quite frankly, it’s not. In fact, one could argue that dance is one of the harder disciplines because it requires every inch of your body to be in excellent working order, and you have to constantly be aware of how every aspect of yourself looks.

Throughout my years as a dance student, I have had many joyous moments, and a few tear-filled ones. I wouldn’t change any of it for the world.