Marena Beale
September 8, 2023
Perspective on Stress
English Composition
Everyone goes through moments of stress. A stressful moment that resonates with me was during my competition season for dance last year. I’ve been dancing since the age of two, and the summer before my senior year started, I tore my meniscus. I ended up having to have surgery in August of 2022, causing me to miss not only the entire first half of my senior year of dance, but also have a weird start to my senior year in school. I got a blood clot that was quickly traveling up to my lungs, which ended up with me spending the first day of school in the emergency room. The stress from that situation came when I finally got to have my first day of school. I was an entire week behind everyone else in school work, and as I tried to catch up, the workload continued to pile on. My grades suffered from this, and I was constantly worried about how I was going to get them back up in order to make sure I got into college. Eventually my grades and school got better, but I still was out of the only physical activity I loved for six months. Dance was always a stressful sport, so adding the fact that I would have to learn my dances in two hours before I performed them on a stage to be judged did not help. The two weeks leading up to the competition, all I could think about was my solo. We had finished it just a couple days before the weekend. While the people I was up against were learning their solos, I was relearning how to walk. While watching the Ted Talk “How to Make Stress Your Friend” by Kelly McGonigal, something she said really reminded me of my prior situation. She said, “When life is difficult, your stress response wants you to be surrounded by people who care about you” (McGonigal). This quote stuck out to me because without having friends and family to support me through the stressful moments of my year, it would have been much more difficult. I think that goes for all people when going through a tougher moment in their life.
Dancers are taught to use their stress as adrenaline. This idea is similar to when McGonigal says “When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body’s response to stress.” (McGonigal). Dancers aren’t necessarily at risk of dying when nervous about a performance, but the idea that stress isn’t always bad is similar in both the dance world and people as a whole. I felt as though both dance teachers and McGonigal were almost making the same points, just a different reason why.
