Emily Coll

When I was five I "quit" ballet. I hadn't been dancing very long to begin with, but the ballet teacher essentially told my mother that I wasn't very good at it, and that I would probably never be a dancer, so she didn't sign me up for the class again, and I didn't complain. Flash forward fifteen years. I am a member the UGA Ballroom Performance Group, an officer for the Ballroom Dance Club, and a frequent attendee of countless social ballroom and swing dances across the state of Georgia, and occasionally surrounding states. I am a dancer. On that note, I would like to say an extremely sarcastic thank you to my previous ballet teacher for being so encouraging. I started dancing again my first semester of college. I was dragged to a free West Coast Swing lesson by some friends of my roommates. In hindsight, I know that West Coast Swing, although it’s now one of my favorite dances, is one of the hardest to learn as a beginner. Feeling slightly discouraged, and having accepted at five years old that I would never be a dancer, I didn’t go back to another lesson for a few months. The following semester I had a class with a member of Ballroom Performance Group, who had been at that first lesson I took, and he really encouraged me to come back and keep dancing. It was at that point that I really jumped in to dancing head first, and I haven’t looked back since.