It is over. All of the practices, the games, the after school meetings -- they are over. For years, we have dedicated ourselves to our passions and talents in hopes of a great return. We sweat, wake up early and stress over our extracurriculars all so that we can excel at our craft, or to put on that always-illustrious college resume. These after school activities became who we were in high school -- the theatre kids, the football players, the marching band kids. What we did after school was not just an activity to pass the time; they were, and maybe still are, a way to identify ourselves.
For me, it was dance. For fifteen years, I slaved away at my dance studio, spending hours upon hours practicing for the next audition or recital. But in the coming week, my dance career is coming to an end and I am stuck with the question, what do I do now? What do I do now that there is no need to wake up in the morning to go to rehearsal? How do I structure my life when, in fact, there is no more structure left?
There are so many emotions that come with an ending. The sadness of leaving something you love behind, the excitement of starting something new, and then all those other emotions that fall in between. It can be a lot to digest because for the first time in our lives there is nothing to move on to that is finite. For our entire lives our parents, teachers and coaches have detailed explicitly the training or classes we needed to take for the next year. But now we are in limbo, a place where we know what we love to do but are unsure of how to keep on doing it. Again the question, what do we do now?
I guess all we can do now is move on. There is no button we can push that will stop time. We are leaving high school and our extracurriculars, and there is nothing we can do about it. All we can do is use the tools that school, alone, could never teach us. The independence from planning our days that start at 7:35 a.m. and end at 9:30 p.m. The organization from laying out all of our uniforms and packing our bags the night before the big game. The prioritization from getting our homework done in study hall because we knew that we had no time to do it after school. The initiative from doing what ever we could to score the goal, get the lead, and hit that note. While the extracurricular may be over, what we have learned from them will stay with us forever.
Not only will we have the lessons, but also we will have the memories. We may not enter the gym or band room again, but we will remember the smells and sounds that were part of our experience. We will remember the people that made our worst days brighten,, and the great days even better. We have the ability to think back to the time when we ran around the dressing rooms before a recital in body tights and bloomers, screaming and dancing in the halls for no rhyme or reason (shout out to my dance girls).
While it may hurt to move on from a passion and love so strong, there is nothing that I would take back or change. As Shakespeare wrote, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
