As a kid, I used to be obsessed with dancing. I was a dancer, on a professional team. I used to love going to dance practice after school and learning new routines for upcoming competitions. I was on this team from ages five to thirteen and I whole heartedly believed that I was going to be a professional dancer when I got older. When I was younger, around age seven or eight and i would bring up to teachers in school that I wanted to be a dancer when I grew up they would always be supportive of my idea and tell me that I could do anything I put my mind to. But over time as I got older around the age of eleven or twelve, when I used to bring up the idea of becoming a professional dancer in school to teachers and my other peers, I would get shut down. I would get told by my teacher that being a dancer is not practical and I would never succeed if that was my goal. After hearing that for so long, I started to fall out of love with dance and all the negative comments I heard about it started to change my perception of even going to dance class not to mention being a dancer. I started to not enjoy going to dance and practicing for competitions, it was starting to feel like a chore because I was starting to perceive it as a negative thing instead of the positive way I viewed it before. The educational system had such a negative impact on something I viewed as exciting and fun, that it made it into something I thought would make me unsuccessful. I started to think more about “practical” jobs that I could have in the future, which I do think benefited me, I just wish it didn’t change my views on dance in such a negative way.