“Are you ready?” my friend asks in the wings, as the curtain opens for our final dance. “No, I’m not,” I say as I run onstage following the lead girl.

The recording of a string orchestra’s flourish travels throughout the theatre as we leap and twirl. Landing the temps leve arabesque, I can feel our breathing in sync.

Almost all little girls attend a ballet class at one point in their life, attracted by the massive amounts of tulle, the satin ribbons, and the ethereal appeal dancing on the tips of her toes. When I first entered a ballet studio as a three-year-old wearing stockings and no shoes, I had no idea that I would pursue it to the level I am at now.

Nonetheless, here I am–this year a New Apprentice of my studio company, an official and “professional” member of our corps dancers, and off to yet another fantastic summer intensive with the Joffrey Ballet in New York. I still don’t understand how I have gotten here, or how I could have possibly qualified.

While others spend their afternoons completing rigorous SAT prep books, practicing an instrument, or attending sports practice, I practically live at my ballet studio, rehearsing for our productions.

Pacific Ballet Academy, like many classical ballet studios, has two primary seasons: Winter, when we present our annual showing of The Nutcracker, and our Spring Showcase, in which we perform selections from repertoire ranging from classics like La Bayadere and Swan Lake to original contemporary choreography such as “Jai Ho” and “Earth Rising”, a contemporary modern piece influenced by Martha Graham’s work.

I remember the morning before my first audition for a summer intensive. I woke up with an overwhelming feeling of dread; my mind and body screamed in a vehement cacophonic high-pitched wail, “NO.”

I didn’t even bother standing up. Using my floral duvet cover, I cocooned my body into a human burrito and rolled off the mattress as my mother entered the room. When she left, I crawled to the kitchen, still with one of the blankets in hand, and proceeded to cry on the floor. I believed the change of background made a more convincing statement.

As pathetic and humorous as it sounds now, I was absolutely terrified that morning. I believed that I was setting myself up for failure. With my terrible technique, unimpressive turn-out, and fantastically weak ankles, the prestigious Joffrey Ballet would never take me. Still, I went. Around three weeks later, I was proven wrong.

The entire Joffrey experience was simply surreal. I was living with four incredibly talented and caring girls I am happy to call friends and an easy going and understanding chaperone in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village. Sometimes, I wonder if my entire summer was a fantastic fever dream. Luckily, it wasn’t.

To say that I have always been committed to dance is a lie. Ballet is a physically gruelling, extremely competitive, and exclusive sport. Before my audition, I had considered quitting ballet too many times to count. In contrast to other styles of dance, ballet is renowned for its demanding attentiveness to technique and physical qualities. The style does not appeal to all; many find the obsession with perfection that is paramount to ballet repulsive.

“So, why do you dance ballet?” others ask me. “I dance to be free,” I say. “But how could you possibly be free with so many restrictions?” Describing my love of ballet to anyone else who does not do ballet is one of the most difficult things in the world. Being a successful ballet dancer requires immense sacrifice, dignity, passion, and the right amount of obsession. Ballet is the pursuit of being perfect, and for that one single moment on stage you are perfect, and everything comes together. And that is why I dance.

It will never make sense to some people why I devote so much time and effort towards an activity I do not plan to pursue outside of high school and college. Although that professional life is not for me, the opportunities ballet has given me, the people I have met, and the individual I have become because of it, are worth it, just to have those three minutes of bourréeing to perfection.