Are You Waiting for Someone to Tell You That You Belong?

Welcome to my college dance story.

I dropped to a dance minor instead of a major during the dark days of my freshman year. The brain surgery/first cancer scare era.

The way the system works, a dance minor is pretty much interpreted as minor interest in dancing. Equated with giving up on the performance side of the degree, because you're no longer allowed to perform in the main shows, only the student showcases. At least, that's what the website and every audition email says.

But I never saw dropping as having anything to do with my interest in dancing.

For context: this was, and still is, my dream.

Let's back it up to how this wild ride began.

When deciding where to go to college, I had two non-negotiables: finance and dance. I needed strong programs in both, which, as you can imagine, is a very specific Venn diagram. Shoutout to USC for answering "pick one" when I asked how to apply to both Marshall and Kaufman. Girl, you haven't even seen my audition yet. Guess that's why I had to go find the USC of the South.

My original dream was Columbia's economics program and dancing at Barnard. I didn't get in. December 15, 2022, my whole family gathered around my computer, and soon watched my dramatic exit on my moped. If only I could talk to that girl now. I'd tell her: Don't worry, the next time you run off, you'll find a motorcycle, one that comes with a man.

But that rejection ended up manifesting in a far more beautiful way than the acceptance ever could have.

My best friend Miranda now goes to Barnard and Columbia, studying neurosurgery and leading a club, Connect Your Community, dedicated to college students going through health crises.

Want to guess how that happened?

My emergency brain surgery that redirected my college and dance journey took place on her birthday. It was our freshman year of college, and she was at UCSD, still figuring out her major. The experience became the basis of her transfer essays, landing her at Barnard, where she's building a community for everyone in her best friend's situation.

So I did get my Columbia dream, after all.

Without New York in the picture, I basically handed the rest of the college decision to fate, knowing my version of fate at the time involved New York, dance, and business, and not being entirely sure how the world was going to size up to that.

And yet, somehow, it did.

SMU, a school in Texas I'd never heard of and honestly forgot I applied to, started sending me very attractive scholarship offers to study finance. That was the only part I liked, until I visited and discovered they have a dance program that studies Balanchine technique. The niche technique I have trained in since I was twelve. And that it's the top-five dance program in the country.

They nailed the Venn Diagram.

So I committed. When I visited campus, I met a ton of dancers and got their contacts. Two weeks later, I reached out to lock in the audition details.

That's when someone told me the audition happens the fall before you attend the school.

I lost my mind.

How was I going to a school with my literal dream program and not be part of it?

I ran to the webpage, hoping to find a glitch in the matrix.

And don't worry, I did.

Somehow, the dance program application had been opened on my account at some point, most likely by my college counselor, because I had zero recollection of it. The deadline had passed, but the portal was still accessible to me.

I could see everything it required.

In one breath, I called my Balanchine high school teacher and told her I was taking two days off, the only days of school I ever voluntarily missed. In two days, we filmed every video the application required.

I sent an email to the dean:

I know this is crazy. I know I'm late. But I love dancing, and here is everything I have.

Then we waited.

An entire summer went by. I committed to SMU and made peace with the idea of auditioning when I arrived and possibly sitting out my first year, not dancing, just waiting. (Imagine the reverse butterfly effect if I'd had brain surgery in that reality too, without having taken advantage of every day my body was still working.)

Then, two weeks before I left for school, I was in Trader Joe's, the holy land, when a random number called.

It was the SMU Dance Division.

I'd applied as a minor because the audition chaos had made "major" feel out of reach. They were calling to ask me to be the nineteenth member of the freshman class.

As a major.

To perform.

I'd done it.

That was the day I learned something important.

I can create glitches in the matrix. That hard work finds its way through. That a system isn't one unless you decide to let it be.

But then it came, the brain surgery, just three shy months into my dream.

I spent months at home, watching life go on in Dallas and trying to figure out how this was the story I was coming home with about the first months of college. How I got so close to being out in the world just to get pulled right back into my childhood bed — and worse, into a body that wasn't allowed to exercise more than fifteen minutes a day for months. I hadn't gone consecutive days without dancing since I was two years old.

I came back in January feeling like an alien, refigured, trying to figure out if I was still able to dance.

What I couldn't shake was the divide I felt growing. My classmates were putting in every hour they had. My teachers, consciously or not, were investing in the majors. And I watched my performance opportunities quietly slip away.

Everyone performed that spring.

Except me.

So I eventually learned to stop fighting it. To painfully meet my reality and stop living in how I wished things would’ve panned out. I let the system file me where it had already been filing me anyway.

That's part of why I went to Barcelona the following semester.

There, I performed once a month; more shows in one semester than I'd do in four years at SMU. Halfway across the world from my broken dream, in a Spanish language that couldn't carry the English words of defeat I'd been telling myself, I learned the language of loving myself back into being an artist.

I got back into my body after surgery, not just trusting it to function but pushing it further than it had gone before. I met the love of my life, the best friends, and, maybe most importantly, myself.

But when I came back to America, I had a hunger. I didn't want to have to leave the country to be a performer. And with that will in my heart, I watched as the system started to open.

First: that fine print about minors not performing? It got scratched when a choreographer from, of all places, Barcelona came during peak fall performance season. The only people available to audition were first-semester freshmen and me. I performed a piece for the Spanish Embassy at the SMU Meadows Museum.

Then a senior choreographer slid into my DMs asking me to be in her student choreography showcase piece. Another loophole: if a choreographer directly requests you, their opinion voids major or minor status. I performed a Dave Matthews piece about the nine-to-five worker fighting monotony.

And that brings me to the glitch that just happened again.

Senior Dance Concert. Every senior choreographs a piece and casts dancers from across the program. The fine print: every major must be cast before a minor can be considered. This year, there were thirteen seniors. Most wanted only two or three dancers per piece. There are over sixty dance majors.

The math made it statistically impossible for all majors to be cast, let alone a minor.

I went to the audition anyway.

If they'd let me be there for nothing, I could at least make it something. And this was a rare sensation: an audition with no pressure attached. So I danced. I smiled. I laughed. I fell, in what turned out to be a very important piece. At one point, a teacher came up mid-audition to quietly remind me to email the dean for permission to perform.

I swear she winked.

That night, I didn't look for my name on the cast list. I read every name with genuine curiosity.

Until I saw Hudson.

Not once.

Twice.

I was cast in two pieces, including the one where I fell.

Ladies and gentlemen — I've done it again.

Here's my takeaway, and my reminder for you: there is no system unless you create one. The unbelievable happens when you let go of a result, release the expectation, and simply place yourself in a position to be wonderfully surprised.

And if there isn't a place for you, go find yourself enough to remember that you can always just make one.