“Don’t waste this time,” “take every opportunity,” “these will be the best years of your life”. That pretty much sums up my summer before starting at Cambridge, a handful of family friends and teachers repeatedly urging me to make the most of my time here. No pressure, right? And so, post-results day, I scribbled down a Cambridge bucket list: write for the paper (tick), go to a formal at another college (check), learn another language (perhaps a tad too ambitious), learn a musical instrument (moving on), and – something I’ve been looking for an excuse to begin since I was a child – ballet. Marching through the Freshers’ Fair with this at the back of my mind, my legs halted at the tutu-decorated table where the Cambridge University Ballet Club were advertising their beginner programme. This was my opportunity; I pinned the weekly timetable onto my pin board and, having finally mustered up the courage, booked a term of classes.

“Ballet’s beauty and pain was completely intoxicating”

My love for ballet derived solely from watching Barbie of Swan Lake and Barbie in the Nutcracker. While I grew up dancing in a theatre school, the closest I got to pointe were jazz shoes. But I was enthralled by videos online of ballerinas attempting Odile’s 16 fouettés in Swan Lake, Pinterest photos of leotards and ribbon, and the carnage that goes into breaking in a pointe shoe. And when Netflix released Tiny Pretty Things in 2020, a limited series about ballet dancers at an elite academy in Chicago, that only added fuel to the fire. The beauty and pain of ballet’s was completely intoxicating.

“What better sport to try than one people are famously told to begin from birth?”

But my internal ache to join in was smothered by the embarrassment of being too late. I cursed toddler me, who rioted at my mum for putting my sister and I in classes, but the idea of finding an adult beginners class in my home town was out of the question. The truth is, I was terrified of being perceived to be bad at something I loved. Alas, I am the typical Cambridge student: a perfectionist, who would rather not take part at all than fail. My fear of starting ballet, of purposefully doing something I knew I would be awful at, is precisely why I knew I had to do it, and had to throw myself in at the deep end. This was the ideal environment for it – everyone in that class was new and trying it for the first time. We could all be simultaneously bad. The satisfaction of watching your own progress, feeling and seeing yourself get better at something (a satisfaction I now feel all the time here at Cambridge) is an experience I hadn’t felt since I was a child. Purposefully throwing yourself into a sport or hobby that you know you will (initially) suck at, frankly chills the blood, offering its victims no choice but to persevere and be resilient. That time is for me, a one hundred percent zero-weighted skill; there is no audience, competition, or rank. Thank God.

“Sign up. Now is the time. Take every opportunity”

And so, seeing the Ballet Club on the SU’s website after results day, I was jolted with the realisation that starting ballet classes could become a reality. Now, I was under no impression that I would be a prima ballerina after one year (a girl can dream), but I was more than satisfied by simply purchasing ballet slippers, and working on barre for tendus and pliés. What better sport to try than one people are famously told to begin from birth, and which is impossible to perfect? Going to these classes every Monday evening was the element of routine I didn’t know I needed as a humanities student. It was time away from my degree, out of my college, with people that only existed for me in the realm of ballet.

Some of my best thinking time occurred on the trek from my college (Jesus) to the dance studios in Churchill. Admittedly, I only saw the romantic side of it in Easter Term when it was light and warm – often the walk involved both the dark and getting splashed by cars on what must be the only ‘major’ road in Cambridge (one time even involved getting pooed on by a bird – not my finest moment). Almost every week I felt like I was stuck too deep in my work to park it aside for a few hours, too deep in the rabbit hole of research and writing, but my essays were almost always better by leaving them. I suppose breaks really do make you work better. Now having done an entire year of classes, I am proud that I took the leap, applied, and stuck it out each term. If you’re reading this and thinking of something in particular, I urge you to do it. Now is the time; take every opportunity.