I recently signed up for an advanced ballet class at my local college. This was a big step for me. I haven’t danced seriously for about 15 years, and bellying up to the barre after such a long hiatus was a bit intimidating. I met with the teacher beforehand and explained my concerns, but she encouraged me to take the leap into the advanced class. Some of my classmates are ex-professional ballerinas (now retired in their late 20s/early 30s), some have danced for almost all of their adult lives, some are dance majors, and some are class regulars. And then there’s me: The newbie pharmacist with the heart and soul (but not necessarily the skillset!) of a Balanchine dancer. I never had dance lessons when I was young; my family didn’t have the resources to enroll me in classes (I was already taking piano lessons which were expensive enough). But I always wanted to dance, so I started dancing in my late teens/early 20s. Starting ballet (or anything new) later in life, one naturally has the physical and mental challenges of age in addition to the limitations of time and other competing interests. And then there is challenge of the paucity of opportunities/scarcity of classes for adults!
I don’t know why it is that people assume that once someone reaches adulthood that they no longer wish to keep improving themselves. We encourage children to undertake new pursuits all the time to help broaden their horizons: sign up for a sports team, play an instrument, join the band, take art classes, learn a language. Somehow when we get to adulthood, it is almost like we hit a wall: whatever you managed to do when you were young is like a freebie—it is all you get. Anything after that is going to be a lot of work. If you make the decision as an adult that you want to branch out and learn something new, the deck seems a little bit stacked against you as everything seems to take a lot more effort (than if you had done it when you were young). But the rewards are perhaps even richer for the challenges that have to be overcome to get there.
When I was taking dance class this past week, I was struck by the similarities between my journey as a new practitioner in pharmacy and my journey in ballet. I started ballet later in life, and I also went back to school as an older-than-average student to get my pharmacy degree. Going back to school for a second graduate degree was certainly not easy. It took a fair amount of courage to make the decision to give up my identity as a medicinal chemist and face down my fear of starting over. I was worried about how old I was, having a family, going into debt, putting both my husband’s and my life on hold for another five or six years. My husband and I both had to make lots of sacrifices to get me through pharmacy school and the residency that followed. And as challenging as the work-life balance was for me, there were many people in my pharmacy class who were single parents, while others were parents raising multiple children (talk about difficulties and competing interests!).
When I started ballet, I was told I was too old and too tall (5’10” is uncommonly tall for a ballerina). My maturity (ahem, age!) meant that I would have more physical challenges than younger dancers and people who had danced their whole lives, but it also meant I was serious about taking class. No one put me in tutu and dragged me to the studio. I was there because I wanted to be there. Being a veritable giant in the dance world also meant more mass to have to move around (unfortunately!) but long limbs give beautiful long lines when stretched out, which is one nice perk of being tall. When I first started ballet, there weren’t any classes for adults were I lived, so I took class with preteens, which also took a fair amount of nerve. I took class anyway, even though it meant towering over my classmates (some of whom were half my age). I looked stupid probably, but I didn’t care because I wanted to learn.
Ballet training and pharmacy training are more similar than you might realize. Every ballet class (no matter which school of training you study) has three main components: time at the barre (to build technique and strength), time in the center (to work on balance, strength, and jumps), and time traveling the floor (to work on synthesizing all the steps into beautiful combinations). Time at the barre is a lot like pharmacy school. In ballet, you spend a lot of time there learning the positions, what to do, and what NOT to do, so that you have a strong foundation and can become a competent dancer. Time at the barre builds strength so that you can execute the practice of ballet successfully without injuring yourself. In pharmacy school, we learn the foundations of pharmacy practice so that we can become competent clinicians to care for and prevent the injury of others (our patients).
If you don’t know the foundations of ballet at the barre, you won’t get very far when you try and practice ballet in the center of the room or when traveling across the floor. Time in the center is kind of like being a new practitioner. You are strong enough to stand on your own and work independently (e.g. you don’t need the barre for balance), but you still can look to your left and to your right at your colleagues for direction. If I put a foot wrong, I can immediately correct myself if I am watching and learning from the other more experienced dancers around me. I can also improve what I already might be doing well. Hold my arm a little more this way, turn my head a little more that way; this is the advantage of being surrounded by people in practice who have more experience than you. This is true in pharmacy practice as well: The more seasoned practitioners around us help guide us when we might find ourselves unknowingly going the wrong way. They can also reinforce what we are doing right. Once we leave pharmacy school and become new practitioners, we do not have the advantages of always having direct feedback to help us improve. We have to be perceptive enough to recognize that the corrections in the professional practice world might be very subtle and often must be self-initiated (since we don’t have a ballet mistress on our shoulder to tell us to straighten our knees, point our toes, and stay in time with the music).
The time we spend traveling the floor in ballet is what I most look forward to and, interestingly, is also what I most fear. There is nothing like the freedom in being able to leap and connect the steps together in a seamless and beautiful way. It feels almost like being able to fly. But it is daunting. There is so much potential for both beauty and failure: It is just you and the vast expanse of floor you have to cover. And what if you forget the steps? You’ll feel and look ridiculous, right? It is a huge leap of faith: You have to go it alone with people watching and seeing every flaw. Traveling the floor in ballet is analogous to becoming a seasoned practitioner in pharmacy. It is the time when you are strong enough, with enough experience and skills, to make that long journey through all those bars of music seem both simultaneously effortless and interesting. It isn’t as though we haven’t traveled the floor as students or new practitioners because we have. We are practicing our steps (e.g. our independence and self-sufficiency) all the time. The proof is in the execution: as students and new practitioners our performance isn’t always consistent because we are still learning. Seasoned practitioners are consistent in their approach and unafraid of challenging steps (at least I imagine they are!) because they have practiced for years, just like the experienced dancers in my class. Still, even for experienced dancers, the pressure is always there to make things look perfect because if you don’t figure it out before showtime, people are going to ask for their ticket price back. Thankfully, in pharmacy at least, most of these pressures are only internal. No physician is going to ask for a refund if I tell him I need to look something up (Actually he/she might, but I think that would be kind of funny.). So I keep looking forward to the day I will be able to cross the floor without fear, but this has not happened to me yet.
Any time we attempt something new, ballet, pharmacy, or otherwise, we have our fears of the unknown with which we must contend: there is always the fear of looking stupid, feeling incompetent, or just failing in the pursuit of whatever it is that we are trying to do. But if we let these fears hold us back, we will never reach our potential. And worse, we might never realize what we are capable of. I never would have become a pharmacist if I had listened to my fears before taking the leap to change careers. And look what I would have missed! I also never would have discovered my strength as a dancer or known the joy of what it means to lyrically express something beautifully without words. We all have to get out there on that floor, even if we aren’t great artists yet. Everyone has to start somewhere. The important thing is to have the courage to get started.