The 1st year, autumn semester, my life has been the most busy and constantly demanding as it has ever been. Yet, understanding the circumstances, I still chose to involve myself heavily in club gymnastics. Recently, I had traveled to Virginia Tech for the first time to compete in my first NAIGC gymnastics meet. Despite going into the competition with a relaxed attitude, once I got into my routines on each of the six men’s gymnastics events, adrenaline was firing and I was extremely motivated to put it all out there. My work had payed off, capitalizing on a 2nd place floor exercise finish as well as taking the gold on parallel bars. However, these strong accomplishments were not what I wanted to choose as my artifact/experience. I am choosing the 3rd place all around finish to model it. It celebrates my early successes in college club gymnastics but furthermore sparks a reignited flame for the future to continue to push myself mentally and physically for what the future has in store.

As long as I can remember, gymnastics has been arguably the most prevalent aspect of my life consistently for years. Especially over the past few, it has contributed to many factors that I believe  have transformed me into the person I am today. This specific artifact I am highlighting is one of the most important skills taught and perfected by gymnasts throughout the rigorous training. The idea of a handstand can be translated to possess many different significant metaphors connected to my ideology. The literal blood, sweat and tears that have been put into the grit filled practices and competitions, working 24 hours a week in high school have truly built me, helping me across the board. Overall, in addition to the handstand, a difficult, goal-based feat, most definitely, I have applied the attributes I learned from my time at gymnastics in high school to foster my future success.