After school, most students go home and do their homework. But for Sophie Lampe (10), she goes straight to dance. 

Right after school ends, she has to rush and get ready to dance. For two hours after school, Lampe dances for school-sponsored Golden Girls. Once she is finished, she has some 

downtime to relax or get homework done. But soon after, she has to go and dance for her studio for another three hours.

“[I chose dance] because I was not athletic as a kid,” Lampe said. “I could not run to save my life. If you threw a ball in front of me, I could not catch it. I was so bad at every sport, and so my parents put me in dance, hoping I’d be good at something, and it just worked out.”

Lampe has been dancing since she was 2 years old. With how much Lampe dances, there can be many difficulties along the way.

“The hardships are just somedays, mentally, you’re just not in it and it’s hard,” Lampe said. “There are days you’re not on it and just not focusing and everything is just hard. Or when you are really sore – those days are the worst. But I always know I can come back to dance because it is a safe space where I can be myself.”

With these hardships of dance, Lampe has learned some valuable life skills.

“I’ve learned how to work with other people without using your words. Just being able to be yourself and not worrying about people judging you. I’ve learned respect for other people,” Lampe said.

With all the life skills she has learned from dance and all of the time she has put toward dance, this is not something that she wants to leave behind after high school.

“I would love to have a future with dance because it’s my favorite thing. But I know, realistically, dancers don’t make a lot of money and I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” Lampe said. “But I want to dance as long as I can. My ultimate goal is to be able to dance in college. We’ll see how that ends up going. But my dream is to end up dancing in college.”