A single story is a belief you have about something that is later proved to not hold true, thus making you reevaluate your single view on the subject.
When I was asked to come up with my own personal single story a million things ran through my head. Out of all those things, I'm choosing to do the one that's most personal to me. You guys heard some of this story in class, but I don't feel that that short minute really portrayed how deeply I feel about this impacting moment in my life.
My senior year of high school, I ran for homecoming court and made the top five. Before this, I had never really went out of my way to run for elections because it has always been a popularity thing and I didn't feel that enough people liked me. On the contrary, I thought that people thought I was annoying and this mind-set made me feel the same way about myself. Now, the top five picked for Homecoming Court have to do Homecoming Coronation, which is a dance the seniors do for the whole school. Had I known this when I ran, I probably wouldn't have done it. I was scared to death because not only had I never danced before, but I have no sense of rhythm! (I still don't totally, but I've gotten much better(; !!!) I had a fear of getting made fun of and messing up, basically I lacked confidence in every area. To make it worse, they gave me a solo dance part! After weeks of practicing, I went up on stage, nailed it, puked, and then did it a second time. It was awesome! Afterwards, people kept asking me like, "Kasey, you dance?" "Kasey, you like dancing?" and of course my answer was no. But somebody asked me like "Kasey, you can dance?" and even though its only the slightest difference in the linking verb it made me do a complete reevaluation on myself. Just because I don't like doing something, doesn't mean I can't. If I set my mind to it, I can do anything. And even though people didn't actually look at me any differently after that, I felt like they did but it's only because I looked at myself differently. I may not be good at everything, but I can't be down on myself for something I've never even tried before and I need to accept myself and all the things I can and will do. With a more positive outlook on myself, my life also started to feel like it was very positive.
And this is my story about how a moment I was scared to death changed my Single Story about myself and helped me grow into a bigger person.
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