Carprese Armstrong, a freshman at Rocky Mountain High School and full-time dancer, speaks on the difficulties of balancing school and extracurriculars while still finding time to hang out with friends. She explains how the difficulty of a busy schedule impacts her relationship with friends and family. Her extensive hours in dance takes a toll on grades in school.
This problem is felt all throughout the student body of Rocky Mountain. “Unfortunately, this issue does not only impact the students at Rocky, but it impacts student athletes across the county…” Although this issue can cause a great deal of stress, Caprese says, “…I couldn’t imagine my life without dance.” As Armstrong stated, even though creating a healthy balance between school, home, and dance is difficult, she couldn’t live without her community in dance.
Caprese was born in Utah and lived out her early years in Hawaii. Now she lives in Idaho with her family. Caprese started dancing when she was only 3 years old, she has been dancing for eleven years now. She previously danced at Dance Unlimited for a few years, but now she dances for Studio C.
Caprese takes seven different styles of dance, which include lyrical, hip hop, ballroom, jazz, musical theater, contemporary, and ballet. Caprease says that her two favorite styles of dance are, lyrical and ballroom. Caprese states, “One of my favorite parts of being a part of my studio is being able to compete with my friends.” She says that competing is one of her favorite things to do.
Caprese spends a total of twelve hours a week at dance, practicing and rehearsing all of her dances. With stressful competition weeks, and the weekly practices, she says that it is hard to maintain good grades when dance takes up majority of her schedule. She explained how it is often hard to find time to hang out with friends, or just relax, due to being at the studio majority of the time.
Caprese and many other student athletes can conclude that balancing schoolwork, sports, and a social life is tough. One way that Caprese handles her busy schedule is by planning out her week and setting aside time to study. She also tries to plan out her social activities in advance to make sure that she will still have time to hang out with her friends.
There are many struggles that occur with juggling sports, school and a social life. Many of them can cause stress or anxiety, but it is very important to learn how to deal with these challenges. Caprese says that setting aside personal time is very important. Some days taking a break from friends or dance also helps. Figuring out your way to destress or just relax is just as important as keeping up with school, sports, and friends.
