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Stressed Out? Kathleen Dahlhoff Has No Sympathy

Photo Credit: Victoria Dahlhoff

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Written by Conrad Yu

M-A student Kathleen Dahlhoff graduated last year. Here’s the catch: she was only a sophomore. She finished school early in order to dedicate more of her time to her career as a ballerina for the San Francisco Ballet Association. While only attending school for three periods a day, Kathleen had to balance her time between schoolwork, ballet rehearsals, and private tutoring. The stress, she describes, was “completely crazy”.

Bear News: When did you first start doing ballet? What inspired you to start?

Kathleen Dahlhoff: When I was five. I actually started doing gymnastics when I was four, but my parents thought I needed more discipline, so they put me in ballet. My parents took me to see a performance of the Nutcracker, and apparently I started crying when the grand pas de deux was over, saying, “I don’t want the white lady to stop dancing!” My mom was a dancer, so she was the one who got me into it. But it was something I liked anyways.

BN: The intensity of your training has increased in the past few years. What was it like going to school and doing ballet at the same time?

KD: Completely crazy. It was absolute hell, basically. I got injured because of it; I wasn’t getting to ballet in time to stretch out my muscles before I took class. I was tired and stressed all the time, and I’m so happy I don’t do that anymore. On a scale of one to ten, it was a seven on a good day, but it go up to a ten on a regular basis. I would come home after having a really brutal workout and have to stay up until one or two in the morning finishing homework. Then, I would have to wake up early to go to school again. Last year, I was doing school, ballet, and then school again the School of Independent Learners, so that was even crazier.

BN: To follow your dream of becoming a professional ballerina, you pretty much had to set school aside. How has that affected your social life?

KD: All of my really close friends have always been from ballet, so on Saturday I’d usually go and hang out with them. But, especially when I moved schools after I came up the Peninsula in the eighth grade, I had essentially no social life at all.

BN: Are you disappointed that you didn’t get the whole “high school experience”?

KD: Oh yea. It’s funny, though, because my sister, who still goes to M-A, is not into the whole “high school experience”, but I totally am. The fact that I am the one who left school and she didn’t is a little ironic. The longer I am away from high school, the more I get into what I’m actually doing, but I still do miss it. I wish I could have gone to all the dances, and, this sounds silly, but I would have liked to take the SATs with everyone. I’m still going to have to take it, just not with anybody I know.

BN: If you could offer some advice to others who are going down the same path as you are, giving up large parts of their social and academic lives to pursue their dreams, what would you tell them?

KD: Make sure it is absolutely what you want to do. There’s a certain point where you must be completely sure, because there’s no turning back. Personally, I’m at the point where I can’t turn back. It’s too late for me now to get back on the normal college track, I have given up that path. And so, you really have to make sure you have no regrets. If you ever miss being in school, as in really miss it and not just in some far away dream, you should really consider that in your decision to continue your course.