My entire childhood was devoted to gymnastics. At the age of nine I began taking weekly classes at a local gymnastics center. By the time I was ten I was asked to join the “blue stars team”. At my gym the blue stars team was essentially levels one through four combined. The blue stars team served as an opportunity for young gymnasts to test the waters and see if they could be successful in gymnastics. The main goal of the blue stars team was to learn all the skills needed to compete in a level five competition. These skills included a kip on the bars, a front handspring on the vault, a back walkover on the beam, and a double back handspring on the floor. I spent entire summer training in the gym to gain these skills. Each day I would enter the gym wide-eyed, eager to learn new skills. Upon entering fifth grade I was moved up to level five and competed in my first meet. This patterned continued for the next four years of my life; each summer I would train a higher level and then compete the level the following year. By eighth grade I was thriving as a level eight gymnast. However, through four years of gaining new skills I had lost my most important skill: my love for gymnastics. Gymnastics had engulfed each sector of my life. Each week I would spend forty hours training. Not only would I train at the gym, I would also do my homework there, eat dinner there, and shower there. By eighth grade my life seized to exist outside of the gym. It was not until the end of eighth grade and my career as a level eight gymnasts that I was able to realize gymnastics just was not the sport for me anymore. Many of my teammates were forced to quit because of server injuries; however, I made the decision to quit gymnastics because I knew I had lost my love for the sport. One June afternoon I left the gym and never retuned. While I resent gymnastics for the pain it caused me, I still attribute much of my personality today to my childhood spent as a gymnast.