Analysis Of Small Shoes

In Small Shoes, Camille Licate shares her story of how she has learned to let go of the things in life that had been holding her back, so that she could be open to new opportunities. She does this by using the metaphor of shoes. While there are some opportunities in life that help to carry you forward, eventually, you may need to let go of them in order to take advantage of other opportunities. Likewise, you cannot keep using the same pair of shoes forever. At some point, you will outgrow them, and need a new pair to help you get to the place where you need to be. Through this metaphor, Licate explains how your plans for the future may change with time and dance is not the only career path out there for dance majors. She also relates

After college she danced for many years, including a few with the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York. However, later on she decided that she was finished with her dance career and went on the pursue other interests. This is similar to what I plan to do in the future. Although I hope to dance after college for as long as possible, eventually I want to switch to a completely different career path. I am planning on double majoring with Criminal Justice and going on a pre-law track. This is another way in which I relate to Licate. We both chose to add an additional degree to our dance major in a completely unrelated field (her with Anthropology, and me with Criminal Justice). While I love dance, and hope to continue with it in some form for the rest of my life, it is not the only thing that I hope to do in the

Even though Licate talks about distractions that can pertain to one’s life in general, while in class we discussed distractions that related specifically to our dancing, she still brings up many excellent points. One point she made is that often we shift the focus from ourselves in order to focus on others. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it can prevent us from personal growth. We need to make a conscious effort to only put ourselves in situations that will benefit us, and not bring us down. Licate also suggested that one should write down distractions that they face during their day to day lives, so that you can realize what may be shifting your focus and figure out how to regain concentration. This is exactly what we did with our distraction awareness assignment. We wrote down the distractions that we faced during our technique classes, and how we were able to resolve them. The book also mentions doubts and fears, which can be related to our discussion of self-confidence. In fact, Licate’s method for trying to eliminate doubt is very similar to some of the tools that we learned to promote self- confidence. She tells the reader to think positively, because positive thoughts will bring forth positive emotions and help you to have better experience. One of the tools we learned in Dance Essentials was to use positive key