During my whole life I have successfully avoided confronting my flaws. In high school I was terrible at math and science, so I became a journalism major in college. I sat the bench on the softball team, so I simply quit the team. Whenever I was presented with a challenge, I avoided it.

Then last spring I realized I need to try something new. I needed to get out of my comfort zone. I had to see a building on campus besides Hamilton Hall. I needed to get a little crazy.

So I signed up for tap dancing class.

I have to admit that tap dancing wasn’t the only dance course I could take. But it was the only course that I had a background in. After all, I took tap dancing for one whole year when I was four years old. And I can recall how good I was.

But I started to get worried for class when I talked to my friends about my newest adventure.

“You are in tap dancing,” each would say. “Remember that time .” And they would proceed to tell stories about all the times I have tripped, fallen over or run into something.

So despite my klutziness and friends’ ridicule, I arrived on the first day of class. I looked around at the class of about 20 students, mostly female. They were all wearing sophisticated black dance pants and T-shirts.

I was wearing old gym shorts from high school, a T-shirt, white socks and my brand new, shiny Mary Jane-like tap shoes with ribbons for shoelaces. The class begins.

I stare at the wall of mirrors, unsure of what to expect while our excited professor starts.

Tap. Tap. Tap. The first lesson.

I looked down at my large, uncoordinated feet. The click of metal hitting the wooden studio floor fills the dance studio. Amazing, I think to myself. I’m a tap dancer.

Then within minutes, the rest of the class is shuffling, hop-stepping and everything else Fred Astaire mastered in one of his movies. And I continue to practice. Tap. Tap. Tap.

After a few weeks of class, I wanted to throw my tap shoes out the window. I dreamt of a day when I could tap hand-in-hand with Gregory Hines or Gene Kelly. But instead, every day I was a drunken Shirley Temple with her shoes on the wrong feet.

Tap dancing was not for me. But I still enjoyed it. I am really bad at it. But now I had more of a appreciation for tap dancing and tap dancers.

That was the point of taking this class.

College is a time in each person’s life when he or she need to push themselves to learn something that cannot be taught in a textbook.

Each person needs to challenge himself or herself to try to enjoy an activity that they are not good at. It’s easy to enjoy the things you are good at. It takes a stronger person to work toward improving oneself.

Tap dancing was my culture- expanding experience. What will yours be?

Michelle Kann is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Garnavillo. She is the newsroom managing editor.