My sophomore year of high school I was chosen to be the Apprentice Stage Manager to the Spring Musical.  It is quite difficult to explain to somebody who did not attend my high school or was not a part of the beautiful chaos that was the Spring Musical, but becoming the Stage Manager was incredibly humbling.  In summary, the three Stage Managers have to direct their peers and keep them in line while running the entire musical during the shows. They must know every single insignificant detail about the production and always be focused and responsible. In short, it was one the most stressful and incredible experiences of my lifetime.   I was incredibly nervous as a sophomore and felt like I was an acrobat on a tightrope, carefully stepping one foot in front of the other and forever terrified of making a mistake in front of my audience. During the Friday of the actual production, I misstepped and fell tumbling into the soft springs of the trampoline below me.  The show was in the second act of Beauty and the Beast and running more smoothly than I could have ever anticipated when It happened. My loyal stage crew was dragging Belle’s house offstage to the left side when the cottage got stuck on a small divot in the floor and spun around with full force, slamming against the wall behind it.  Gratefully, they were already out of sight.  I sprinted over, my stomach filling with dread and tying itself into a knot. The house had split down the middle yet had to go on stage for the next scene.  Frantically sifting through ideas in my head, I of course told myself that I could fix it on my own.  My mother always tells me that my fatal flaw is my pride.  I did not want to tell the other Stage Managers, or even my stage crew, because I believed that I could fix it without causing any panic.  I hastily put duct tape on the top of the house, securing the two parts to each other, and instructed my stage crew to be incredibly gentle bringing it on and off stage.  While the house went on stage and did not break, that was my biggest mistake. Short term my plan had worked, but in the long term the damage that I caused could have been avoided.  Because of my own pride, the house had to be reconstructed by individuals who otherwise would not have had to work and money that would not have had to be spent.  The backlash afterwards made it one of my biggest failures to date. This experience taught me many things, not just about the Spring Musical experience but about life in general.  It taught me that it is alright to rely on those around you and that sometimes it is understandable to ask for help.  I learned about teamwork and about thinking through every possible scenario before making a decision. Looking back at my slip off of the tightrope, I am glad that it happened. Now I can truthfully look back at that experience and have made changes over the past two years because of it that I otherwise might not have made.  In a similar situation only a year later, I was able to ask for help and avoid it entirely. I am proud of my position as a Stage Manager to the Spring Musical and would not change any of the things that have happened to me for the past three years because they built me into the person I am today and have led me to make the choices I have made in life.