I ran away from the circus to join Princeton

While most parents in my Eastern European neighborhood enrolled their daughters in ballet, mine sent me to join the Russian circus.

From the age of four, I was launched into the heart of it all, trained by veterans of the famous Moscow Circus. What started off as an experimental after-school program turned out to be one of the most unorthodox and greatest childhoods of all.

The circus travelled all around the United States, Canada and the Virgin Islands. The crowds ranged from 50 people in a park in Brooklyn to thousands in the Cerritos Center in Los Angeles.

My specialties included juggling and unicycling (sometimes at the same time), walking on a narrow tube, standing on a man’s shoulders while he rode on a bicycle, and jump-roping on a two-foot-tall globe with two people on either side of me spinning another jump rope.

For the better part of the decade, I toured around the country with two coaches and ten other kids, performing in over 150 shows a year, visiting large cities and small towns I’d never heard of.

It was a time of blood, sweat and tears, interspersed with laughter and long days on the road. The harder the tricks were, the higher the risk of injury. While practicing the double-jump-rope on a globe trick before a show in Chicago, I lost my balance and fell off, injuring my arm. The whole incident really scared me. I wasn’t able to even attempt the trick for a few weeks.

One of my favorite moments in the circus was when I got to appear briefly on Cyberchase, a children’s show on PBS, with a speaking and performing role. As a seven year old with a fading Russian accent, it was the greatest thing ever to appear on TV and teach kids how to add numbers and do what I love.

Looking back, the whole experience seems surreal because I have no idea how we were able to pull it off. We practiced Mondays through Thursdays for three hours at night and on Sundays for four hours.

As an eternally sleepy college student, I decided to compare a typical day on the road then with a typical day in Princeton now.

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Typical day in the circus

5:30am – Wake up call from the hotel, pack up and head downstairs to meet with the crew
6am – Breakfast
6:30am – On the road to the next city
9am – Arrive in the theater, start unpacking the equipment
10am – Practice for the show, full run through
12pm – Lunch before the show
1pm – First concert of the day
3:30pm – Practice acts that need improvements, small break
5pm – Second concert of the day
8pm – Dinner, pack up all equipment into the van
9pm – Leave theater for the next town
11:30pm – Check in to the next hotel, go to sleep, eager for the next day

Typical day at college

8am – Curse my alarm clock and roll out of bed
8:30am – Breakfast in the dining hall
9am – Statistics
10am – Linear Algebra
11:30am – Lunch in the dining hall
1:30pm – Orgo Precept
3pm – Done with classes for the day, start homework
4:30pm – Watch Orange is the New Black on Netflix, finish Season Three, ponder life
5:30pm – Dinner in the dining hall
6pm – Continue homework in the library
10pm – Ballroom practice
12am – Start Prison Break on Netflix/sleep

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I have absolutely no idea how I was able to wake up before sunrise and still manage to do it with a smile on my face. I wish I was back on the road almost every day, but I don’t regret the reasons why I had to leave. I knew that I had to focus on school work and get into the college of my dreams.

Sometimes the nostalgia gets to me, but I found a way to get a slice of the old life. My parents and I attend Cirque du Soleil shows, I juggled in one of my high school’s theater productions, and I even started my own juggling club in high school.

The whole experience has also made me love traveling. I got the extraordinary chance to see how people from all walks of life were alike and different. Whether it was leading workshops in juggling for kids in middle school or talking to audience members after a show, it made me appreciate and understand cultural differences.

Whenever I visit a new country with my family, I always want to learn from the people and culture I am surrounded by. Basically, the circus didn’t just teach me a few cool tricks, but also really important lessons on responsibility and perspective.

When I tell people I used to be in a traveling children’s circus, they don’t believe me (they even demand pictures), and I can see why.

Besides the fact it’s not something you hear at your typical Frosh week ice-breaker game, I’m a pretty shy person in real life, so it’s ironic I was able to get up in front of huge audiences and perform my heart out.

Well, to be honest, sometimes I don’t believe it either.