Yay Juggling!
I have been a juggling fool for several years now. I initially learned the juggling basics from my mom during highschool, but when I went to UMass Amherst in 1999, I found I was living on a hallway with three great jugglers and they taught me to be a much better juggler. I also got some free pizza for going to UMass Juggling Club once in a while. I started practicing on my own a good deal, and noticed steady improvement with both balls and clubs.
Then in my Junior year, I started going to Juggling Club more regularly and picked up so much more: club passing, all kinds of ball tricks, rings, etc. At the end of the year, we looked around and realized no one was stepping up to lead the Club, but none of us wanted it to die, so a friend and I agreed to be Co-Presidents.
Luckily for us, the club started to expand rapidly that fall, and we even got a couple of new officers. By the end of my senior year I was passing 7 clubs, passing 10 clubs between 3 people, doing all kinds of other passing patterns, juggling 4 balls and eyeing 5-ball patterns, had experience in a couple lesson-giving expereinces (paid gigs!), and lots more. The club had a nice steady attendance and great support from within, and we elected 3 or 4 officers that spring.
I was so proud when in the fall after I graduated, the Club started drawing over 30 people per meeting, especially considering they were holding 2 or 3 meetings a week! Anyway, I didn't move far away and still attended Club fairly regularly, and learned more stuff.
But in November, a very cool opportunity arose: one of the club members had fallen in with some stilt-walkers down at King Richard's Faire. The stilt-walkers were from Simply Circus based in Newton, MA. They didn't have a juggling teacher for their otherwise awesome kids circus program, so they invited the UMass Club members to teach juggling for a day in exchange for stilt-walking lessons. I was all over this opportunity! It ended up leading to me becoming the Juggling Instructor for Simply Circus, once I moved close enough to attend regularly. It's really fantastic for me, because I get experience teaching, which I love, teaching juggling, which I doubly love, and learning all the other circus skills, which is priceless!
That's my circus story so far. :-) Thanks for listening.