Conquering My Fear of Swimming

“Conquering My Fear of Swimming”

Learning something new can be a scary experience. One of the hardest things I have ever had to do was learn how to swim. I was always afraid of the water, but I decided that swimming was an important skill that I should learn. I also thought it would be good exercise and help me to become physically stronger. What I did not realize was that learning to swim would also make me a more confident person. This later on would be a great benefit to me in anything new I would try to do and make any new experience less stressful and scary. New situations always make me a bit nervous, and my first swimming lesson was no exception. After I changed into my bathing suit in the locker room, I stood timidly by the side of the pool waiting for the teacher and other students to show up. After a couple of minutes the teacher came over. She smiled and introduced herself, and two more students joined us. Although they were both older than me, they did not seem to be embarrassed about not knowing how to swim as I would have been in their situation. Once we had introduced ourselves to one another we got into the pool, and the teacher had us put on brightly colored water wings to help us stay afloat. One of the other students, Lisa if I remember correctly, had already taken the beginning class once before, so she took a kickboard and went splashing off by herself. The other student, Tim if I remember correctly, and I were told to hold on to the side of the pool and shown how to kick for the breaststroke. One by one, the teacher had us hold on to a kickboard while she pulled it through the water and we kicked. Pretty soon Tim was off doing this by himself, traveling at a fast clip across the short end of the pool. Things were not quite that easy for me, as this was the first time I had tried to learn how to swim; but the teacher was very patient with me. After a few more weeks, when I seemed to have caught on with my legs,