A SCHOOLGIRL is pursuing her dream of a ballet career after securing 10 A grades in her exams – following fears she would not dance again.
Amy Pollock from Clarkston in East Renfrewshire has scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, and was told she needed urgent surgery as she prepared to sit her exams at Williamwood High School.
The 15-year-old decided to postpone the operation so she could sit her nine National 5 exams and Higher dance.
The surgery at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh on June 6 was successful and yesterday morning the teenager received a text to say she had achieved straight As.
Pollock, who started dancing at the age of two and joined Scottish Ballet’s junior programme when she was 10, said: “It was scary and hard but if the surgery was going to take the dancing part of me away, I knew I couldn’t let it take my grades as well. So I just had to put it to the side and concentrate and work hard.”
On receiving her results she said: “I was so shocked and happy. I felt that all the work I put in was worth it. Everything went really well with the surgery and I’m looking to start dancing again soon, which is great as I didn’t think I would.”
Pollock’s scoliosis became more severe at the start of the year and she was told she needed surgery just weeks before sitting her exams.
“That absolutely crushed me,” she said. “I thought I would never dance again.
Her mother Gillian, 43, said there was “some screaming” when her daughter shared her results with the family, including her father and her brother Ben, 10. A head teacher in Coatbridge, she said: “We are incredibly proud of her – she does really put in the work, both in her dance and in school.”
READ MORE: School boy battling deportation secures top grades in Highers
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