Title: Junior-Senior Relationship
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Blog Entry: In our federation we have a certain dynamic between those who are of a higher rank and those who are of a lower rank. The higher ranking students are known as the seniors, and the lower ranking students are known as the juniors. In an ideal world the relationship of a senior to a junior belt is that of a mentor to his or her student. The junior is supposed to look up to his or her senior belts and use them as models for where they want to be. The senior is to care for his or her junior belt and guide them as they progress in the martial arts. Juniors are to respect their seniors the way a student ought to respect his teacher or the way a player respects his or her coach. However, there are unfortunatley bad seniors as well as bad juniors. Some juniors resent their seniors for having authority over them. Their autonomy and independence is threatened. They feel that the situation of some students having some type of rank over them will lead to oppression or harassment. As a result, the junior rebels. This leads to a bad attitude. These juniors are hard to teach and are not very cooperative. Sometimes this will also lead to a junior belt becoming cocky. They feel paranoid that their seniors are just going to analyze everything they do anc correct it. Therefore, they analyze the seniors first and come up with the conclusion that they are in fact better than their seniors. On the other hand, you have seniors that become filled with power hunger and look for any way to throw their weight around. They will look to criticize all of your techniques and look for ways to make you do things in class. They will also not let you forget that they are your senior. They are the arrogant bullies that exist within your school. Other seniors fall into the trap of being paranoid of juniors automatically rebelling, and therefore, they go out and make sure that the juniors "know their role." Just recently in one of the classes at my school, the high ranking instructor constantly spoke of "watching your seniors" and "listening to your seniors." He obviously had it in his mind that the students didn't do that. This to me is jumping to conclusions and being paranoid that junior belts do not listen to their seniors. The only reason I can say with certainty that he was being paranoid is because I know the man. I have trained under him for quite some time. He is a teacher and you can tell by the way he tries to assert discipline on his students. I had to spar with him once and he didn't move at all. He was waiting for me to make the first move. When I began advancing towards him to get him to do something he would stop and give me a lesson of what I should try. He wasn't even giving me the chance to show what I could do. He just presumed right from the get go that I didn't know anything, and he had to teach me. That isn't right. I actually like that instructor that I was speaking about just now, but I don't like his outlook on life which is that everyone needs to be preached at about respecting their senior or that juniors have to always be taught something because their is no way that they could possibly know anything. (I will finish this later)
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