Today was a extremely odd class at the West Branch. The only people who made it to class tonight where the people planning on pretesting so class was extremely small for the advanced class.
I think we only have 6-8 people from our branch who will be able to test this weekend and I am looking forward to watching them represent our branch on the test. 4 of the people testing are people that have stayed after class for extra practice time and they all did extremely well and all thanked me after their pretest was over for staying after class and helping them to get ready. It was nice to be thanked however truthfully the people did the work all I did was over assistance here and there and helped them through the process. This is not uncommon and truth be told is something that Sr. students should do more often.
I am looking forward to this weekends testing and I am certain that those testing will represent our instructers and our branch extremely well. I would love to say that I will be going to the Main Academy to enjoy watching the testing but nothing could be futher from the truth. I am going to be in the back wearing my jeans and tshirt and stressing for my classmates. It Is the bomb at belt test when you see classmates get stuck or mess up you want to jump in and help them out, however at that point there is nothing you can do. Perhaps being able to communicate with telepathy would be a good thing in this case, but then again that mey be wrong in other ways.
Funny over the years I have done over 30 promotional tests and only one really comes to mind. The test I will never forget was for my TKD red belt and the worse test I have ever experanced. Personally at the time I thought I did horrible, however the judges, my instructer, my classmates and my wife told me otherwise when it was over. I thought I tanked the who test but they told me that it was not hard to miss the combination I had difficult with, however that was the only aspect of the test and it was only a few seconds of the entire test.
When my wife and i got home after that test I was feeling sick and I decided to sleep before we headed out to work. When I woke up I felt worse and half way through work I was having huge issues while trying to focus, I was frozen, and there were times I did not even recognize my wife. Needless to say my wife rushed me to the ER and I was "rawr" near admited for a few days until I told them that I could not stay. I ended up having a 102.9 degree temp and they added 2-3 litters of fluid into my system and kept me for 8 hours until my fever broke. I am wondering if I was feeling the effects of the this sickness and if that made me think I did much worse then I did. I also wonder if I just blocked out the good parts of my test, and did the test in a nonaction state for most of it. Truth be told I did not remember doing forms, sparring or breaking that night. My wife had to tell me about the rest of my test because of the lack of memory of it. I do not recall feeling sick before the test, but that day was very shakey for me.
Thankfully the two tests sence then have been wonderful and I stronly believe that my last test in June went wonderfully and I am happy that I started my 8 months of black belt prep on a high note. Sence then I have been working extremely hard my combinations that give me troubles, and my plan of being twice the martial artist at my next test then i was in Juen is going very well.
