Well the first night of promotional testing is over. I can not remember the last time so many people tested. I want to say we only had 8 people from my branch test and personally I think they all did extremely well. For all the branches however it seem like over a hundrend people tested, but I may be mistaken.
It was amazing to see the number of people per rank keep getting smaller and smaller as the night progressed. It seemliked like with every rank the numbers kept getting almost chopped in half. When they got to the Blue belt level there was a total of 10 people testing and 4 of those 10 were all from my branch. (The Blue belt test were both the blue belts and the blue belt red tips.) I thing there was also 10 red belts testing total with one of them being my classmate and another being my wife. The test was as long as I thought it would be, however the breaking was a lot easier then I had to do.
Personally I do not understand how the instructers take belt testing. I was extremely nervous for all of my classmates and I had nothing at stake on the testing, however the instructers have their reps at state with every individual on every test. I have a interest in all of my classmates but there were four people that I was really concerned with for tonight and they all did extremely well. The people from my branch as I said did well, but you could really tell which of the people stayed after class on most nights for practice and for supporting the rest of the branch. I am hoping that more people will start staying more often and perhaps have a group practice day may also be useful. I will need to check with my instructer about that idea but I do not think he would have anything agaist the idea. No one will be teaching anything all we will be doing is some basics, working on forms and breaking like we do now, but it would be a day were we do not have classes and perhaps this will help everyone more.
