How Taekwondo Affects School

Taekwondo and school are both big parts of my life. Both make me who I am and affect how I act and what I do. If I am having a bad day at school I will go to taekwondo to calm down and focus. If taekwondo is particularly hard one day then school will be a bit of a relief. There are many ways that school and taekwondo affect each other. Homework is the most obvious example. When I have a lot of homework at night, I will have to skip taekwondo. If I have to go to taekwondo to prepare for a competition, I will have to either email my teachers to ask for an extension or stay up late trying to finish. Staying up late makes me more tired at school so I get less done causing more homework for me at night and the endless cycle begins. To break this cycle I would have to skip taekwondo, therefore decreasing my chance of doing well in a competition.

Taekwondo competitions are a whole other story when it comes to school. They are on the weekends which makes them big homework conflicts. Thankfully, they normally only take one day out of the weekend but it’s still a lot of wasted time. The taekwondo is not the boring part. The boring part is all of the waiting. My most recent competition was on February 3rd and it was the Oregon state championship and national qualifier. My group was scheduled to compete at 1:00pm along with three other events. There were only three rings in the whole place so everything took longer because there was limited space. I arrived at 12:00pm, as instructed, and proceeded to warm up. At 1:00pm I went into the staging area but my division hadn’t been called yet. I watched my friends compete, and cheered them on, but I still wasn’t called. At 3:30pm we were finally called to start competing. I went 2nd. In total, I spent 5 1⁄2 hours at the competition. I was competing for only 3 minutes of that time. Of course I had fun watching my teammates, but I also wasted over 5 hours that I could have been doing homework.

Taekwondo affects school as much as vice versa and not only because of the homework. Taekwondo changes how I’m viewed at school. When someone asks me what sports I do, I usually
answer, “Taekwondo and soccer.” Most of the time, the kid who wanted to know proceeds by trying to talk to me about soccer. I think this happens because most kids either play soccer or

watch it and therefore find it a comfortable talking point. If I had just said taekwondo then the kid probably would have said “Cool,” and moved on to another topic. This is because a lot of people don’t know what taekwondo is and find it weird and foreign. If I just said that I played soccer then I would be viewed as “normal.” Since I have decided to respond with both of my hobbies, some kids will inevitably think of me as “the girl who does taekwondo” if they don’t know me very well.

I love taekwondo so I don’t care what it does to my life in school. It will always be a part of who I am even if I don’t do it as much in the future. It will be a fond memory for me and I will look back on how much I enjoyed it.

Example of one of my taekwondo competitions: https://youtu.be/RZGjS-7ppLw 
Photo credit for 1st pic
Photo credit for 2nd pic