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

Family of black belts

"Ayea, Ayea I yelled as I kicked and punched the training dummies!" I was 6 years old living in sunny California with palm tress everywhere. I learnt martial arts. When we moved to Portland, Oregon later that year in February.
My mom wanted me to start learning martial arts or taekwondo so we found a dojo near out house. My mom used to sit and wait for my classes to get over and decided she would join too she dragged my dad into it. I was a year advanced of them but we could go to some classes together.  I went there three times a week. I was a very serious kid back then and wanted to be like the other black belts. I got my yellow belt, then my next belt and 2 years later I got my poom belt which is the belt before black belt. I worked very hard that year and was scared I would fail my black belt test.

I tested when I was ten years old and got my black belt. My parents got their's the following year. I was sitting watching them while testing and remembered me when I was 10 years old. Its really cool to have your whole family be black belts. In the summers I used to teach classes my dad would drop me off at three and pick me up at six and we would all do class together and go home. Doing that helped me learn responsibility and how to act around kids. I had to stop in 6th grade when the school became a little harder and sometimes regret that now. I am really glad that I am a black belt and my family are black belts too.

Taekwondo (meaning foot hand art), is a Korean martial art. Taekwondo teaches many different things like, self discipline, self control, self confidence, and of course, self defence.  Taekwondo, like many other martial arts, has ranks in the form of a colored belts. In 2008 I started as a white belt and moved through yellow, orange, green, purple, blue, brown, red, deputy, (half red, half black) and finally black belt in 2011. In May 2014 I will be testing for my second degree black belt. However, different martial arts have a different number of belts. In Taekwondo there are four stripes in a belt, they each have their own meaning and when you have all of them you can test for the next belt.

Like I said, Taekwondo teaches many other things aside from self defense. There are five tenets of Taekwondo, courtesy, integrity, indomitable spirit, perseverance, and self control. Taekwondo has also taught me how to set small goals, for example, getting the next stripe for a belt, and big goals that are challenging and far away, like getting a new belt.  At the beginning, you start out not knowing much but as you go on and progress through the belts you learn new techniques.

A lot of things in Taekwondo can’t be achieved fast and easy. This picture is of a kick that took a long time to practice and master. This kick can’t be taught in one day, like every sport you need to work hard and master challenging things. For instance you can't just memorize moves, you need to focus on how it looks, being crisp (not sloppy), and how much power you put into your moves.

I like Taekwondo because it is a different sport. It is a supportive and challenging learning environment, where I have met nice and supportive people. When I was a white belt I used to look at the instructors and want to help the class like them. Now that I am one, I get to share my knowledge and teach the colored belts.