Channeling Chuck

I’m not going to lie. I’m getting really frustrated and stressed by this belt testing process. I went to class tonight, expecting my teacher to finally evaluate me for my final stripe. But instead, someone else was teaching the class. When my teacher finally showed up, he spent a few minutes determining who would be testing on Thursday, even calling me out specifically for my orange belt. Then, he had us do our forms for the next ten minutes before he left to teach a jiu jitsu class. And he never actually evaluated me for my third and final stripe!

I’ve been killing myself to train and be ready early, and I feel like it’s coming down to the wire unnecessarily. It’s stress that isn’t needed. I’m there. I’m ready. And he just never takes the time to put me out of my misery. And the worst part is that I’m mostly likely not going to class tomorrow, so it means I’ll only have Wednesday to wrap this up. Since there are no classes on Thursday, it literally is going to come down to the last day! I will have gotten my first stripe before everyone else and my last stripe after everyone else.

It’s frustrating when I see them handing out stripes in my son’s class like it’s nothing. They aren’t even doing it well sometimes, and they’ll still get a stripe. And they can even get two or three stripes on the same day! There’s so much more emphasis on preparing the students for the testing during the two weeks before. For all the benefits of training with black belts, this is the one thing I hate about it. Most of them can go months or years before testing again, so there’s little to no emphasis put on it. The focus is mostly on combat and sparring and preparing for tournaments. I feel like if there were more people in the colored belts like me, then it would be important. But as it is, it doesn’t feel like it is. And now, I’m left with wondering if I will even get to test on Thursday.