Olivia's Blog

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Thoughts on Black-Beltedness

Almost six years ago, I started taking karate. I was 12, and it was another extracurricular in a long line of sports and arts and myriad hobbies. Three years ago, I became an assistant teacher. I was 15 and a green belt, and karate was fast becoming my main avocation. Last night, I received my first degree black belt. I am eighteen, and karate long ago transcended its avocation status to become the best expression of who I am.

My training long ago ceased being something that I could separate from myself as a person; karate has shaped and altered me, made me strong as it taught me humility, given me my second family, and become integral to my existence along the way. I don’t think about training as if it’s an option or an activity, I train like I breathe—all the time, and no matter what. And ultimately, I think that that attitude is a big part of why I’m a black belt now; not because I’m magically gifted, but because for the past several years I’ve trained like it was a necessary part of my life. I’ve trained (carefully) while injured, sick, tired, bruised, stressed. I’ve trained in 90-degree heat and on cold dojo floors in the middle of winter. I trained so much that I began to grasp something of this art that I really love (although I’m eons away from claiming any sort of mastery), so when the black belt test came around last March, I felt ready for it.

The other major factors in this are, of course, my amazing Senseis, who started training, guiding, and caring for me on day one and haven’t stopped, despite my defection to DC for much of the last year. These are the people who made me love it; these are the people who have done everything possible to make me my best possible self, in and out of the dojo. I try to be a good person for the sake of it, but also because I am trying to live up to my Senseis’ belief in me. Also, since I may as well make a list of people I’m grateful for, my parents have done everything they could to enable my being a martial artist; that’s six years of driving to the dojo a billion times a week, writing a lot of checks, and supporting my strange obsession with this thing that has me coming home black and blue all of the time, and I’m very thankful for that support.

I am now a dual-state-living college student, and my life has gotten slightly more complicated than it was when I was 12. But I am a black belt wherever I go, whether I’m wearing it or not, and I am proud of the work that I put into that, and awed by the work that others put in making sure I got there.

Oh and, of course, pictures on the Flickr.

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Things This Semester Has Taught Me

1. 18 credits is great. 18 credits is also a lot of work.

2. Be thankful for not having had Friday classes up til now. Starting next semester, I have an Arabic lab every Friday at 10 AM. Bah.

3. Springtime in DC = rain. Every day. Yes, the flowering trees and whatnot are all lovely. But they are also wet, because they are in the rain, which is not something that they tell you in touristy literature.

4. Turning work in early makes professors really, really happy for some odd reason. Happy professors write nice rec letters

5. Math doesn’t suck … at least, stat doesn’t suck. Calc and trig are still on the list of things I do not wish to do, ever, thanks very much.

6. Less than 6 hours of sleep makes me stupid. More than 8 may never happen again during a semester. Looks like 7 is about it.

7. DC housing is OMG EXPENSIVE. But so is living on campus, so yeah. Guess we can just change that to COLLEGE is OMG EXPENSIVE.

8. Holding down 1500 things at once is not something you do alone, it’s something that is only made possible by having awesome people supporting you and making you laugh and making sure that you know when stuff isn’t really as serious as you think it is. By the same token, the right people do not always just take you as you are, but push you and challenge you when you need that.

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I Passed!

5 years of karate training, help from the parents, huge amounts of support and training (and basically everything else) from my incredible senseis, a plane and a bus to get up to NH, a 2-hour drive down to Atkinson, Mass, and a little over an hour of testing, and I’ve just passed my black belt test. Huge thank-yous to everyone involved! And now on to registration and my final 5 weeks of school, before going on to my summer break and black belt graduation

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A Brief Lull in the Craziness

Do excuse the lack of blog posting lately; as most people are aware, I’m taking 18 credits this semester, which is currently translating into piles and piles of reading every weekend, supplemented by other assignments and lots and lots of test prep in various forms (like right now; I’m recovering from a 75-minute in-class-essay exam for my history class while prepping for the 5 other tests that I have coming up next week in all of my other classes). And I’m in Aikido 3 times a week (my rolls are getting better!), still keeping up my karate practice, and trying to leave myself at least a day or so of chill time every weekend if possible, so my schedule can get a bit jam-packed.

In news not in the “why oh why did I take on this workload” category, my birthday is fast approaching, as is Spring Break, so yay! I’m going out Friday and Saturday for the birthday with friends, so pictures should certainly by forthcoming, and I will be home (more accurately, I’ll probably be at home a little and at the dojo as much as they’re willing to have me, sorry Mom!) for the first week of March. It will definitely be nice to have a chance to unwind for more than 2 days, and to get to see as many of my NY and NH people as possible, before I come back to school and do my best to power through the post-midterm crunch season that will be the rest of March and April. And back to the semi-caffeine-fueled study sessions

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The Promised Overview

It’s been 4 days, 2 days of classes, and 2 Aikido classes since the Inauguration, so I’ve now had a chance to unwind a bit from the semi-madness that engulfed DC for the last week. A semi-madness which for me ended up involving 2 unofficial Inaugural Balls, the Lincoln Memorial Concert (Beyonce, Bono, Barack Obama, a bunch of other performers, and a ton of people, in case you were under a rock last weekend), and of course the Inauguration itself (final opinion: OMG CROWDED. But cool!). Oh, and somewhere in there I got to see Raina and Kavi, somehow It’s all been amazing (albeit cold … seriously, dresses should not be mixed with 10-degree weather, it’s just cruel), but I think pretty much everybody is happy that the tourists are beginning to disperse, the streets are re-opening, and we can all go back to looking at how cold it is outside and resolving to only go out to get between wherever we are and wherever the nearest Metro station is or whatever. Which is good, because I now have way too much homework to contemplate going out for anything anyways. Pictures on the Flickr, available by cell/email/etc, I’ll be home for the first week of March for Spring Break

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Inauguration Madness!

Inauguration craziness has definitely hit DC, and we’re still a couple of days away from the actual event … I just spent all day out on the National Mall at the We Are One Inauguration concert, so I am dead tired, so suffice it to say that this is a truly awesome time to be in DC. Oh, and there are pictures up on my flickr A sample of the photos is below, and a complete overview blog post is forthcoming, sometime after it’s all over and things have settled down.

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Somehow, Everything Is Running Smoothly …

So, my break has been fabulous. I’m getting plenty of karate in (we did get snowed out a few times, but this is to be expected in New Hampshire in December), I’m reading and hanging out with the awesome people that make up my NH social circle and sleeping in and eating good food on my own eating schedule, thanks very much (which, for the record, involves random meals all somewhere between 9 AM and 11 PM, none of that ridiculous three meals a day nonsense), and basically life is good.

And I somehow also feel good about heading back down to DC; I’ll certainly miss home,  but you will not find me madly clinging to something in Boston Logan Airport and refusing to leave. Compounding my general feeling of non-stress is the fact that this time, unlike when I left for last semester, I actually know what to expect; the prospect of having classes for the next 3 months is not quite as unbelievably exciting, being as I’m now aware that classes = getting up early, heavy textbooks, and lots and lots of paper writing (woo), but at least I’ve got a very clear idea of what I’m going into, which as everyone knows is something that I’m very fond of having. I’ve also once again managed to save a bunch of money by renting my books ($204.20, to be exact), which is nice. That about covers it all—DC people, I will see you starting the 12th, NH people, you have 7 more days to catch up with me if you haven’t!

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I’m Home!

It hasn’t quite set in yet that I’m really finished, but officially I am done with my first college semester. I’m sure I’ll have some thoughts on it as a whole, given some time to reflect, but right now it works down to:

I’m glad I did well academically

I made some great friends

I’m not sure yet how living on my own in DC has affected who I am, but I’m sure it has in some way

I strongly dislike school food

I am so, so, so happy to be home.

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Break Season!

I kind of can’t believe it yet, but this semester is well and truly nearly over. Thanksgiving Break is next week—New York! Food! And … other stuff I guess, but mainly food!—followed (for me almost immediately, because I am a final-week-skipping schedule ninja) by Winter Break. Followed of course by another semester, but I am not going to be particularly enamored of being reminded of that fact during the next couple of months, thanks very much. I’ve been having a really good time in DC, but I am still definitely looking forward to heading home; 5 weeks of New Hampshire, my friends, my family, and nothing on my schedule but karate classes.

In the meantime, I’ve been fairly busy; my school workload has picked up a bit, as we’re coming up on finals, although it’s nothing unmanageable, plus I’ve been apartment-hunting with one of my friends (no, dorm life doesn’t suck here, but I’m irked by the food and the guest policies, so I’m looking at other options), plus people keep inviting me out to lunch and things … so I’m comfortably busy. I hope everybody’s doing well

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OBAMA!

This is a beautiful day in America. That is all.