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.

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

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

I went to karate at the dojo here last night. And it wasn’t good. They do almost everything differently from the way we do things at my dojo, but I maybe could have adjusted to that. But teachers make or break a school, and suffice it to say that I don’t think I can stand to work with one of their teachers. Karate is so central to my life, so essential for me to be happy and do well. I do not want to adjust to a new dojo, lose all of my techniques from my old dojo, and have to work with teachers I can’t deal with. I do not want to not do karate. I do not want to be without my senseis. I do not want to adjust to life here, to try and find other things to fill this massive space. I want to go home.

I just had my last training session at my dojo with two of my senseis. My dojo has just been the best possible place for me to grow up in, and my karate family is made up of the most awesome people you could find … I am so, so lucky to have had that, and I can only hope that the other places my life takes me will have people as amazing as the ones who are currently down the street from me, but who in a few days will become unbearably far away.

I said the first set of many goodbyes tonight, as my junior classes let out for the summer. I said goodbye to my much beloved students, and then to my peers in the teens class. The adults class will run for another 6 weeks, so thankfully saying goodbye to my senseis will be put off until then.

Karate classes have been such a big part of how I define myself for the past 4 1/2 years, and particularly for the last 2, I’m not quite sure what I’ll have to say, the next time somebody asks what I’ve been up to lately. Who I am is the girl who’s at karate, Monday nights, Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights. I’m training my students, who are amazing, I’m in the teens class, training with people who I love to death. I’m working with and training under my sensei, which is an experience I wouldn’t give up for anything. And now, some hugs, some high fives, and a group picture later, that’s come to a close. My sensei said, “And let us bid a warm farewell to Olivia, and David, as they are leaving this year”, and that was that.

I am excited to have a largely blank slate, to be able to go into college and the next few years with the chance to re-forge my definition of myself, to allow new things and new people to make their way onto my list of things important to me. But I will still dearly miss the people and things that previously held top spots on that list. It’s been an awesome 4 years.

I just finished my last promotions at my karate dojo. I tested (some of) my students, shook their hands as they were promoted, helped with the demonstrations, and was once again reminded of what an amazing group of people I will be leaving behind when I leave for college this fall. Karate has afforded me a million fantastic experiences over the years; looking out over rows of happy, proud students (with their proud parents behind them), with new stripes and new belts, knowing what it took for them to get there, and being so proud of them for it, is another memory that I am so lucky to be able to take with me when I go out into the world.