Where to start? The exam (or presentation to be precise) takes two days. In reality it could be done one day, but they were putting a tournament together with the testing, so it took a lot get things squared away.
The oral exam, which is usually held after the final part of the test, was moved to Friday evening. I'm not sure why, but at least we wouldn't be huffing and puffing and trying to think straight.
I got there around three pm and we had a mass bow in. I think there was between a hundred and a hundred thirty participants. And from several regions as well. Friday had two big seminar sessions. The first was using a rear, cross stance while blocking to set up for an attack, which took an hour and was actually pretty fun. We built on it and got up to the point of using it practically with partners. Very fun.
The second session was different options for each level. My group was Dan test prep. We had a crash course in protocol in exams. My co-hort was me and three kids. I was at the end of the line as the "youngest" in rank. The co-hort was expected to act as a group. In the case of the forms, we were supposed to act in concert. Anyone who has seen group kata at a championship understands the time and effort to have everybody hit their timing correctly. Let's just say that all that practice I put into to having the correct time went out the window in a hot second. We were slave to the timing of the senior student. In the end we moved way faster with little or no pauses.
After learning to stand up and sit down and where to run to, we ran to our next session which was the oral exam. The eight of us (the other four were the Ee Dan candidates) got into line, where I was the tail-end charlie, and faced thirteen of the high-level belts from the region. They started at the other end which bummed me out. I wanted to get it over with but found the questions interesting. The Ee Dan folks got very hard questions. I knew a fraction of the information they were talking about and start getting nervous. When they started on the Cho Dan folks the questions throttled down quite a bit, but they were challenging enough. I was wondering what they were going to ask me to be honest. They get to me and say, "We were all reading your essay and were fascinated about what you wrote. Can you elaborate on some of the main themes?"
I stood there and thought to myself, "what the hell did I write?" I pulled myself together and talked about espoused philosophy versus whatever the teacher wanted to talk about. My old schools really never got into tons of details about what the school believes. Reed did talk about what was appropriate, nothing in stone.
We finished around 7 pm. I was wiped out.
The next morning, I had to be there at 7:30 to practice protocol and then warm up a bit. I couldn't see that we'd have the protocol part down, but when we got started, we were golden. I think we might have a few hiccups, but I surprised how well we did as a group.
Here's the test break down:
1. Basics - 13 techniques that everybody should know. From simple blocks to jumping kicks tied to a hand attack. I messed up three times on basic turning. I suspect I'm going to hear about that.
2. Forms - 3 of these with my gang. Bassai, Nihanji and Chil Sung Ee Ro.
3. Il So Sik - Normally I'd do sixteen of these, but they cut it in half because it was running so long. That was an adjustment. I got a bit slow at one point because I was trying to remove moves from my normal process. Some kid whispered what I was supposed to do. Bless his heart.
4. Ho Shin Sul - Self-defense. I did that on automatic. I don't even remember other than I was worried that I was hurting Bill on wrist submissions.
5. Sparring - two one-minute rounds. So fun, but I was worried about gassing myself. The advanced students were doing two on one. That looked so fun! At this point I was huffing and puffing when we stopped. I gather it was noticeable across the hall. Nice.
6. In Neh - Endurance. I have to do 120 straight punches in thirty seconds. Not as bad as you'd think, but the counter said 92. I was blinking in disbelief. I knew I was tired, but was I that slow? The region head said, "does anyone want to go again?" I said yes. We started over and I realize about 30 punches in that I don't have any gas in the tank. I reach down and get going again and when they call time the guy says 94. I didn't hear it, but a few people in the audience were audibly upset and a few stood up. Colette said I was fine and later told me I was in the 130s for each round. The guy couldn't count or something. Weird.
7. Breaking. I had to do a jumping spinning side kick. I don't normally have a problem with this, the first shot knocked me back. Hunh. The second, I kicked the living crap out of the guy's hands. Ooops. The third went well. Nice clean break. Boring ass kick though. See below.
We all gathered afterwards and bowed out. I'm now waiting to see what the results are. Hopefully I won't have too many corrections and I'll see the Midnight Blue belt fairly soon.
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