Challenges

Last Monday we received the audition results and I am extremely unhappy where I am, not only because I did a lot crappier than last year, but also because I feel that I didn't do my personal best during my audition. It is very true that I could have done, much, much better, but how much better? I don't really know. I ended up getting placed second to last in the top band, Wind Symphony. Last year I was fifth out of ten flutes and this year I'm eight out of nine. I am definitely displeased with my drop of three places, and I feel that if I would have done better I would be sitting either third or fourth chair.
I finally decided that I was going to challenge up to where I thought I should be, after my lesson teacher convinced me that I should challenge up. I had premonitions that I was going to be hurting the three people that are in front of me's feelings and I still feel a little bit guilty about challenging them, but my lesson teacher says that it would be a lot better for everyone if I sat higher up. So I guess I going to challenge.
My band teacher personally walked up to me and handed me a challenge form on Tuesday, saying, "I think you will be needing this." I just smiled and nodded, then I walked over to Kelsey, the girl sitting one chair in front of me, I told her it was nothing personal and she signed the challenge form and walked with me over to the Band director who signed it and went to get us some etudes to study.
The music is really really easy and I am going to definitely kill Kelsey on it, I still feel really bad, but I don't want a freshman in front of me and I want to reclaim my spot in the top five, so I'm not going to dwell on peoples feelings too much. Like my lesson teacher said, if I really feel like I should be sitting higher then I should go for it. Then she secretly told me that I was going to crush everyone sitting in front of me except for the third chair, Lindsay, she said I was just going to have to work a little harder to beat her. Her saying that enboldened me to go and kick some butt, and I will tomorrow when I cream Kelsey in our challenge.

Working My Butt Off

My personal goal for this school year, pertaining to taekwondo, is to pass my testings in February and in June. My friend Austin having gone through this a year earlier has agreed to help me out on getting in shape. So for the last two weeks we have been getting together twice a week and working out like crazy.
We get really really sweaty and it's insane how tired we feel afterwards but it's definately worth it. We usually start out with a light warm up, stretching and doing some kicks, before we get into the serious stuff.
My form for this testing, is the second longest one our taekwondo club has, the only one that is longer is the 3rd decided form. Not only do I have to do the one form, I have to do a second form a long with the first one. These forms are not easy to accomplish either, as you go higher up in level the forms get increasingly difficult and this one definately is quite difficult. So for the second half hour we spend the whole time working our way through our forms two or three times each, commenting on how each other is doing a certain technique and questioning if we are doing something right or not.
Next it's time for the fun stuff, this is by far the hardest part, but it is definately fun. We get to jump over stuff until we are so tired we don't wanna pick up our feet. We start out with frog leaps up and down the forty foot room twice, then move on the bunny hops up and down the room.
Next we start jumping ove each other kinda like leap frog except we bunny hop over each other. We make our way down the room and then come back. Lastly we get out the pads that are about four feet high, and we jump over two of those spaced at about a six foot interval, we do this while kicking a pad that the other person holds.
The last thing we do before warm down, is the sparring. By this point we have to really push ourselves because we feel like we're gonna faint. We do five sparring matches each lasting about three minutes, then we start to warm down. I have definately gotten alot better at taekwondo since practicing this way for the past to weeks and I will hopefully be really ready for my testing in February.

November 1st Testing

I am currently a second degree black belt in taekwondo and last year I got my instructors certificate and recently I have started teaching taekwondo for the Marion Ymca about once a week and I absolutely love it.
Last weekend we held our annual testing at the Marion Ymca in the gym, testings are usually lots of fun and this one was no acception. We got to the Ymca around one in the afternoon and my instructor, my friend austin and I started to set up. Austin, a third decided black belt at our club, mentioned to me that he was going to judge for the testing today. This was a very big deal, judging is one of the highest honors that you can get while you are in taekwondo, usually you have to be a junior master to judge, meaning you are 4th decided or above, but they were not going to have enough people to judge at the testing, so he was the lucky one who was going to judge.
I on the other hand had to direct, that means I would call out names, send people to there spots, call them to attention, bow them in and tell them when to start their forms, one-steps, sparring, self denfense, and board breaks. Basically it's a lot of responsibility for one person to do.
So we got everything set, Austin and I changed into our dobaks, mine is gold and his is white, because I got my instructors degree already and he hasn't, but he will in february where I get my third decided black belt. After we were in our dobaks, we lined everybody up for the pictures and all the gold dobaked people grabbed chairs to sit in front of everyone else.
Testing turned out all right, I didn't have to yell at anyone too much, but I was still disapointed that I hadn't gotten to judge. I mean, I've been in taekwondo a year longer than him and I'm an instructor and he isn't. Besides he's only thirteen and way to young to be doing much. Eh I guess I don't have too much to complain about, i'll be judging in May anyways.
This is a video made of our testing last saturday.





This is a video made of our testing last saturday.

My personal audition

If I were to describe my audition this week it would be, "a complete disastor". I had been calling my lesson teacher for the last week and half leaving messages daily and I hadn't heard back from her at all yet. I was getting worried that I wouldn't get a lesson from her until midway through band on monday morning when she finally called me and told me that I could have a lesson that night at 4:30, this was much to my relief.
I had been extremely nervous about my audition because placings between the flutes are always tight. Last year I was placed fifth chair wind symphony, the top band at kennedy. That was a phenominal place for me to be, because I was one of two underclassmen in the wind symphony flute section which consisted of ten flutes. I was king of the section.
This year I feel it will be a different story though, I had hoped to get second chair this year, but I'm pretty sure that audition didn't go too well.
I am doing the most three octave scales of all the flutes, six in total, versus the average of 2 per person, Megan, our first chair from last year was only doing four three octaves and I was glad to be doing more than her. As it turns out in my audition I messed up on every single three octave scales of mine except for the hardest ones, D and E-flat, the one I was most worried about. I was nervous to begin with, because the flute three auditions previous to mine had screwed up the sign in sheet and we had to switch everyones names a place down one. Our band director was getting mad that no one had come in for a while, so she yelled at us and then I was basically pushed into the room before I was ready, that made me even more nervous, as did playing in front of the mean band director. So my scales pretty much sucked, but my etude was amazing, and I didn't mess up on my sightreading at all because it was in the key of B-flat major, the second favorite key of all flutes.
So I'm basically hoping I did okay and I get in the top five flutes again, but I'm no to sure I wil.

Audition Week

Last week was audition week, which is a nightmare for everyone who has to audition and a nightmare for our band directors and drum majors. For the first two days we had five auditioning rooms, three with our three drum majors in them and two with our two band directors in them. The drum majors start a tape recorder in the room and then they leave the room. For either the tape recorder or a band director, you play up to twelve scales, an etude, and a sight reading piece that you have never seen before.
We had twenty-nine flutes, and twenty-six clarents that would audition in room one. We had three days to get all of us done and needless to say it did not happen. The first day we got eight flutes done, the second day, when I auditioned, we got another eight flutes done. On friday, the third day, we added to more auditioning rooms with two members of the band council running the tape recorders in those rooms. We finally finished the flutes and we got through three clarinets. We were originally suposed to have the band listings done by lunch on friday, but since we still have almost all the clarinets left and all eight tubas left to go, it didn't happen. I believe that the earliest we will see the listings will be morning afternoon, but it might be even tuesday before we get to see.
My friend Kim, a drum major in our band, has the same second hour class as me and for the last three school days she hasn't gotten to class until about halfway through, because they were holding people back to audition and the drum majors were still having to run the tapes. I think this is completely ridiculous, we should have started auditions on monday like most other years we have, and we should have started out with seven stations like we did last year and the years before. It would have run so much smoother and stretching it over five days would give us more time to relax and do a better job during the auditions.
Not only is having to audition stressful for the band directors, it's stressful for us and it needs to be way more structured, i'm sure we could think of a much better way to make the audition process run smoothly.