Minus 6 weeks

In my post from Nov 7, 2006 I mentioned my ambition to achieve a black belt in Taekwondo in the near future. The examination was already planned for May 27th, so I would have precisely 3 months from today for my final preparation. However, last week the examination date was rescheduled and moved to April 15th, which is six weeks earlier. That puts a little stress on the preparation because there are still some issues that have to be excercised thoroughly, e.g. my hosinsul techniques (self-defense) need to be improved and I need to work on a couple of new series of so-called step-sparring. It's good to know that I'm not the only candidate at our Taekwondo School. There are two more (one of them is my 13-yr old son). Fortunately, there is a lot of help from fellow taekwondoka's who achieved their black belts earlier. They are helping us to get through the exercises and provide us with useful feedback. The parallel with education is obvious. If you have to figure it out all by yourself, the learning process will be much slower compared to the situation where you have a role model who also gives immediate feedback on what you're doing. It is mainly for this reason that I am still confident that we will succeed on April 15th. Our trainer is also confident, which gives a good moral support. I'll keep you posted.