from the July, 2015 issue of Kiai!

My Junior Nidan Test: Not What I Expected

By Senpai Ana Gore
Junior 2nd Degree Black Belt

 

Senpai Ana tested for junior nidan (junior 2nd degree black belt) on May 16, 2015. Her testing group was comprised of Evan Burleigh, Sophie Ljung, Joseph Friedman and herself for junior nidan and Jack Savoie, Michael Goodall, Joshua Arias, and Bahar Berksoy for junior shodan (1st degree black belt). Here is Senpai Ana’s account of the test.

My junior nidan test was certainly not what I expected. We studied Japanese terms for weeks, and practiced the kata we’d started learning when we were so young we can barely remember when we began.  We spent hours together just going over stances with our eyes closed over and over until the words were stuck in our heads like songs.

The day of the test I was a nervous mess. I felt like I’d forgotten everything I’d learned, and how to do things that are normally natural instincts at the dojo (like saying osu) – things that I even do outside of the dojo (like bowing.) I felt like I hadn’t even prepared (let alone prepared for weeks straight.)

 

Once we got to the dojo, it was all nerves. My fellow junior nidan candidates, Sophie Ljung, Evan Burleigh, and Joseph Friedman were all simultaneously freaking out and also consoling each other’s freaking out. We stretched and freaked out a little more and at that point we had only a minute, but then Sei Shihan rang the bell and that was that. We didn’t have time to freak out. We meditated and then the test was starting.

Once the test really started the time we had to worry and be nervous was over. It was all focus. I felt like the people who were sitting and watching us weren’t even there. It was a moment where I was completely centered. I wasn’t worried about what anybody else thought, I was just worried about the group I was testing with and myself.

It was a blur. The thing we’d worried about most (Japanese stances) wasn’t covered, but we got past that. After that it was basics and kata and everything just flew by. We went to breaking and essays, and then we did intermediate self-defenses and basic self-defenses and bo work. It seemed like it was over in a flash. And then we had sparring, the thing I worried about most.

In the end, it was fine. I got hit, I hit others. Basically it was exactly to be expected. Not by me, but by the rest of the dojo. It was a jumble of sweat and overheating and general grossness and then Sei Shihan rang the bell. My last sparring round of my junior nidan test was with my sister. Then she hugged me and I knew it was over and I felt that surely I would cry, just out of exhaustion. I didn’t. It was the perfect ending. There was nothing to be afraid of.


The test is complete! New junior nidan (2nd degree black belts), left to right: Evan Burleigh, Sophie Ljung, Joseph Friedman and Ana Gore.