I've lost already

Tonight was leadership class. I got a chance to see Sharon coming out of the class before, and I told her what happened with Victoria on Saturday, and she agreed that Victoria is a little bit of a smartass for her own good sometimes. Class was small again tonight due to it being summer and all, but that's okay. Ma'am actually taught leadership class for the first time in at least a month. She did speak a little about how you approach how you speak. For me, it was all pretty easy stuff. It was about things like, don't correct the black collar on the floor when he/she is in charge and you're just a trainee; if you disagree, talk to them about it after class, not during class, etc. A lot like discipline and parenting skills stuff, so it's pretty easy for me to understand and put into practice. We then worked on each of us directing the class in a form or one step as needed. Ma'am had me do One-step #1 in Songham 1. I was nervous enough, as I've never done it before-- that is, directed other people. Talk about being put on the spot a little bit. After we reviewed Songham #1 in its entirety and all the corresponding one-steps, we reviewed the steps for this week for my form. It helped getting the preview from Mr. A last week. Ma'am then sent me to the back floor to work on my form thusfar.

Then the disaster began. I pulled out my cheat sheet book to help me remember the steps. Ma'am scolded me and told me to not look at that. She asked me to do what I knew so far, and after only a few moves, she stopped me in the middle. Evidentally, I have developed a lot of bad habits in this form that hadn't been corrected. She had me do the first two sections over and over, and if I tried to do the next section after that, she got after me. I'm just trying to get the damn flow of the whole thing as it is! While others worked on weapons, I just kept working on my form the whole night, and she'd fix a few things along the way. I know she wasn't being mean or getting after me to be harsh. But part of my problem was that I started to cry. Part of the reason for that, I think, (warning: TMI) that it's female hormones surging right now. But a lot of it was frustration and anger-- at myself, and at the instructors who were supposed to have been teaching me this correctly and looking for those bad habit and those mistakes. All those who have been my instructors in these past weeks are even certified to be tournament judges, so they know what to look for in my form. And they weren't correcting it. And they all know, or at least most of them know, that I'm using this form for tournament. I'm frustrated at myself for a) crying when I shouldn't have (embarassed about it too), b) for being so dense that I can't cram this and know better with some of this stuff. Some of the corrections she made were simple hand and foot timing that I do know better. I dunno. I just felt so lame and upset. I mean, here I've been working for weeks on learning a new form, which as usual is meant for a color belt two belts up from me, and I'm trying to cram in learning it in half the time, and this happens. I'm feeling like crap now. All those feelings of dread that I thought I was starting to get over with the rush of confidence I've had recently was smacked down in an instant. I felt like I had a chance to do well with this upcoming tournament. Now, I'm having serious, serious doubts again. Oh crap. All I can do now, I guess, is just keep working on this. It looks like there's a potential that this tournament may end up being much bigger than expected, with people coming from as far as the MidWest US for this. That means more competition. That means I have to work that much harder to ensure that I place-- because I want to place.

Maybe I need a mental break from TKD myself, much like Drew is getting the summer off. The problem with that is that with a tournament coming up, I can't do that. Maybe afterwards, but not right now. Then I have to worry about graduation, but if I can do those board breaks, keep up with my sparring, and learn this icky form, I'll be fine, I'm sure. But I'll have August to get the kinks out. I dunno.