Personal Narrative: Lessons I Learned In High School

I was 10 years old. I looked from the edge of the mat, unaware about the endeavor I was about to take the moment my foot touched that mat. I finally decided to walk on, like they had taught me by bowing, it was the first of a near million times I was going to do this. I was a white belt, at the best taekwondo centers in the area. All the kids, stood to the side eerily silent, waiting for instructions. After a couple of classes I began to learn more and more about how the center worked, and I began to see the lessons that the instructors were trying to teach; Lessons I learned there were embedded in my mind forever. Bow in. Listen, very precisely. Bow out.
The first few days taught me the importance of listening to every direction given by …show more content…
This time I was going for my first belt test. I looked towards the center, there sat 6 judges, each with a pencil and paper. In an attempt to remember everything I learned in class I began to run through the combinations in my mind; punch, punch, duck, wait or was it duck, punch, punch. I sat there waiting for my turn fearful that I was going to mess up. As I grew more anxious the other combinations seemed to mix together. They called my name, in a haze, I got up and went to my spot. I felt the stares of the parents and the judges. It was a true test of my focus and confidence, checking whether I could do my forms and combinations with the distractions sitting around me. I tried to do my best from what I could remember from class, but as I began the moves slowly came back to me like I had known how to do it the entire time. When I finished, they saved the hardest part of the test to the end, board breaking, where we had to break wooden boards to show our physical strength. At that point I was more tired than I had ever been in my life; even playing steal the pin at school never made me this tired. With my last bit of energy I kicked, CRACK!, I jumped with joy as I had just broken my first