From: popovich@cs.columbia.edu (Steve Popovich)
Subject: Re: years for black belt
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 19:59:10 GMT

In article <Bs5uAI.CLC@apollo.hp.com>, stave@apollo.hp.com (Joel H. Stave)
writes:

> In article <1992Jul29.164241.4373@PA.dec.com>, stark@dwovax.enet.dec.com
> (Todd I. Stark) writes:
> |> When it comes down to it, after all the reasons have been analyzed,
> |> I think it comes down to ritual.  The test is a ceremonial event,
> |> a rite of passage both public and private.

> One reason I have heard is to see how the student performs under pressure.
> Admittedly, spectators and masters staring at you shouldn't make any
> difference, but it often does (I know it does for me).

It seems to me that the important pressure is often not that test-day
pressure that you describe here.  It's that pressure that comes from
the instructor knowing that you're preparing for a test on date X, and
from everybody else in the dojo knowing it as well.  Various sorts of
"extras" appear in training before important tests.  Sparring gets
harder, you're expected to demonstrate more applications for your
kata, the instructor and/or senior students will have you do extra
drills before or after class to work on your weak points, etc.  In our
case, our instructor is the examiner (or one of the examiners), so he
sees over a period of months before the test just how you've been
responding to the pressure.  We often try to calm pre-test jitters by
telling each other that Sensei has already decided our test results,
and sure enough, with rare exceptions, the tests turn out as expected.

After the test, if Sensei wants to make you work some more for your
promotion, he'll make you "pending" instead of passing or failing you
outright.  That's when the REAL pressure starts, since pending people
get even more "special attention" than pre-test people.  For black
belt ranks, the "pending" period is usually three months; for kyu
ranks, it's usually one month.  After that, there may or may not be a
full or partial re-test in front of the class; sometimes Sensei just
calls you up in front of the class and announces that you've been
promoted.  He will usually tell you in private, if at all, when you've
failed to promote from "pending".  In that case, you can re-test at
the next regular opportunity (we have two dan-rank tests each year).
It seems to be very rare to be "pending" a second time for the same
rank, although I have seen it happen; not to me, thank God :-).  The
last time I saw somebody get a second "pending" result for shodan, he
left the dojo soon afterward.  It gets quite discouraging being
"pending", and the end of the "pending" period seems to merge into the
beginning of the next pre-test period, so that the pressure doesn't
really let up all that much until you pass.  At that point, or
actually anywhere from a few weeks to a few months afterward,
everybody seems to improve substantially.  I guess that's an effect of
releasing all that accumulated tension from the promotion process.

> Also, it isn't always one's own instructor that is doing the grading.  It
> can be thought of as getting a second opinion.

It's always valuable to get fresh insights from another instructor,
but I'd think that it would help the student more if he could get them
by training under the instructor (at a camp or a seminar, or just by
visiting his dojo) than by testing.  Or are you talking about somehow
"validating" the instructor's assessment of the student?

Of course, training under another instructor can also create problems.
We have one student in our dojo who has been working in Philadelphia
over the summer, and so has been training at Okazaki sensei's dojo
while he's been there.  He'll be testing for shodan in December, so I
just hope he hasn't picked up too many contrary habits and differing
interpretations of kata for Sensei to iron out of him before then :-).
At least he's been able to keep training, though; Okazaki sensei's
dojo seems to be better about this than one ISKF dojo (with a JKA sign
out front!) that I stopped into on a recent West Coast trip.  I'm
still a little PO'd that they wouldn't let me train there; let's hear
it for petty style wars! :-)
	-Steve