Sensei Emily Snyder

A View From the Real World

A year out of college and into "The Real World," I find myself reflecting on my years as a Karate student, and how the Martial Arts have shaped who I am today. My training has influenced the ways I think and react as a rookie member of the adult club.

I live in Washington, DC, a city known for its living expense and its crime level. These factors obviously equal an inverse relationship between where you can afford to live, and how happy your mother is about where you live. Many of my friends feel uncomfortable in my working class, very urban neighborhood. Green glass litters the streets, and a woman gets honked at every time she leaves her apartment. One of my students, who lives in a suburb, referred to the area as a "ghetto." It's not, but it is a far cry from Plantation. In order to keep myself safe, I called on a part of my earliest Martial Arts training: How to not get attacked. Make eye contact, I remembered, and smile and nod. Don't look like a victim. But in seeking to become truly aware of my surroundings, I learned about all the great things my neighborhood has to offer; I chat with the teacher who gets on my bus when I do, and laugh at the boys racing down the street, pulled by a large and happy puppy. I've started training at the Kung Fu school that's only eight doors from my apartment. Most importantly, I learned what my friends often miss: When strange men make a comment, they're not moving in to attack me. They're continuing in their own direction. Karate taught me to make eye contact for my own safety. The skill has indeed kept me safe in dangerous situations, but it's also allowed me to see decency and innocence where I might have otherwise missed it.

To afford my newly acquired life expenses, I spend my days shadowing a fifth grader with Asperger's syndrome. The job requires patience and the willingness to understand a completely different mindset. My experiences teaching Karate and watching others teach it gives me the resources to reach all different types of kids, each on their own level. Because I've done it before, I better understand the need to say the same thing over and over in different ways, and I know when to be strict and when to be fun (and how).

I could even say that teaching Karate was the first thing that instilled in me the desire to be an educator at all. Despite other teachers I've had throughout life, it was the consistency and skill of my Karate teachers that taught me the true importance of a teacher. Outside of my university, UKC was the only place where I knew, beyond a doubt, that my teachers could control a classroom, respected their students, and absolutely knew their subject matter. To have teachers who still consider themselves students brings a level of honesty and integrity to a classroom that students recognize and appreciate, even subconsciously. An educational system that believes the title "teacher," Sensei, is a distinctive and hard-earned honor has given me some of the best role models for my new career path.

There are so many small things that have become so big, now that I think about them in a (slightly) more mature way: Drills have taught me that sometimes success takes many tries; slow progression is often the best way to develop a new skill; there really is value in a good push-up; the ability to defend oneself can translate into the ability to expand oneself. Perhaps best of all, Karate has given me a community that I can depend on. I know that, no matter where my new adult life takes me, I can always come back to UKC to visit with old friends and teachers and freshen up the skills that have taken me so far. Who knows where they will take me next?

© Sensei Emily Snyder, June 2008

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