"Coming of Age"-Essay Draft

I slowly walked out to the familiar car, in the lightly lit up parking lot. It was around 9:00 p.m. My legs ached with every step, and my head pounded harder than a hammer. I jumped into the cold air conditioned car, to my mom’s voice, “How was practice?” I didn’t even have to respond for her to know the answer. I’ve been training for the past 6 months, preparing for the biggest test of my life, my second degree black belt test. I’ve been in karate for nine years, and nothing made me more nervous then tests. I started attending 5 classes a week just to prepare for this test, and pretty much drained all of the energy I had in my body.

When my instructor informed me that the 2^nd degree test was in December 2008, my first wave of emotions was excitement, to get my 2^nd degree belt, then nervousness unfortunately took over my body. I automatically knew that I had to buckle down, and get serious as ever, or I would fail. The fear came back to me, an event that occurred almost 7 years ago, that I never mentioned to anyone. The event was my 1^st degree black belt test, the first time I took the test, and I failed, and had to take the test a second time. I was scared that the disappointment from nearly 7 years ago would come back to me. Despite my fears I emotionally and physically prepared myself for the big day. Pushing myself to heights I never pushed myself to before. I trained to the point where I had aches all over my body, and even injured my leg, but throughout my training, I pushed through all of my challenges physically and emotionally because I knew it would all be worth it in the end.

When the big day finally came, I felt an ocean of emotions. Words couldn’t start to explain the way I felt. I arrived at my dojo that night, and it was time to take the test. During warm-ups my fear came back, so I ran over to my cousin, who was also taking the test and asked her for a quick pep talk. She told me something like “its okay Destrie, you got this, just relax.” Relaxing was the last thing I wanted to do, but it was time. My brain was running at 100 miles per hour, and unfortunately wasn’t about to slow down anytime soon. First thing we did was the basic karate moves, I passed that with ease, followed by 4 “katas”, and number of sparring rounds. I was pretty confident that I passed, but wasn’t 100% positive. The moment of truth was coming up, the presentation of belts. Row by row, the belts was given to the students that passed the test. Thoughts ran through my mind, and finally my agony was over. My name was called, indicating that I passed! When I was called up, my instructor gave a speech about how I improved, and worked really hard for 6 months, and how it all paid off and how proud he was of me.

Although I didn’t noticed this until I recently looked back, this experience has taught me to have perseverance for something I really want, and when I push through all the trials and tribulations, I can achieve any goal I set. This was defiantly a lesson I will remember for the rest of my life.