Summer school 2012

For the BB summer school 2012 I was employed and unable to get a week off work, so I could only go for the weekend.

This was to be my first ever experience of Summer school which is why I made the terrible mistake that I am about to discuss.

Before I talk about that though I just want to mention one of the most memorable moments of that Summer school for me. I walked into the hall where we were training for Batto-Ho practice and witnessed at least a hundred hakamas drawing their swords (Known as an Iaito). Their actual real life swords. I'm sure everyone found it really cool the first time they saw an EMK senior training with a real sword. Well this was like that times a hundred. 

Seeing a hundred people with real swords is reason enough to go to summer school.

But back to my monumental miscalculation.

I decided that since I'd only be there for the weekend that I would go all out, throw myself into the training guns ablaze, 100% energy at all times, no holding back. I sought out pretty much every teacher of 5th Dan and above as quickly as possible and spent my entire time amongst the hakamas (For those of you who haven't gone to summer school I should explain that there is a general structure of juniors on one side and seniors on the other with the brave juniors joining the seniors side and the friendly, or sometimes mean, seniors moving to the juniors side).

So those juniors who want to get their ass kicked move towards the seniors. I wanted to get my ass kicked. It did.

By lunch-time of the second day I was completely and utterly exhausted, a broken man.

With my body was screaming in pain, I spent the last few hours of the day fleeing from seniors as best as I could. Yet somehow the seniors were finding me despite my attempts to avoid them. It was like they knew.

They were hunting me. Grinning as they increased the damage already done, or maybe I imagined that.
Something definitely happens in a persons head when you're that tired. You do get full of the paranoia, and times seems to stop.

It seemed to go on for ever but did of course finally end.

The moral of this story is not to try and take on a horde of seniors when you have days of training ahead of you. They will destroy you.