singularity6

I slept funny this past Saturday night, and had some pretty severe neck pain. Got cracked on Monday at the chiropractor. I would say I was about 90%+ better when I went to class on Tuesday. If I were smart, I wouldn't have done any of the self defense stuff, and just worked on things like forms and strike techniques. Well, that didn't happen. I got on the mats with a tweaked neck. By the end of class, I was in a fair amount of pain and wasn't moving well. When walking into the changing room, I was pretty sure one of the instructors was complaining/joking about the students being "wusses." I can see where he's coming from. I was annoyed. Not necessarily with anything that was said, but with the fact that I end up injured more often than I care to. The pain that night actually woke me up. So yesterday (Wednesday,) I go into the chiropractor again to get cracked, and to get a massage. Sure enough, the T2 vertebra was twisted and had to be put back. When the masseuse took over, he found that my right rhomboid (near that vertebra, and where most of my pain was located) was in rough shape. Fortunately, I have good insurance that covers such things!

Physics can't really be changed.

I teach at a college, and I chose college because I didn't want to deal with the parents. Unfortunately, some of my students act like children.

I too see where you're coming from. Yeah, I don't think students should be calling the show. I also believe that some people simply aren't cut out for _________ (fill in the blank with whatever subject) and sometimes need to be guided to do something else, though this number is probably fairly small. Please bear in mind that I do not think we should lessen curriculum, or allow students to call the shots. I do believe in scaffolding when teaching. Some students might need a bit more support when they first start out, and I do my best to give them what they need (within reason, of course.) Over time, the supports are removed one-by-one, until the student is able to work on their own. I suspect you, and everyone else here who teaches does the same, to some degree. You don't. You just sound passionate. And for what it's worth, I teach math for a living... I've had people be "much more direct" in their manner when speaking to me!

It really depends on how you are brought up. 20 years ago or 100 years ago, kids are kids and people are people. Nothing has changed except a movement to PC. Instilling respect, morals, integrity, humility, empathy, drive and work ethic in our kids is not achieved by meeting them were they are at. As a parent it is my responsibility to teach my kids, not meet them were they are at. As a teacher the same goes. Yes I'm older than most here on the forums but there is a simple translation to raising a good human being and I'm sorry but meeting them were their at is never the path. Its our responsibility to teach right and wrong not to entertain the gray because its the new fad. Might not be popular these days but there it is. A response to the bit in bold: Parenting and teaching are quite different. Sometimes us teachers have to make up for poor parenting. Not all students enter the class room with the same skill set. Teachers who refuse to meet students where they're at might as well not teach. Please keep in mind that this isn't justifying repeated insolent behavior or sheer lack of effort on the students part. There are no perfect students out there, and there are no perfect teachers. We'd all do well to remind ourselves of this from time to time.

You know, martial arts is recreational for me. Yes... I'm serious about learning it. But if I'm at a school where I feel I can't learn, I will go someplace else. My iaido class was like that... We met for an hour per week, and the method of (attempted) teaching didn't work for me. I quit. I'd rather attempt to learn the art from a DVD.

Depending on which muscle you're talking about, I could be dealing with that. The location is higher up on the leg for me (aductor, iliacus, iliopsoas areas.) http://www.muscle-pull.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/6.png There are a number of things I had to do to correct it, and even though I haven't had an episode in months, it threatens me if I don't do things correctly! 1. See your doctor and get referred to a sports therapist. 2. Stretch! You can look up a series of stretches for the areas affected. Perform them several times per day. Make sure you warm up the muscles before you stretch. 3. You can strengthen all the muscles in your hip region by doing leg lifts (including the glutes!) One cause for the problems I had could have been from lack of strength from all the other muscles... the iliacus (or whichever was affected) isn't all that large. 4. Warm up before you kick. 5. Lift that knee! I developed a nasty habit of swinging my leg out a bit too much to compensate for not lifting that knee as high as I should. This put extra strain on the muscles that I injured. 6. See your doctor!

We are working a lot with "mindsets" at the college where I teach (It's actually a nation-wide movement.) There are many different kinds of mindsets, and each type has its place in a classroom, and in everyday life. The mindsets I'm working on most for my classes are the growth mindset and the mindset of belonging. In short, we try to instill that mistakes are okay, and are a normal and required part of learning (growth.) Also, students frequently feel that they don't belong in the classroom, for various reasons. We try to create an environment where students feel welcome, respected and connected to others at the school. Keep in mind that of this can be done without lowering standards. It might require instructors and staff to be more mindful of how they talk to students, and maybe modifying the way things are taught a bit. All of it really does seem to be perfectly aligned with the tenets of Tae Kwon Do, too!

The level of pain tolerance should be left to the student. They know their body best, after all. I know the difference between sore and injured, and I also know the limits of my body. My shoulders dislocate fairly easily, and I know the warning signs that my hip flexors send just before they become injured.

Hmmm... That's almost like asking someone if they prefer to be not hungry, or not thirsty.

Tomorrow is the magical land where 99% of the productivity happens. It's always very busy!

We currently have "one of those" students being discussed in my class right now. She's young, overweight and not that athletic... whines about stretching... whines about forms... interrupts when adults are talking, etc. At any rate, a transformation was made 2 weeks ago. After a couple weeks of trying, she FINALLY broke a board with a front kick at the end of class. This happened maybe 2 weeks ago. Since then, she hasn't missed a class (and appears to be having fun!) The whining was greatly reduced and it seems like she might be practicing more at home. While this is anecdotal, I find it encouraging. Yeah, people are exercising less and instant gratification is an issue. This reinforced the idea that we can still reach the young people, but we might need to demonstrate some patience and meet them where they're at. What will this look like in the martial arts class? I'm not entirely sure. I just know that things which worked 20 years ago might not work today.

Sorry to say that it appears to be happening everywhere, a result of the liberalization of society, where kids can run riot and parents reply "they are just expressing themselves....." The PC world gone mad. The first time I caught myself saying something like these, I took a moment to pause and reflect. I decided that it was one of the first signs of me getting older, and that there was clearly a distinct boundary between myself and a new generation. There is a man by the name of Chuck Underwood who writes and presents about the differences between generations (mostly applicable to American culture.) I found his work to be quite enlightening, and would recommend it to anyone who works with people outside their own generation (i.e., pretty much anyone.)

I thought this was what sparring was for!

I'll try to keep this relatively short and simple, but it at least slightly appropriate to post now. If you are holding an election with more than 2 choices, then there is no way of finding a winner that satisfies all the fairness criterion. Most elections are between more than 2 candidates, so every election we run is mathematically imperfect, so if you read this, don't be upset. It's just the way the world works! Also note that when I teach this stuff, we usually spend a couple weeks in the class room working on this, so if it seems hard to understand just by reading a couple paragraphs... well, it's math! There are plenty of resources online for you to explore. Keep in mind that Wikipedia might not be the easiest one to read, however! Let's unpack this a bit... What are these fairness criterion, anyway? 1. Majority Rule - The choice with the majority of the first place votes wins. This can be a problem when there are more than 2 choices as it's very possible that neither choice receives the majority of the vote. One might think that the most votes should suffice... but if you think about it, let's say that in an election between 3 people, 100 voters voted, and it turned out like this: 31 people for A, 40 people for B and 29 people for C Is it fair that B won when the majority of voters voted against? 2. The Condorcet Criterion - The choice that beats all other choices in one-on-one match-ups prevails. Runoff votes, where look at one-on-one comparisons and eject the loser in each pairing can violate this; someone might be second choice in one scenario and ejected too early (loosely speaking, kinda like Survivor.) 3. Monotonicity - I had a hard time summarizing this one, so I will swipe this from the internet: If an election is held and a winner is declared, this winning candidate should remain the winner in any revote in which all preference changes are in favor of the winner of the original election. Three students, Al, Bob, and Carrie are running for class president. The class will vote in rounds. The student with the fewest votes in the first round will drop out and a new vote will be taken between the two remaining candidates. The student with the most votes in this final round will be declared the winner of the election. In the first round, Al gets 11 first place votes, Bob gets 8 first place votes, and Carrie gets 10 first place votes. Bob drops out (since he had the fewest votes in the first round). In the final round, Al gets 11 first place votes and Carrie gets 18 first place votes. Carrie wins the election! But wait! The chairman of the election oversight committee destroyed the ballots before the results had been officially certified by the administration. You guessed it! The election had to be repeated. In the first round of the repeated election everyone voted exactly as in the first round of the original election except for 4 voters who decided to jump on the bandwagon and vote for Carrie instead of Al. As a result, Al gets 7 first place votes, Bob gets 8 first place votes, and Carrie gets 14 first place votes. This causes Al to drop out instead of Bob so that the final round of the repeated election is between Bob and Carrie. BUT the 7 students who originally voted for Al prefer Bob over Carrie. So, all 7 of them cast their votes for Bob in the final round. This gives Bob 15 votes and Carrie 14 votes. Bob wins the repeated election EVEN THOUGH THE ONLY CHANGES IN VOTER PREFERENCE WERE THE 4 VOTES THAT CHANGED FROM AL TO CARRIE (THE ORIGINAL WINNER). This illustrates a violation of the Monotonicity Criterion. 4. The Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Criterion - This one is also a bit hard to explain, but here's a stab at it... If there are 3 ore more choices, and a choice is declared winner in one election, the same choice should be declared winners in any recount where one or more of the losing choices were removed. In other words, a loser dropping out shouldn't shuffle the votes to help one of the other losers win.

I'm watching our master instructor recover from a hip resurfacing (this procedure should yield better results than a resurfacing, but has twice the recovery time.) He's dealing with a lot of the same issues you are, which makes this slightly easier for me to imagine. Keep that martial arts spirit up!

Sometimes it can be hard to not take criticism personal. I'm guilty of doing the same. While I preach the same stuff Jesse had in his article in my math classes, I still find myself needing a constant reminder in my TKD classes. Learning anything new is hard. Keep at it, and all your hard work and improvements will pay off!

I may have mentioned this before: The second highest-ranking person in our school (was 4th dahn, recently promoted to 5th dahn) opened his own school. He and our master instructor still get along, but he just wanted to get out and spread his wings more. Ripples were definitely felt, though. Since the guy who left was the primary instructor at the location I practiced, he ended up being many students' preferred instructor. When he left, they went with him. Right now, we're lucky to get 6 people to show up for training (and we frequently have 2 or 3 instructors present at any given time.)

None of the Karate that I've seen has this knee spring, but I'll look out for it. Our form of Tae Kwon Do is closer to Tang Soo Do, which has the more Japanese influence. We don't do much with a knee spring, and no sine wave what-so-ever.

Congratulations, Danielle. Thanks for helping keep this forum together. I really enjoy being part of it. Get well soon!

I played WoW on and off from about 2005 until 2015. If I were to rank all the expansions: 1. Wrath of the Lich King 2. The Burning Crusade 3. Warlords of Draenor (I quit during the tail end of this one) 4. Mists of Pandaria 5. Cataclysm Even though my bottom 2 xpacs came with some huge quality-of-life changes, I did not care much for the story, or the new playable races. Cataclysm also ruined some of my favorite zones, like old Duskwood and Hillsbrad to name a couple. Blizzard announced the release of WoW Classic, and that might be enough to draw me in to play again. Anyone else play WoW? How would you feel about returning to the WoW of old? I'm hoping they keep some of the QoL changes, and the newer graphics... but yeah, getting randomly killed by Stitches in Duskwood would bring back some memories!

I ordered an Alienware 15 a couple days ago. It should arrive no later than Thursday of this week. Here's the specs: Intel i7 CPU 16 GB DDR4 RAM GeForce 1060 GPU w/6GB DDR5 vRAM 180GB SSD (I ordered a 1TB 7200 RPM Western Digital to put in one of the extra bays) I got a discount of $250, which was substantial. The most I've paid for a laptop was $900, and that was 5 years ago. Hopefully $1500 (after tax, of course) lasts me at least 5 years!

I bought some brown monk-like robes last year, and dressed up as one of the monks from Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail. Unfortunately the robe disappeared (my wife thinks she donated it...) I spent too much money on that to really want to buy another one, so alas... no costume for me!

Episode 7 simply did not fit, in my opinion. The whole episode felt forced and convoluted. Anyone else kinda feel like the characters were inspired by some sort of JRPG?

I think I was about 5 or 6 the last time I got scared by a horror movie (C.H.U.D. or Superman III... I can't remember which.) Growing up with that stuff pretty much desensitized me... though I do not like movies like Hostel, Saw or the original Hills Have Eyes. I see enough of people doing horrible things to one-another just by reading the news every day.