I am someone who is focused on discipline, order, effectiveness and efficiency.
I require my training spaces to be tidy and organized, I place discipline as one of the top priorities of training and I don’t tolerate sloppy work. I work to make the class fun, and I definitely believe that enjoyment is crucial to learning, but the second I feel we’ve crossed the border between informal to undisciplined, I bring it back.
For instance, when students talk excessively during class, I immediately have the entire class sprawl again and again. Eventually, they associate talking during class with exhaustion and avoid it.
I have so much empathy for how annoying this may feel, because this nit-picking perfectionism was done to me as well. As you can probably guess, my need for order comes from my formative training during my military service.
Making sure everything is correct was drilled into me in fairly imaginative and painful ways. The stopwatch was our merciless master, and we knew we either had to get it right or we would do it over, in addition to punishment.
In the army, we had to line up in the blinding sun for inspection to be released for weekend leave. X would go row by row, making sure our pants were rolled correctly with rubber bands, that our faces were perfectly shaven smooth, and a whole list of other checks. Any failure meant staying on base for the weekend and losing out on precious sleeping and eating time at home, which we all desperately wanted. I remember praying to any god willing to listen to just let me slide through and send me home to my doting parents.
This is how I was trained and as much as there are downsides, it has served me very well.
It doesn’t mean I don’t worry sometimes I am too hard. I remember once checking in on my co-writer after she had dental surgery and was on very heavy painkillers. I also wanted to apologize about how I had been too harsh in a previous class. I had chewed her out hard for not following instructions, and I felt I should have been more patient with her. The look of sadness on her face had haunted me. This was a wonderful student and I felt like I had failed her by not measuring my words. “I wish you could have trained with my brother. He’s very kind,” I said, feeling very vulnerable. I figured, if I said anything wrong, she was too drugged up to remember.
Her Vicodin-laced response both honored me and made me laugh uncontrollably. Apparently, pain relievers functions as truth serum too. “No, I need you. Yes, you are merciless and can be a bit of (mumble) but that’s why you got results with me. I was too scared of you to think about quitting. So yes, you’re really mean and scary but that’s what makes you great.”
I got off the phone to spare further embarrassment, quite pleased.
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