OK, since I teach college English, I'll take a stab.
First off, "third person," in writing refers to a viewpoint more than to a grammatical person. First person would be appearing to speak in your own voice, as in a novel with a first person narrator such as, "Huckleberry Finn:" it ends, (more or less), with, "I got to light out for the territory cause Aunt Sally she wants to sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before." First person naarration is also sometimes called "subjective," or "limited" narration, because what you can say is limited to what one person might actually know.
At the other end of the spectrum is third person, also sometimes called, "omniscient," narration, as in the start of Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities:" "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of hope; it was the age of despair...." Or then there's the beginning to some "Babylon 5" epissodes--"It was the dawn of the Third Age...." I sometimes call this, "eye-of-God narration," because the story gets told from a sort of god's viewpoint, in which everything is known aand the teller isn't directly involved in the events they're telling about.
College writing tends to emphasize third person narration, because it's all about the detached, impersonal, scientific presentation and evaluation of truth. Scientific writing takes this very far indeed: you don't use "I," because "I" is fallible. The objective scrutiny of the truth supposedly ain't. For example, an established scientific theory such as evolution (sorry, kids, it's as solid a theory as there is in science) isn't a matter of opinion, so "I" isn't relevant.
A cheap way to summarize: Dr. McCoy is first person, subjective, emotional; Mr. Spock is third person, detached, unemotional, scientific. Which is better? Neither. Depends on what you're doing. And BOTH viewpoints, as well as all the ones in between, are artificial constructs. They're ways we construct stories and representations of the world, and help claim the power to get others to listen: first person has the authority of personal experience and feeling, third person the authority of objectively-presented reality. (Note: if you can get somebody to buy the notion that you're objeective and they're only subjective, you win the argument every time.) But read Robert Scholes and Nancy Comley's "The Practice of Writing:" both positions are artificial, and both have to do with power.
Suggestions for paper topics:
1) turn the question back on itself and write about subjective/objective viewpoints in kenpo (there are alwways 3 points of view in a fight...")
2) discuss the role of "handicapped," people on the mat, and methods of "objectively" deciding when to promote somebody who can't, say, possibly do a form. What are one's criteria as an instructor?
3) Discuss the fact that in a sense, everybody's handicapped in learning kenpo. I'm handicapped if you want to call it that by being darn near 50; others are handicapped by athletic gifts that make them unwilling to buckle down and study; guys are handicapped by being guys; women by their repressive social training...
4) look up Mr. Parker's comments about writing well.
Hope this helps...
Robert
Instead, cite people who have written on the topic and give references (Ed Parker, Geoff Thompson, Tony Blauer, etc). Or if you do cite yourself, give a reason for it, such as you conducted a survey, compiled statistics, etc.
Somehow it just doesn't have the weight to persuade someone, or at least it wouldn't persuade me. Personal experience is usually best left to oral presentations when it allows people to ask you to clarify your experience or relate it to a bigger picture. 
