Testing for a blue and white stripe belt...

Tested sucessfully today for the next belt (blue with white stripe - the next one will be red). It was...hmm, interesting. First, I came to test in a completely stressed mood (no luck with my job search). I was sitting cross-legges on the floor among 50-70 other students contemplating the fact that the Korean grandmaster (9th Dan) and my master (7th Dan) probably did not even bother about job search as they knew what they would be doing since they were kids. And here I have a PhD, spent 10 years in my area of research, published a number of articles and can't find a job. Then suddenly my master calls my name and the Korean guy announces that they decided that I was an outstanding student during the last 2 months of training (along with 4 other students). I was ordered to come to the table, get some medal from them and line up with the 4 other people, and SMILE for cameras! This order "to smile" a kind of improved my mood. The rest of the testing went smoothly. I imagined that the board I had to break with a back spinning kick was the rejection letter from a potential employer. As a result, I did not even understand how I broke it from the first attempt. It was a difficult kick - nobody in the group of 10 people broke their boards from the first kick. The lesson from this testing: being upset is probably not a bad thing, especially when you have to break something!