Give Don’t Take

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“The club will never look like this ever again.” - Master Dan Chuang, during debrief of the last official practice of the semester.

I’ve been apart of MIT Sport Taekwondo for just under two years now and it’s been one of my biggest sources of happiness since coming to MIT. But an era has just ended. The club is changing next year and I want to dedicate a blog to this bittersweet ending and beginning.

MIT Sport Taekwondo is MIT’s largest martial arts club and we’re incredibly productive, having over 50 active athletes, hosting free practice 5 times a week, and always performing at or near the top in the Eastern Collegiate Taekwondo Conference (ECTC) and National Collegiate Taekwondo Association (NCTA) annual national tournament. We owe our success to the one and only Master Dan Chuang and our incredible group of alumni instructors who volunteer countless hours to make sure we always bring our A game.

My story begins with stumbling into taekwondo on the recommendation from a few upperclassmen that I try the PE class. What’s really cool about the PE class is that it’s super big and that by the end of it, we have an opportunity to test for our yellow belts! As someone who always longed for a chance to learn martial arts ever since they were a child but was barred by financial barriers, I struck gold (okay the belt was more the other kind of yellow but you get the picture). And after the class, I kind of just… kept going to practice. Many people who finished the PE class alongside me also stayed and I didn’t want to be left in the dust.

But beyond the taekwondo, I treasure our club dynamic. Everyone is unapologetically goofy, wholesome, and supportive. Practice is both laidback and focused. You won’t find any Cobra Kai’s in our club but you’ll still find an ever growing collection of trophies, medals, and plaques. Above all, it’s one’s character that shines through and, in my experience, bonds formed on such a basis trumps any bond you can make by sitting with each other in class and doing homework together just to end up not sharing any classes the following semester. There is an inexplicable closeness you share with your sparring partners, grabbing and kicking each other to no end. Even with poomsae, progressing with and building a sense of community in and outside of my belt group is incredibly rewarding. It’s the kind of thing where there really isn’t a correlation with how much of an academic weapon one is. Sport TKD is the one place at MIT where I feel like how “cracked” you are doesn’t matter. And better yet, it’s the one place where I’ve only ever thought more and more of someone the more I found out about their academic background and interests. Taekwondo is what brings us all together but everyone is so multitalented and we don’t miss a beat “spotting” club members in our groupchat whenever someone is caught giving a presentation, winning an award, defending their PhD thesis, and generally being an awesome MIT student.

As one of the Social Chairs this past year, I got to organize our club banquets, an evening at the end of every semester where our club gathers to celebrate each other. Every time, seeing everyone, dressed to the nines, bringing their homemade dishes and sharing food and laughs really makes my semester. Preparing Broken Board awards (similar to superlatives), compiling everyone’s memes and confessions, signing cards, hearing senior speeches, watching tournament videos, and finally hugging everyone, some for the last time, broke me down to tears. I owe so much to this wonderful club.

Yet, even though consistency is one of the unspoken tenets of our club, I haven’t been exactly consistent. Kicked into Shape is ongoing right now which is a summer-long challenge designed to kick us back into shape so that we don’t lose all the progress we made over the year. However, I haven’t been the most active contestant with everything going on in Korea at the moment. And this of course, is contradictory with all the feelings I have about having a chip on my shoulder, about wanting to prove myself to me and others and stand out in my belt group. But the sparks of success I’ve had thus far indeed helps with rebuilding the self-belief that I too can do it if I put my mind to it. There are so many people in the club that I look up to and seeing them succeed and kick ass fuels me. I will be starting this next year in the same position that the upperclassmen who so warmly welcomed me to the club were in two years ago. I don’t want to simply pay this gesture forward because it was made known to me that if I, along with a few other core members in my year simply gave up, the club would cease to exist past our generation. That realization, along with the many memories I have of our lively competitions, practices, and banquets and the overall giddiness and excitement I associate with this club, suddenly overwhelmed me with a strong sense of responsibility and identity for the club. And with a new chapter beginning, I’m starting to understand that taekwondo is really much more than a physical marathon.

I guess subconsciously I may be writing this blog as a way of trying to get myself to think about taekwondo and trick myself to get back into grinding in preparation for the next competition season. Everything before now is water under the bridge. I have two years left to make my mark. We’re at halftime and it’s still anyone’s game - let’s get it done.

“You sir, need to learn how to give, not take.” - Zen Chu, patting my shoulder after Grand Hack 2024 (Zen is the Faculty Advisor for MIT Hacking Medicine and one of the coolest and wildly successful people I’ve been lucky enough to meet)