An Absence of Responsibility

Tonight a student got hurt. I was leading the students. I was looking after them. And I completely froze when it happened. I panicked. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, or what the next step would even look like. The other instructors jumped into action, getting the rest of the class to turn and take a knee, running to get Sifu Rybak, and I panicked. Brain completely shut down, it wasn’t even that my thoughts were running around scrambling or grasping at the thoughts flying around my head, there was nothing, Just waiting for someone else to come along and take over. I had no sense of responsibility for one of my own students, and this absolutely cannot continue if I am to call myself an instructor.

Afterwards Sifu explained that all we had to do, was calm them down and call their mom. Extremely logical. Extremely simple, and I realized through writing this blog that I was worried about doing The Proper thing, not The Logical thing. I wasn’t thinking about what to do with an injured kid, I was thinking about what to do with an injured student. Instead of thinking about what things I needed to do to be a helpful person I was focused on what role I needed to play to look like a competent instructor. With further introspection I realize I wasn’t even really thinking about how that student felt, how scared they must have been, instead I was too focused on what the whole situation was looked like from the outside.

All of this to say it is glaringly obvious that I need to better develop my empathy, I need to better develop my reaction time, and I need to better develop how I recover in crisis mode. All of these things can serve my training, maybe it’s the echos from my last blog, but it seems obvious how progressing in these areas will improve my own training, my sparring and applications. But my empathy to be deeper, my reaction time needs to be quicker, and my recovery in times of crisis needs to be faster, first and foremost for the sake of my students. 

Current Total

Push-ups

3219

Sit-Ups

2604

AOK

85

Km

228

Blogs

5

Sparring

5

Hand Form

71

Weapon Form

46

Repair Relationship

0

Comments

  1. KhonaMarch 17, 2026 at 9:35 PM

    You’re not wrong, you need to be able to react to these situations if you’re an instructor. However, give yourself some grace. It’s a skill, and like all skills it takes practice to develop. Not like I can break a child every week to give you chance to practice, but as you said, work on your sparring and it’ll develop both your empathy and reaction/recovery.

    Some people will seem like they know what they’re doing, but recognize they just have different experiences that have allowed for that development. For better or worse, I can react that way because I’ve had to in the past. I’ve also always been a logical thinker; I’m one of the analysts I talked about in class. Plus, I’m a mom. Many people write that off, but it quite literally turns on a different part of your brain. I just have had different experiences that gave me the skill set. Think of empathy and reaction as skills to learn, and they’ll come easier.

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