say it ain't so

My friend D. made some comments a few days ago that have been bouncing around in my head for a while now: "Why are you guys trying to add standing meditation, ground fighting, push hands, [. . .] to ksw when it doesn't actually contain those things? People who saw your demo and signed up knew what they wanted and were getting into. Why try to remake ksw when other things already exist that do what you want?"

Could it be true? Could our students really care more about looking cool than learning how to use their bodies effectively or developing practical fighting skills? Is that why the kind of person who joins the ksw club is not the same as me, T., B., or the kind of person who studies bjj or tj? Is that why we have so much trouble with bad attitudes among them?

I mean, I know what I want to learn. I've started to realize that studying ksw will probably not get me very far with that, so I've picked up other things. But I've been kind of assuming that the students want to learn those things too, so I've been passing on some of what I think helps. Maybe they don't want it, though.

I'm collaborating with this optics professor on an experiment right now while I simultaneously take a class on optics from him, and I'm starting to think I'd like to do more optics-related work. Maybe it's just because I get along with the guy, but there are also some really cool problems in the field.

I've been back here for a month, and I am still spending a lot of time reexamining whether I still want to do what I have been doing all along. Both parts of this post are related to that.