Let Me Sleep – How aware are you actually?

You all thought I was joking.  No, I don’t joke about sleep.

So during class, Jon (lead instructor, has been compared to a dying wolf spider with fewer legs EDITORS NOTE: First I am aware of this but sure)  posted a picture of me to the UTKM Instagram story. Look at the picture below carefully as I shall be referring back to it.

When I found out about the post I, of course, was annoyed and I then reposted it and threatened to rant “share about my life experiences” or whatever Jon always is asking people to do. So in my mild annoyance, enjoy my rant.

If you’ve been to enough classes or poked around on the blog, you will have heard of the mental awareness color code. If you are a student of UTKM who is reading this, you should know that ‘white’ is when you are unaware of your surroundings, usually in a safe place like your home (If you don’t, you need to read all the principles and listen more in class). Eyes closed, headphones in, I’m not going to really argue about that. I was pretty close to white. However, I WOULD argue that if you are asleep that you are closer to black, which is when your brain can’t protect you as it’s shut down. While your brain doesn’t actually turn off while you sleep, sleeping is a lot closer to having been choked out, fainted, or gone into ‘the black’. And I was not in stage black, as you will see if you keep reading. If you stop now, then you are wasting all the effort I put into making a convincing argument. I even did research! Like five minutes worth but still… Might as well keep going to make sure I don’t just say “LET ME SLEEP I WAS TIRED”.

So, is falling asleep in Krav class a good idea? Well first we have to keep in mind the location. Krav class. That’s very different from a Skytrain. I personally wouldent recommend falling asleep on a Skytrain? I mean, I’ve done it, but I also missed my stop once cause of that soooooo TRY TO GET YOUR RECOMMENDED AMOUNT OF SLEEP AND DON’T DIE.

The only people who should be there (Krav Class) are students, instructors, or people interested in joining. There are not going to be random people just hanging out there for no reason. Also if people are coming to class for the purpose of  attacking other students for no real reason and UTKM isn’t stopping it, that’s a major problem. This is why I’m glad that the students are nice (of course until they get to orange belt and they’ve been long enough to feel comfortable with one another, then all sorts of things might happen.)

Look at how nicely that leads to my next point that I’m not sure should been its own point but is anyways cause I’m the author yay! You need to be able to trust the people you train with. To be honest, I’m not sure if there’s a blog post, annnd okay, there is I just checked. It’s more about being a good (student and) training partner but it is close enough. The way we train, it could be easy to injure each other. To all the new people, don’t worry, injuries thankfully don’t happen that often. That’s because we know how to be careful and trust our skills and those of our training partners. Now, if someone can refrain from hurting you in class (where it would be easier to pass it off as an accident), why the !#$@ would they attack you unprovoked in plain view of others (please no one attack anyone in or out of class). Note that I said your fellow students should not being trying to kill you at least, they will and have pulled pranks (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE).

Now, let’s say a threat did come in with the intent to harm someone (with a knife because I say so) during that class. They aren’t going to be going for me specifically as I don’t make bad life choices! I think? If there’s anyone out there who wants to kill me, mind giving me a heads up? Or you could just not. So this person has come to stab people. First, they’d have to get through a room full of dancers. Why bother looking in other rooms when there are convenient things to stab right there? But okay fine. They LOVE dance and refuse to hurt the dancers, moving on to a small room where your author lies helpless. -_- I’d like to draw your attention to the kick shield wall on the right side of the picture. This wall is between me and the door, making me hard to see. Plus why attack me when you can stab Jon, who is conveniently right there. Now in this class, we have Jon, a yellow belt, three white belts who have a decent amount of experience, and obviously me. I have faith in their combined skills to take this attacker down. Or failing that, at least make enough noise so that I wake up and A) fight them off B) steal their knife and stab them or C) run and call the police. I’m voting for C but who knows. Regardless, I’m not dead!

So why would it be a bad idea to fall asleep in class? The place is safe(ish, watch for pranks), the people are more or less good, and you have a bunch of free bodyguards! At this point if you can’t relax you may need to look at the blog again and make sure you aren’t in mental state orange. Guys I’m covering three of five states, that’s so many more than I planned for. This is the exact and the only reason why we should expect the unexpected (to my shock and dismay, there isn’t a blog post about this but Jon has talked about it enough sooooo good enough also I didn’t look that hard). Right, I had a point. If you can’t get out of orange while you are at Krav, it is kinda a problem (obviously be prepared during drills/sparring). But if you are in a place where you trust the people around you (to a certain extent) and know that if something does go wrong the people around you are prepared to handle it and you are STILL worried someone’s going to attack you? You are getting paranoid (or you made very very BAD life choices). I can’t think of anything else to say to transition to the conclusion. I’m so glad this is voluntary and I’m not getting a grade back. That would NOT go over in my English class.

A few things the picture doesn’t show you. I was feeling sick that day which *I* thought was justification for a nap, clearly I was wrong.  I watched at least 1.5 hrs of class, so it’s not like I was sleeping through all of it. Now, are you ready for this? I wasn’t actually asleep, just listening to a podcast. And you see that knife in the bottom right? Later on I actually grabbed that knife just in case (if you’ve been half-heartedly scrolling through and not paying attention, allow me to reiterate, DO NOT TRUST ANYONE NOT TO PRANK YOU! They WILL betray you).

Hey look at that. A well-reasoned explanation that ties in Krav principles and is more than “aaaaaaaah i’m tired let me sleeeep” bet you didn’t expect that! I don’t think I did. I put way too much work into this if only I could do the same for my school work. I’m not kidding I have school tomorrow (actually it’s now tomorrow) and I’m doing this instead of schoolwork. Moral of this story is don’t sleep at Krav if you don’t want people to poke/kick you awake because it’s time for class, or build a FREAKING FORT AROUND YOU! WHY? I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING.

That is all,

Karis out!