As I mentioned in this previous post, I’ve been studying Kung Fu for several years. Yesterday I tested and passed my 10 Short Defense, which are moves to throw your opponent to the floor. Ten different ways to slam someone into the ground, pretty fun to do, not so fun to have done to you.
Anyway, I’m now closing in on the four year mark in my training. And I started thinking about if life were more like video games. The only class left that I hadn’t tried in World of Warcraft was the rogue, so I started a Dwarf Rogue yesterday (Dwarves being one of only 2 races that I hadn’t tried either). In about 45 minutes of play I got to level 6, ranked up my skill in Daggers to 30 and slaughtered hundreds of boars and trolls. Ok, maybe not hundreds, but definitely tens. If my character’s training progress proceeded like my real life training process, she would have gotten MAYBE one dagger point of skill in that time frame. And certainly not leveled up 5 times.
I’m sure glad that video games aren’t too much like life. The interesting thing is that in real life, there are small things that are equally as rewarding as the big things. For example, when I was working on and practicing my Short Defense, I would have little moments of success where some concept really clicked in my mind. Successfully executing each of the throws requires many small pieces to be done in a particular way. Every time I get closer to correct on any one of those pieces, it’s a small victory.
So maybe my analogy is skewed - perhaps passing my test yesterday was more like leveling up. By that system, I am now a level 9 Kung Fu novice. And each piece of my progress, each small win in understanding a technique is a skill level increase.
I am a total and complete nerd. Isn’t it great?
4 Responses to “Kung Fu Skill +1”
Congrats on being a Kung Fu Master! I just wanted to report that I went to the Virginia Psychological Association with my findings on video games. I know it’s not a real biggie, but it was fun. I definitley debunked the myth of females not playing video games. For that session I conducted an extra test to try to “spin” advertisments of male dominated genres (i.e. FPS). There was a significant increase of intrest in male dominated genres when the synopsis included details that were neutral or feminine based.
(There was a significant increase of intrest among females)
Wow, sounds cool. Good to see people spreading the word on girl gaming outside the discussions we have inside the community!
Congrats on your kung fu ding, if we ever cross paths, please remind me too never piss you off.