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Last night's class was very cool. As we do each Thursday, we had an open mat session for the half hour prior to class. During this session, I found out that our instructor wouldn't be able to make it. Additionally, our most senior student would be late, so it fell to me to lead class.
About five minutes into the regular class period, Micah (sempai for all of us in the dojo) showed up. I was ready to let him take over leading class, but he declined and urged me to continue. The class went really well! It was nice to have Micah there to point out things that I missed (which, thankfully, wasn't that often).
We worked on kokyunage, which led into some proto-randori drills. That's my term for some drills that we did at the eastern states seminar last year. They're drills that are a little abstract, but focus on certain aspects of randori. Then we did some slow motion and full-speed randori. We ended the night with tsuki iriminage and kokyu dosa with renzoku.
All told, it was a good experience. Micah said that I did a good job. I made sure I got in to take ukemi during the class, and I made sure to give some words of encouragement when I saw something worthy of them. It is sometimes hard to remember to give praise. I was also pretty successful at not worrying too much if I messed up; nobody expected me to be perfect and everyone was willing to work with me.