How Taekwondo Made Me by Dina Nayeri
June 4, 2019 9:38 AM Subscribe
When she arrived in the US as a 10-year-old refugee, Dina Nayeri found it hard to fit in. But that all changed when she hatched a plan to get into Harvard – by becoming a taekwondo champion. A long read from The Guardian. [Note, talks about restrictive eating]
When I was 13, three years after arriving in the US with my mother and brother, I devised a plan to get into the Ivy League. I was a refugee kid with no money and I lived in Oklahoma, where university means Tulsa or Stillwater or, if you’re smart, somewhere in Texas. My mother, who had been a doctor in Iran, was now a single parent working in a factory. My father, who was a dental surgeon, had stayed in Iran and rarely sent money. Our sponsors, conservative Reaganite Christians who thought public assistance was a slippery slope to a lifetime of sloth, discouraged us from applying for temporary relief. It took all our energy just to continue living, working and studying. I didn’t have tutors or advisers. No one was bribing coaches or hiring consultants on my behalf. But I did have a vague notion that I needed more than good grades and test scores – I needed to transform into someone the books called “a high achiever”.
... Taekwondo is a Korean martial art focused on strong legs and cardiovascular fitness. Unlike karate – a calmer, more physically balanced combat style – in taekwondo, you do a lot of jumping around and kicking. It is a perfect sport for teenage girls, and yet there were almost none in this dojang, probably because all the glory came from bloodying and being bloodied – and you could really mess up your face.
It was a strange place: a Protestant fighting school called Kicking Christian Soldiers (KCS) run by Kerry, a white man with a Navy Seal body, and his scary Thai girlfriend, Cheri. She was KCS’s first selling point: those blond bitches had nothing on this lady. Her thighs were torpedoes.
And here was the second selling point: I learned that they handed out trophies by age, belt and weight, almost every weekend at local competitions that led up to statewide, then national contests. That meant I could starve myself into a lower category, beat up a bunch of scrawny green belts and write my ticket to Harvard – a totally logical way of becoming a doctor or professor or supreme court justice.
Dina Nayeri on the blue previously and previously.
When I was 13, three years after arriving in the US with my mother and brother, I devised a plan to get into the Ivy League. I was a refugee kid with no money and I lived in Oklahoma, where university means Tulsa or Stillwater or, if you’re smart, somewhere in Texas. My mother, who had been a doctor in Iran, was now a single parent working in a factory. My father, who was a dental surgeon, had stayed in Iran and rarely sent money. Our sponsors, conservative Reaganite Christians who thought public assistance was a slippery slope to a lifetime of sloth, discouraged us from applying for temporary relief. It took all our energy just to continue living, working and studying. I didn’t have tutors or advisers. No one was bribing coaches or hiring consultants on my behalf. But I did have a vague notion that I needed more than good grades and test scores – I needed to transform into someone the books called “a high achiever”.
... Taekwondo is a Korean martial art focused on strong legs and cardiovascular fitness. Unlike karate – a calmer, more physically balanced combat style – in taekwondo, you do a lot of jumping around and kicking. It is a perfect sport for teenage girls, and yet there were almost none in this dojang, probably because all the glory came from bloodying and being bloodied – and you could really mess up your face.
It was a strange place: a Protestant fighting school called Kicking Christian Soldiers (KCS) run by Kerry, a white man with a Navy Seal body, and his scary Thai girlfriend, Cheri. She was KCS’s first selling point: those blond bitches had nothing on this lady. Her thighs were torpedoes.
And here was the second selling point: I learned that they handed out trophies by age, belt and weight, almost every weekend at local competitions that led up to statewide, then national contests. That meant I could starve myself into a lower category, beat up a bunch of scrawny green belts and write my ticket to Harvard – a totally logical way of becoming a doctor or professor or supreme court justice.
Dina Nayeri on the blue previously and previously.
Thanks for posting this - I had been meaning to. It was unclear to me whether she actually followed her initial strategy of "beating up a bunch of scrawny green belts" to write her admission ticket - or if she ended up getting side-tracked by more ambitious targets. In either case I love both the ingenuity of her plan, the way things worked out for her - and her latter day re-acquaintance with the sport.
Sit and be Fit will probably not get you anywhere Ivy League - but I provide the link here in case there are other foreigners like me who think it was made up.
posted by rongorongo at 11:33 AM on June 4, 2019 [1 favorite]
Sit and be Fit will probably not get you anywhere Ivy League - but I provide the link here in case there are other foreigners like me who think it was made up.
posted by rongorongo at 11:33 AM on June 4, 2019 [1 favorite]
Thanks to the mod or whomever alerted a mod to add the warning up top.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:00 PM on June 4, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Bella Donna at 1:00 PM on June 4, 2019 [1 favorite]
Wonderful story.
I know a kid who decided he wanted to go to [elite university A], and though he had great grades and a lot of accomplishments, he knew his chances were slim. He decided to become a competitive fencer.
Fencers who get recruited generally start in elementary school, and he was a high school junior. But he came to our fencing club, worked his tail off, did a great job, showed his incredible stick-to-it-iveness and general positive attitude, went to the summer fencing camp at [elite university A]and ended up getting in early-admission --
-- To [elite university B], for which the club's owner happened to be assistant coach, which the kid hadn't known when he joined the club.
It's the flip side of that horrid college-admissions cheating scandal. Sometimes there are kids who decide to work the system and succeed for all the right reasons.
posted by Peach at 5:35 PM on June 4, 2019 [4 favorites]
I know a kid who decided he wanted to go to [elite university A], and though he had great grades and a lot of accomplishments, he knew his chances were slim. He decided to become a competitive fencer.
Fencers who get recruited generally start in elementary school, and he was a high school junior. But he came to our fencing club, worked his tail off, did a great job, showed his incredible stick-to-it-iveness and general positive attitude, went to the summer fencing camp at [elite university A]and ended up getting in early-admission --
-- To [elite university B], for which the club's owner happened to be assistant coach, which the kid hadn't known when he joined the club.
It's the flip side of that horrid college-admissions cheating scandal. Sometimes there are kids who decide to work the system and succeed for all the right reasons.
posted by Peach at 5:35 PM on June 4, 2019 [4 favorites]
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