The past seven days seemed to fly by. It feels like just yesterday I wrote my journal entry for last week. I’m going to take this as a sign that I had a good week. Time flies when you’re having fun, right?
School and BJJ Are Not Unrelated
School has been pretty awesome. I honestly have zero complaints so far. It’s only the second week of classes, but I can tell this is going to be a good semester. I feel much happier now compared to how I felt about school for the past two years. I’m hoping my change of heart will help me boost my grades to above a three this semester. (Yes, I know, my grades have been bad.)
Now that I’m happier with school, I leave campus feeling great. When I leave campus feeling great, I have great day at Scranton MMA. I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll bring it up again. When I feel good about school, my training is good, and when my training is good I feel like the happiest person on Earth. The opposite is also true. If I don’t do well in school, I feel crappy when I’m training. When I have a bad training session, I don’t feel like applying myself at school. It’s a cycle that I tend to fall into, but I truly believe that cycle will be a good thing for me this semester.
Training This Week
I’ve been getting a lot of great rounds in lately. I’ve picked the speed back up after having to take it easy on my elbow for two weeks, and I can definitely feel the burn. Even though turning down my training for a few weeks sucked, I believe it was for my benefit. I was able to let my mind and body rest for a bit, which had me anxiously waiting until I could start training hard again. Now that I’m back at it, I’ve noticed I feel more confident while I’m rolling than I did before. Sometimes you need a break in order to fix flaws in your game, whether they’re physical or mental.
The only bad part about my week was having to say, “See you later” to one of my training partners. Ty moved back to Pennsylvania from Georgia a few months ago, after finishing her time in the Navy. She trained jiu jitsu in Georgia for about six months and wanted to keep training when she moved back home, so she chose Scranton MMA. And man, was I lucky she did. She became my training partner and also a great friend. She left for Spain this week and is going to spend ten months there as an au pair. I was sad she had to leave, but I’m happy that she’s living out her dream of traveling the world. I hope I get to see you soon, buddy!
Upcoming Seminars
I’ll be attending a few seminars in the near future, so I’ll definitely have more interesting topics to tell you guys about soon. Speaking of seminars, Scranton MMA will be hosting a Rafa Mendes seminar on September 20th. So if you’re on the East Coast, this is definitely one you should consider attending. If you’re interested in coming, you can preregister here.
Thanks for reading about my life. See you all next week!
Jess Papi is a blue belt at Scranton MMA and also pursuing her degree in exercise science. Read her entries every week for insights on competing, training, and juggling BJJ and life.