Kazu's grades are amazing!

When I first met Kazu in April of his freshman year of college,
he seemed to be extremely afraid of being disliked by others,
so I decided to take him on as a student because I felt he couldn't go on like that.

For the first eight months after we met, he would commute from Yonabaru to help with lessons,
but when Hero moved in January,
he ended up living at my house.

When you live together, you start to understand each other's lifestyle patterns, thoughts, and preferences.
Surprisingly, I feel that our thoughts and preferences are similar to Hero's.

You can tell by watching his actions that he is extremely afraid of being disliked by others.
He tries to accommodate so many different people that it becomes unreasonable and leads to exhaustion.
So, I told him he shouldn't force himself to accommodate others, but rather do what he enjoys.
When you do things you enjoy, people naturally gather around, and it becomes even more fun.
If someone doesn't like that, they should just go do something themselves.

If anyone could be liked by everyone, it would only be God.
No, wait, even God can't save everyone in the world; they are fighting over religious differences.
Is it impossible for humans to aim for something even God can't do?

When Hero does something new, some people leave saying it's impossible,
but new friends who think it looks interesting gather around.

To put it simply, when Hero's hair turned fluorescent green at age 33,
three students quit, and three new ones joined because they thought it was interesting.
Just because his hair color changed. It's fine for people to leave, and it's fine for people to come.
We talked about how we realized that everyone has different values.

Some time after that, Kazu said, "Coach, I'm going to enter a Spanish speech contest!"
We practiced his presentation many times. Hero doesn't understand what he's saying,
but I can understand a speech when I know what the speaker wants to convey,
so we worked on adding reactions, how to use eye contact to reach the whole audience,
and ways to build confidence, repeating it over and over until he took 3rd place.

Kazu is serious and spends a lot of time on the studies he's assigned,
but it didn't feel like he was studying because he truly loved it.

For Hero, understanding is a joy; the more you understand, the more you like it.
The more you know people, the more you like them, and the more you know and can do in sports, the more you like them.
I believe that daily life and routine are studies, and while I sleep,
knowledge combines with knowledge to create dreams of new ideas.
Maybe I feel like I'm studying 24 hours a day!

How do you make someone like something? It's by stimulating their curiosity, right?
Kazu's studying used to take 6 to 8 hours for a single assignment.
His thinking speed was slow, so I did brain training to increase his speed.

There are numbers 1 to 25 arranged randomly, and you press them in order
to time yourself. Kazu's first attempt was 30 seconds.
Next, his speed reading was 700 characters per minute, and his speed writing was 130 seconds.
His 100-cell calculation was 90 seconds.

Three months later, the 1-25 task went from 30 seconds to 3 seconds, 10 times faster.
Reading went from 700 characters per minute to 7,000, 10 times faster.
Speed writing went from 130 seconds to 55 seconds, about twice as fast.
The 100-cell calculation went from 90 seconds to 45 seconds, twice as fast.

And as for his university reports, he became able to finish them super fast, in 40 minutes instead of 6 to 8 hours.

Just pressing numbers up to 25 quickly, just reading and writing quickly,
just doing 100-cell calculations quickly—everyone says it's obvious you'll get faster if you keep repeating it.

Have you ever kept doing something long enough to be able to do the obvious things obviously?
Even if you understand it, this is difficult, isn't it?

Kazu kept doing it every day for 100 days, and as a result,
it became a fun habit, and he must have found it interesting.

He started applying that to tennis and his studies.
After working hard at tennis for a year, he could beat people with five years of experience.
When he started with his left hand because he couldn't use his right hand due to an old injury from before he started tennis,
he caught up to his right hand in half a year.

Curiosity also emerged regarding his studies. When I taught him that there was a great person from Okinawa named Tobi-Asato who flew before the Wright brothers,
he immediately started researching it. If I told him there was an island in Taiwan called Little Liuqiu,
he would fly to Taiwan to investigate. When Mr. Wu, the brain training expert, came to Okinawa,
he went to meet him alone to learn. He understood the joy of knowing and taking action.
It would be strange if his grades didn't go up with this, right?

The university's grading criteria are 'Excellent,' 'Very Good,' 'Good,' and 'Pass' for passing, and 'Fail' for failing.
Kazu's grades in his first year included three 'Excellents.' When he worked hard aiming for all 'Excellents,' he took 1st place in the Spanish speech contest.
By his third year, he achieved all 'Excellents.' It's just too amazing! ( ´∀｀ )❤

What I'm writing now is from the perspective of an instructor, so what does he think himself?
I definitely don't want to tell him to do this or that, or force things on him,
and I want him to decide various things for himself.

What kind of things is Kazu interested in? What are his keywords?
I want to find words that tickle his curiosity and make him feel excited and thrilled.