School: Bayonne AOKA Inc
Sharina Palencia Desai
High School: Bayonne NJ
I found Isshinryu in 1992, when I first started school at Bayonne High School.
It was the first year the Bayonne (High School) Karate League came to be. Karate
became an integral part of my life and became one of the major factors in shaping
my self-confidence. I was a part of the BKL all four years of high school,
holding the title of Vice President of the club in my last two years. I volunteered
on the weekends with (then) Sho Dan Roberto Cambiero at the YMCA teaching a
kid's karate class. I participated in three hometown fairs and several demos
at MOTB and BHS. I also participated in two of the annual tournaments held
at BHS and both years won first place kumite in my rank division. In the summertime
I would train at the dojo, which was then on Broadway and 19th street. I loved
those years and experiences. I met so many wonderful people through Isshinryu
and developed a love for them and the martial arts that I could enjoy and share
with my sister Lori. She was introduced to the sport through my first karate
experiences and now stands as a fine ka and awesome Sho Dan candidate. During
my high school years I was promoted from white belt to Go kyu then to Ni Kyu
and finally Ichi kyu in 1995.
Isshinryu helped get me through my parents' horrible divorce a little easier.
It helped troubled times at home and with the general growing pains of being
a teenager. I truly feel it was due to karate that I had the discipline, joy,
and energy to strive for many things in these years. I graduated first in my
class of 1995 with about a 4.0 GPA, a transcript full of honors classes, Honor
Society membership, and many many other extracurricular activities including
volunteering at Bayonne Hospital, the Bayonne DARE program, visiting my senior
citizen buddy, singing in the girls Glee Club, and being a super active member
in the Peer Leadership Program at school.
College: New Brunswick NJ
After graduating from high school, I attended college where classes, distance,
lack of transportation, and job schedule made it implausible to continue my
training at that time. I majored in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and
started school as a Douglass Scholar. I became president of the Douglass Asian
Women's Association, Council member for the Rutgers Asian American Coalition
for Equality, and a founding member of the alpha Kappa Delta Phi Sorority Inc,
at Rutgers University. I took up dancing in cultural shows and when I wasn't
in class I was working in pharmaceutical and academic laboratories to earn tuition
money. In my junior year I was crowned Miss Asia Rutgers the winner of the
biggest fundraiser/pageant at the university where all proceeds went to sponsoring
twelve underprivileged third world children's education, clothing, and food
for one whole year. I volunteered at soup kitchens, holiday parties for the
hospital pediatrics department, visited seniors at retirement homes, cleaned
up the grounds of the Piscataway Battered Women's Shelter, and helped raise
money for the annual Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Walk in NYC. I was also a
mentor for incoming freshmen in science and a 1999 Portrait of Strength Nominee.
On a side note, one fun and interesting job I had was spending two summers working
at Six Flags Great Adventure frying chicken and making mashed potatoes and jello
by the gallon. =)
Academically I was busy trying to get as much scientific experience as I could.
I spent a year working on a project to create an HIV vaccine. I spent two years
picking and cross pollinating genetically altered corn in a transgenic cornfield;
another year helping to research a genetically altered pest resistant plant;
and a summer trying to induce more resistance in strains of bacteria to common
antibiotic drugs. I also met my husband to be in these years, got my first
tattoo and my nose pierced. I discovered more of the fun side of who I am and
didn't always balance my school work and extracurriculars as well as I should
have.
Graduate School: New York, NY
I graduated from Douglass College of Rutgers University in 2000 and began
my first full time job at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC. I
was a technician for the Developmental Immunology Department studying the development
of the thymus and its role in the immune system. Two days before 9/11 I moved
in with my then fiancé. That move into our first NY apartment saved me from
the Path train ride I would have been on coming from NJ and commuting to work
that morning. It was also the end of a grueling three-year bicoastal relationship
period when Shiv was living in Los Angeles, and I on the East Coast. It was
the most wonderful beginning of my personal life and at the same time, the worst
time for New Yorkers and all Americans. Those were truly tough times. The city
smelled like barbeque and the world was gripped with fear.
At that time I began an MA program. I completed my Master's of Biology degree
from Hunter College, CUNY in three years doing part-time night school while
I worked full time in the day doing science research. I took up salsa classes
and rediscovered a hobby with movement. There was no Isshinryu in Manhattan
and I had no car while I lived there but It was great to find another outlet
to exercise while learning a skill. On the weekends I taught two high school
enrichment programs at Rutgers, Newark NJ. One was an SAT prep course called
Saturday Academy for high school students that were in their junior year. The
other was an accelerated science and math program in which I taught high school
students about aspects of science that probably were not being taught in their
regular curricula. By 2003 my fiancé and I had both completed our Master's
programs, I had taught several classes, and published my first scientific article
in the Journal of Immunology.
Present: Los Angeles, CA
Finally, my fiancé and I moved to Los Angeles, in the summer of 2003 so that
he could begin his PhD program in Urban Schooling at UCLA. I started working
at UCLA in a Developmental Biology Laboratory. I love my work screening for
pancreas and pituitary gland mutations in Zebrafish. My boss says I have a
natural talent and should seriously consider doing my PhD at UCLA. My dream
as far as academics is concerned, is to become a DVM/PhD (aka Veterinarian and
science geek). This year I am listed in the National Dean's List as a result
of my 3.8 GPA that I worked really hard for during my MA program. I guess I
just want to take a small hiatus before going back to school again.
I've also been volunteering like crazy in two local hospitals, rotating in
departments such as the ER, post partum (where mommies go after delivering their
babies), the CT/ICU or Cardio Thoracic Intensive Care Unit (for patients who've
had lung or heart surgery), and NICU or Neonatal ICU where I help care for 1-2
lb babies.
Return to Isshinryu
I go to the California Karate Club (the closest Isshinryu dojo in my area)
from Monday to Thursday under the instruction of Sensei Sean Davila. I also
try to go to the gym every morning before work. Once a week I take a salsa
class with my now (finally) husband and on Sundays take a Filipino stick fighting
class. I recently got married to my long time fiancé in this passed June.
Life is great for me and very hectic, but I guess I thrive on such a lifestyle.
I've truly been blessed my more ways than I can ever count and I know having
found karate early on in my life has had a huge part in that.
It's been one of my biggest dreams since high school to be tested and to earn
my Sho Dan. I know it is only the mark of the beginning of serious student
ship of the martial arts. Though it has been many years since I've gotten opportunity
to train in Isshinryu again, I've never lost my love for the art. When I'm
an old wrinkled woman I'd like to be able to say the following things about
myself:
1) I‘m a mom and a grandma
2) I speak at least five languages
3) I've traveled to at least 10 countries
4) My title is Dr. so and so (Dr. Vet or Dr. Science Geek or both)
5) I'm a great cook
6) My tattoo still looks great
7) If I died tomorrow I would have left the world a better place
8) I'm an awesome salsa dancer
9) I've raised great kids
10) I EARNED MY BLACKBELT IN ISSHINRYU KARATE FROM THE PEDIGREE OF MY BAYONNE
NJ ROOTS.
Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier
to live in the world they've been given, rather than to explore the power they
have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible
is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is
temporary. Impossible is nothing.
Laila Ali Mohammed
Ali's Daughter