Monthly skating review: progress and goals adjustment

I will start by telling you that I don't understand how I ended up so busy during the holidays. My intention was to have some quiet time and I haven't made any commitments for Christmas days or New Year days. I suspect I felt that I'll have all this free time so I got into a deep cleaning, lots of cooking, going to few shows, meeting friends and stuff like that.

The skating schedule was as expected, not great. I did have my weekly private lessons, and the first weeks I added an extra lesson to hopefully get me ready to test the Ten Fox. The deadline was January 1st and I wasn't ready. I have to say I'm frustrated. My coach was asking me in November if I wanted to test in December, when I couldn't because I was busy skating in the Nutcracker on Ice. I felt ready to test, in the sense that my performance was good enough for this level. But the coach kept correcting things, the basic skills like not wide stepping when changing those lobes backwards, and the dropped 3-turns. Again, I thought they are good enough for my level, it is still a Bronze level dance, but of course I do agree they need improvement. This is firstly affecting my confidence, in the sense that the coach expected me to be ready in December and I wasn't able to.Then it's putting pressure on my regular life schedule because I try not to schedule other things close before those potential test days. I don't even know how to ask my coach about this to be sure he understands.

And now that I'm done venting, I'm trying to look again on what could possibly not be ready. I'm thinking at my coach's latest corrections but I also tried to remember the issues I had before testing the Willow Waltz, and it all made sense. Then, after the steps and skills were considered appropriate for the level I was asked repeatedly for power, remember I test standard, so I need to look as the kids and teens do. I also was asked repeatedly to be aware of partnering, I cannot skate go on my own way, I have to follow my partner.I think this is exactly what is happening now. My coach didn't ask for power, but to go for it, and to be assertive, but basically it is the same thing. And I'm still not partnering at points... To add to these, we haven't yet skated the Ten Fox on music, just on counting. And looking back at the posts about the Willow Waltz I found a post with the title Searching for confidence to test the Willow Waltz and here is the link, where I was describing that my last worry was skating on music. On my last lesson I tried and succeed to be more assertive. On my next lesson my plan was to pay attention to partner. But I'll skate an hour on my own before my lesson so I"ll have the opportunity to try the dance on music on my own. I'll have to remember to put some Ten Fox music on my phone.

The plan for this month is obviously to  keep working at the Ten Fox for testing, but with my newly found assertiveness I may be able to also finally work on the Pre-Juvenile MITF for testing. As for testing dates, there is one early February and one mid February.