Hey, readers! I don’t even know where to begin today, this past week was so crazy. Most people had mid-terms last week, which is stressful enough, but in AMS we had our actual finals. On the one hand it’s good to know that Tuesday I can start over on a clean slate, but the finality was pretty hard to deal with, especially since I almost failed one of my classes. Being sick for a week definitely screwed me over in a lot of ways. Since we don’t really get homework in my program, everything is really based on quizzes and tests, which until last week, I was convinced we’d had more of, so the fact that I had kind of messed a few up wouldn’t really matter, but it did. Anyway, the important part is that I did pass.
What sucks is that I really need more money for school, and my GPA right now isn’t all that good. I still have another term to raise it, but I don’t know if I can get it high enough to be very competitive for an ROTC scholarship. Fortunately, I did pretty well on the AFOQT, surprisingly my verbal section was really strong and was actually better than my math. Hopefully that will at least help me out a little in the selection process in the future. Since I was a junior in high school last year, apparently I wasn’t eligible for the 4-year scholarship, so I’m just gonna keep on trying until hopefully I get one, one of these days. If you are considering doing ROTC and you are a senior, I highly recommend applying for the 4 year scholarship as you are under no obligation to the Air Force your freshman year.
On that note, the whole bronchitis thing didn’t mix too well with ROTC. I haven’t missed any ROTC stuff since Lead Lab, but I got totally screwed over for PT. My lungs got really weak from all that coughing, so now I can’t even run a quarter mile until I start wheezing. We had our PFTs (Physical Fitness Test) this week and I had to get a waiver for it because I absolutely could not run. This pissed me off for a couple reasons, one, that I feel like a total quitter, two, I know I could have passed all the events before I got sick and three, I might have to do remedial PT (basically an extra morning of PT every week if you didn’t pass all the events), but I’m still waiting for my flight commander to get back to me on that one.
With all the things I have to do for school and no one to remind me to do them, I’ve gotten way stressed out. I even had a dream the other night that I forgot to go to Lead Lab, and then I got so confused that I also almost forgot to go to my Air Force GMC class. (That class is basically where we learn about military standards and the history of the Air Force, and all that other basic stuff.) It was a pretty bad scene, so I’m gonna make pretty sure that I show up for Lead Lab today.
I know a lot of you will probably be wondering about dorm life and spending so much time with other people that you don’t know. I can be pretty introverted myself, so I understand those of you who require alone time. The first six weeks or so of being here, I hardly had any time to myself. Oddly enough though, I didn’t really feel like I needed it. I used to need some kind of time to myself like once a day, but that need sort of fell away for a while. Plus, your friends really do become like your family. But with more work piling on me, I felt a much greater need to be on my own, but when I was doing a million things at once, it was kinda hard to get people to leave me alone, or to find a quiet place to study. This weekend I basically spent in bed recovering from all the stress. I even spent 15 hours sleeping on Friday night, I was that tired. All I did was read my book, sleep and listen to music. Eventually, I want to start back up learning my languages, too, but I think that’s going to require some more separation from other people.
The weekend before Thanksgiving, ROTC is doing a base visit to Shaw AFB in Charleston, SC. Since it’s all free, I’m strongly considering going. That’s another on the perks of ROTC, free vacations. After that I think I might actually end up going home for a week instead of staying here as planned. It’s going to be really expensive but my mom said she’d pay for it so I guess that’s all good. It’s hard to explain, I’m not homesick, but I still really want to go home. I think it’s basically all the stress of school that makes me want to go somewhere where I can forget about it. Plus, after graduation I won’t have that many opportunities to go home anymore, so I might as well go back while I can.
My goal for the rest of the term is to make a lot more time for productive studying, to have more time to read, because I like reading a lot and it should help me unwind from school stress, and to be more involved in ROTC. Since I got sick I started slacking off with all the optional stuff we do, and I’m not cool with that. I have to keep reminding myself that being in ROTC is a privilegeand I should treat it as such. So we’ll see how all that goes, and if I can actually make time for everything. The main thing in college, like everyone says, is time management. In two weeks, I’ll update you on whether or not I’ve actually had enough discipline to do everything I’m supposed to.
I’d best be going now. With some luck, I’ll have more interesting things to report on next entry. Any questions- you know the drill: kenyonj@erau.edu
‘Til next time!
