Heading into the home stretch!! One week to go! This week went well, and went by fast. Monday was our test, I did okay on it. Tuesday we had a timed 5K to run in the morning. I did mine in 28.32 minutes, which is faster than I’ve done before. Right after that though we had to run back to our rooms and change into “service dress” which is our blues and jacket. We all looked very nice, but it was hot. We all had to give our briefings (just to the class). Mine went wayyyyy better than my practice run the night before. I actually lost points for using the podium because our flight commander said I was too short for it. He can have those points; I was quite happy behind my podium. I got a nice middle of the road score on that. I wasn’t looking for anything more. I know that I will have to give talks while in the Air Force, but it will be something I know about and am familiar with. I think the main problem I had preparing for this briefing was that it was on oil production. Why would I know about oil?

Wednesday and Thursday we had leadership courses. We were put into smaller groups and each graded for leading a small group through a complex situation. (Again, this is secret stuff and if someone on their way to COT finds this blog, I wouldn’t want to spoil it for them, so sorry for not delving into details) Of course it seems easier when you aren’t leading, but my situation was really complex, plus I had to battle a couple of dominating personalities in my group. I got another middle of the road score, and was quite content with it. I want to excel in my field and duties, but honestly here I feel like I am just trying to survive and graduate. Therefore, these mediocre scores don’t bother me.

Friday… we didn’t do much. We had parade practice in the morning, a few classes, evaluation/review time from leadership exercises, and then a lot of free time. Free meaning we were in our classroom, but we played some games and talked. Our Flight Commander spent about an hour in there talking with us and telling his stories of time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Friday evening we got introduced to the Officer’s club; basically a posh club that every base has for its officers. It was cool to get to laugh and hang out with people in a sort of normal environment. The building itself was interesting. It is really old and there were lots of old Air Force pictures. I love old pics so I was captivated by them.

And we are now second class status, so we have off base weekend privileges. Yay! And we can sit however we want at meals and put elbows on the table and talk.
This weekend we exercised our privileges by going off base a lot. Saturday we had a flight lunch with our commander. He even let us call him by his first name (not that anyone did). We had delicious pizza and had fun with each other. For dinner we went out again. My carload of people went to a bookstore just to wander for awhile. After getting back to the dorms, I joined some other people in a rousing game of catch phrase for a couple hours. Honestly, I haven't laughed so hard as I did friday and saturday with the people in my flight. Not sure if things are really that funny, or if it's just 4 weeks of keeping a straight face. Whatever the reason, I think everyone had some good, side-cramping laughs.

Today (sunday) I went to church for the last time here. I worked on a few final assignments and organized the mountains of papers I've collected while here. It was a load off to get rid of so many. :) Tomorrow we head out to the field, simulating a deployed medical environment and are going to do a high ropes course. We get to live in tents and eat MREs for a few days. I’m excited about everything except the MREs. I get to pretend to be a lab technician (for some reason apparently optometrists aren't needed in the field med clinic), I'll bring back those undergrad research skills.

So things at COT are winding down, we have more time to chill, and sleep since all the tests and projects are done (I actually got 8 hours friday AND saturday nights).
Graduation is friday and I’m excited to see mom and dad at the end of the week! Just in case you were all thinking about Texas as much as I have been, it's currently 105 degrees there. Just saying...

First off base adventure = animals!

Although the impending doom of the test and briefing is fast approaching, I went to an animal shelter for community service. It was so fun to be in civilian clothes and talk with new people. We even went out to eat after words at a really good bbq place. One other girl in my flight also went and total we had about 30 people there.

We got to walk a bunch of dogs and run them around in a field. My dog was so sweet! I think we were as excited as the dogs to run around and be free. It was 97 degrees out though, so quickly the dogs and officers realized the temperature and everyone went looking for shade. Dogs panted, people sweated, it was fabulous.

Next up was the cat room! I got to play with kitties for awhile. I held a bunch of cats and played with kittens. Nothing like a room full of lovey, meowing cats to brighten the day!














Then we washed the dogs (about 50 of them). They set up two little pools and we got the dogs in, splashed water on them, shampooed and scrubbed, and then rinsed with a hose. It went pretty fast, with lots of chaos and everyone was drenched with soapy water, dog drool, sweat, and more sweat. We smelled incredible afterwards. Most of the dogs were okay with the bathing, some were pretty skittish though, as would be expected. I was impressed with how well all the dogs were, they were so cute.

After our romp with the animals, the Major with us suggested a yummy restaurant and we all enjoyed the food and relaxed atmosphere. My fellow flightmate and I sat with the Major, who is a fantastic person. She was really nice and talked about life in the Air Force and her experiences.

This ate up about half of my day, so I didn’t actually work on my project at all, which is troubling to me. However, playing with animals and relaxing for half day was well worth it. 13 days to go!

(sorry for weird formatting!)

Week Three

(Flight Pic!)

Yay, the end of week 3!! Only two weeks to go, which is fantastic. Next week brings challenges on a timed 5K, second written test, a presentation, and two days of running leadership groups. We got upgraded a ‘class’ level so we also are enjoying some new privileges here. We can now whisper at meals, we don’t have to wear the hydration packs in the hallways, we can go to our cars (no driving them though), and buy snacks at the shoppette. Wooooo. Really, it means a lot to us. :) Oh, and we have base privileges so we can explore the rest of the base, I hear there are some fast food places somewhere.

(just some of us girls (my roomie is on the left))

Monday was our first test (the very first one I took at the end of week 1 didn’t really count). I did pretty well, only missing 2 of the 35 questions. Although our flight commander thought that was still a bad score. Tuesday I got shot. Well, shots… two to be exact. I don’t like needles. They lined us up, took our social security number, then stabbed us with needles as needed and sent us on our way. Wednesday was leadership exercises, similar to before, but we were out in a big field and got ‘rubber duckies’ aka, hard plastic guns. It was about 95 degrees out and 110% humidity, but nice to be outside a classroom. Our flight has a variety of personalities, but a few too many dominating ones. The leadership exercises don’t always go over so well since different people want to be in charge of the situation, which really just makes chaos. You know me, I’m pretty quiet and non-dominating (except to mom, then I’m bossy ;) so I just stand back and watch. However, I am trying to step it up in my own leading. Our flight officer in charge and I are the only captains in the flight (the rest are 2d lieutenants, under us in rank), so the flight commander expects us to be running things. It’s weird stepping up into such a… higher feeling role than I have ever had before. It’s hard for me to be commanding and to have to get on people’s case about things. This comes with the position I’ve chosen in life though. I want to be a good leader/supervisor, as much as I want to be a good optometrist for as long as I am in the Air Force.
Side note for clarification – flight officer in charge is a girl like me, brand new to the military. The flight commander is a hardcore Air Force officer in charge of us.
Thursday I got to be the person walking in front on the flight with the flag. As dad said, I get to be the dork for the day. :) I managed to carry it around all day without dropping it, running into a door way, or stabbing anyone; the tip on those things is deadly! I did take off walking in the opposite direction of my flight once because I was thinking about getting ice cream at dinner. Derrrrr. I mean, that’s not obvious or anything when the flag bearer walks away from the flight.
Friday, we wore our ‘blues’ for the first time: hot, itchy stiff pants with a crispy button up shirt that wrinkles if you look at it wrong, but that you are supposed to keep wrinkle free. Plus the hat… the little wedge that almost falls off. And very shiny shoes. Seeing everyone in their blues was cool, we did look pretty nice as a group, all dressed up compared to the heavy, baggy camo uniform (which is referred to as ABUs). I actually missed that uniform since everyone looks frumpy in it and there’s lots of pockets and room to move. The blues keep you pretty rigid, desperately trying not to get wrinkled or to have your shirt come untucked or to get any scuffs on the shoes. Ahhh the joys of a uniform. Oh, also Friday morning was our final physical fitness test. I improved in all my areas, personal bests for pushup (28!) and the run (1.5 miles in 12 minutes!) Small victories for me. My flight commander’s encouraging words for the morning “your face looked creepy when you ran.” Sigh. Deep down, I know he likes us… at least a little.
Fill in the rest of the week with classes. And eating too much at meals. And no sleep.
Tomorrow I actually get to get off base for a couple hours to do some community service. And wear real clothes. I can’t wait to be done here. Now, I have to go work on a briefing about OPEC and oil production levels.

(pic: my flight at the assault course)

Sunday note

Hey everyone,

A lovely member of my flight has a wireless card that works on my computer. That means I can have internet!! yay! Hopefully I can be a little better with my posting now, and then they won't be so long to read. :)

Today I went to church and we had communion, which was really nice. Then they had a potluck for us and coffee and cake. mmmmm. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) we still have to eat in the dining hall. So I will have had 4 meals by the end of today. My second lunch was just a salad though. :) I weighed myself this afternoon and I've only gained 2 pounds while being here, so I guess my inner fat kid isn't completely taking over. Tomorrow is a test and the end of the week brings our fitness test. We are hoping to get academic flight of the week this week, so everyone send some prayers that the Foxtrot Fuzziee Wookiees all do well on our test!

Now I am off to write my weekly letter about my morale. I better write it while it's high. Yay again for cool people that hook me up with internet access!

Week Two!

Soooo, now I am already through week 2, and still haven’t posted from week 1, which means you all get a double post to read (if you so choose). Week two had its ups and downs. Over the weekend I got a chance to organize myself and breath. I really needed that to figure out what had just happened the week before. Sunday I went to church here on base. About 6 people from my flight came too. It was a contemporary-ish service, so the familiar songs were nice. Just being in that environment and being able to relax and talk and sing was fantastic. They had us stay for COFFEEEEEEE and donuts afterwards and talked about Christian activities/groups in the Air force and what we can find on base. It was a good relaxer to help me reset for the next week.

Thanks to Memorial day, we actually had a three day weekend, which was filled with meetings, testing, studying, marching, and studying. I ran a 5k on Monday morning and felt pretty proud about that. Tuesday we had PT in the morning, during which I ran another 3.25 miles. Then it was pretty much classes all day. With very little sleep, very filling meals, and no coffee, I (and everyone else here) have such a hard time staying awake in lecture. It’s so hard! During lectures they tell you to stand up in the back if you are falling asleep (they encourage it), but I can’t bring myself to crawl over everyone in the lecture hall to do it. So I just get poked by my fellow flight mates. Sidenote - Classes are either held as a full group in the auditorium or with our flights in the classroom, by the way.

Wednesday we were suppose to have a ceremony and get our ‘driver’s license’ so we can march without an instructor, but they thought we weren’t ready (as a whole) so that got pushed back to Friday. People are lazy here, for instance when you walk down halls you are suppose to be single file, hands cupped and not talking. That’s not that hard to accomplish, but people don’t do it. And it’s the little things like that that keep us from moving up in the world here. Anyway, Wednesday was PT strength training in the morning. A variety of push-ups, sit ups, jumping, planks (holding yourself up at elbow height in push-up like position, kind of like torture), and other such activities. We got done and I was like “whew, I did everything.” Then they made us do the whole set three more times. Sigh, yes I still did it all. Then classes allllllllllllll day. I was flight leader again that day, and it was a little better. Someone said leading the flight was like playing a video game, trying to get everything aimed right. I tried to keep that in mind as I ran my flight into the grass a couple of time since I’m too short to see where to turn them. Another side note, our flight commander asked if anyone didn’t like football, and I raised my hand, because I don’t. So for my sake he makes occasional baseball references. That day he told me I was hitting some things out of the park and other things I was just striking out at. It kind of made me smile (not the striking out, just the baseball thing). He told me the flight doesn’t always trust my calls because I don’t trust myself and the only way to fix that is to have confidence in
my abilities and make it clear to others that I am in charge. Good advice.

Thursday was running for PT, 45 minutes of jogging the corners of the track then sprinting the straight ways. I had a fellow flightmate with me keeping me motivated, so we were able to keep up a good pace. We had a field leadership thing in which we were broken into small groups and given scenarios to complete in a certain time limit. Like getting across a lake of acid, or scaling a falling apart house in a mine field. I can’t talk to much about it in case future COT-ers stumble across this. You know, it’s suppose to be secret and where would be the fun if I gave it away? Then classes. Oh we got to eat MRE’s again for breakfast. Always a fun experience.

Friday, MREs for breakfast again, then onto the assault course! That was a blast. We had about 16 obstacles to get through, like crawling thru the sand under wires, climbing a rope ladder thing and rolling across the top and climbing down, jumping over walls, pulling myself across a rope bridge, and so on. Lots of fun and we were the first ones done. Definitely the highlight of my time here so far. Then most of the afternoon was given to us to study for the test on Monday. We did have the ceremony to get our drivers license so we can officially march alone now. The ceremony gave us all a lot of pride, I think, and our flight commander actually gave us a nice little peptalk, which meant a lot coming from him since he is usually very disapproving seeming. I think he secretly likes us though. :)

Like I mentioned, we are the “Foxtrot Fuzziee Wookiees”, our chant is as follows:

Fuzzy fury bold and brave
There’s no place you will be safe
Towering high your fate it grim
Wookiees tear you limb from limb

Fuzzy fury tried and true
Ticks us off no good for you
Force can’t save you from our rage
Wookiees cannot be contained

(Wookiee roarrrrr)

(pic = my flight in PT gear, waiting for lunch)

Our flight commander says we sound like a bunch of pigeons when we do our roar.

And while I’m at it, our Squadron (the Falcons) chant is:

Falcons hunt from on high,
Diving down from the sky.
Ripping flesh with our talons,
Drawing blood by the gallons.
FALCONS!
Death from above!!

With a hundred people yelling that, it gets pretty loud. :)

So that’s life at the moment. Only three weeks to go. I am still having lots of ups and downs, but this week was better, at least less stressful/scary. My roommate here is great, I really enjoy her company and value the few minutes we can actually talk like normal people at night. I will be happy to be done here for sure, but that brings on new thoughts about life at my next base and what that will be like.

But no time to reflect on that, I’ve got some studying to do. Only three weeks to go!

Miss you all!!

Week One of Training

Hello all! So first week of COT is done. I am basking in the enjoyment of the weekend, with only a few assigned duties (test, drill/marching, meetings, stack of readings, assignments, 5k run), and I got to sleep in till 5:30! Haha, can you tell how my schedule has changed in only a few days?

Upon arrival at COT the drill instructors were happily waiting to yell at us for various things. We got pushed through a lot of orientation and more yelling. We had to get fit for uniforms, which was chaotic. There are about 300 fellow officers in training here, which is an overflow class (they usually have about a third of that). So everything was a little bit of mass confusion at first. I met my roommate, who is a laboratory person. She’s great and we are enjoying each other’s company. I am in a smaller group of 16 people (the flight), also good people and we are figuring out how to mesh our personalities and work as a team.

The first morning we were woken up at 4:30am with banging on the door and yelling to get in the hallway. At which point we were given three minutes to get dressed and outside. A little rushed to say the least. Lots of inprocessing and forms to fill out, oh, and more yelling. The next day was a few intro classes, more yelling, drill instructions, finishing uniforms, my first experience with MREs… complicated to eat when you don’t know how to. We met our flight commander, who was terrifying, and still kind of is. He loosens up in class, but yells a lot. I had to lead our flight in marching and there are sooooo many little details and wordings to get right, so he yells at the leader the most. I should make a point here that when I say ‘yell’ it’s usually only a raised and angry voice, not verbally abusive or right in my face. It’s more of discipline and corrections. Only sometimes if instructors are reallllly mad do they shout. Anyway, it makes me throw up a little in my mouth and have an extremely raised pulse when leading and being ‘disciplined’ but that’s the best way to learn so I didn’t mind stepping into that position (we all take turns leading).

As a basic overview of life here: We get up at 4:30am, have to be downstairs by 4:45 and off to class or physical training (PT) or marching by 5. Usually we get about 20 minutes to change to uniform and be at breakfast. Then classes/drill, lunch, classes/drill, dinner, mandatory study time and then personal time (aka more study time) till lights out at 2330 (aka 11:30), and repeat. We have about 10 minutes between things and if you remember the 290 students, about 60% male, 40% female, bathrooms tend to have long lines. Basically pants are undone and ready to go while in line. Who needs privacy? Meals are crazy, we sit at attention, no talking, no looking around. We technically get 20 minutes, but they yell if you aren’t done and moving out in about 5-10 min. The food is actually pretty good, or would be if I have time to enjoy it. We have to drink water constantly (yeah hydration pack!), including at least 3 glasses of water before any other beverages with meals. Yes, we sweat a lot (uniforms are sooo hot in the humid, 90 degree sun) but still, that’s a lot of fluids intake… and remember the comment about the bathrooms, and we can’t leave during lectures… I don’t think there have been any ‘accidents’ yet, just some close calls.

As for me, I am up and down emotionally all the time. I feel frustrated by the lack of organization (there is organization, we just have to figure everything out ourselves, which is hard when you can’t ask anyone except the several hundred other people that don’t know), then happy with meeting new and interesting people, then annoyed at the clashing personalities, then very proud of what I am doing here, then confused what the heck I was thinking in signing up for this, then excited to be a part of the Air Force, then feeling like I am dirt for not knowing things faster… you get the point. Everyone here is in the same boat. The workload is insane. The schedule is intense. My poor hair (which was too long for uniform) is falling out from being pulled back, pinned up, then hair-sprayed excessively, and not washing (no time for full showers, just a quick rinse). I have one week done, I’m still standing. I took my first written test and got 100%; it wasn’t that hard. I passed my PT baseline test (25 push ups!). And it’s the weekend, so I’m feeling good today.

I miss everyone back home. I miss sleeping. I miss having my hair down. I miss coffee. But I am doing this and proud to be here and will have interesting memories. :)

Dustin, if you read this, sorry for all the grammatical errors. Please don’t hold it against me.

Oh andddddd, my flight is going with a Star Wars theme for our group name, chant and mascot, so I’m pretty happy with that choice. I’m working on my Chewbacca call for part of the chant.