A light at the end of the tunnel

Good afternoon! Time for a new post. The pace slowed down last week, just a smidgen. It was short lived as we had two tests on Monday and a Graded Leadership Positions (GLP) at an all-day course on Tuesday. I predict it will start to slow down again throughout the rest of the week. Everyone is talking about the closeness of the end of the course, "only 2 Mondays left!" 

Next week is the mock-deployment training for the "Air and Space Expeditionary Force." We're purposefully getting kept in the dark about the details of it, but it appears that we will have two groups: a few squadrons at a Forward Operations Base (FOB) and a native/indigenous population. Conflicts and various missions will arise and reaction training will ensue. 

Scored expert marksman with the M-9, crushed BELPS, and did moderately well on my informative brief. I'm still in hot soup for a "lack of adaptability" from early and mid-February, but time goes on as some faceless bureaucracy casts judgment on whether or not I should stay here. They've got 2 weeks and 2 days to make up their minds, but I doubt it will take that long. 

Life has a unique feeling to it these days. Never before have I lived 7.5 consecutive weeks on 5-6 hours of sleep almost nightly. The middle of each day has evolved from good and novel, to sleeping on my feet and lacking all sharpness, to functional and aware. I am beginning to feel a change out of the most recent phase of functional and aware, but not sure what I'm going into at this point. I suspect it might be the last phase I get to feel here. Thursday is my last academic task (an advocacy briefing), and Friday is my last scored task (Personal Fitness Assessment). Not sure what we'll do the second half of next week and the first half of the week following, but we won't have any more tests or papers to complete, so I imagine it will slow down even more. 

Blazing Forward

Good afternoon all,

I've gotten into the habit of counting down my time left here: Just finished week 3 of TFOT (week 4 of BOT). It has been quite a remarkable week, one where I was continuously thinking I was going to be sent home. Every week we have an "individual morale" memo due where we promote the accolades of 2 of our fellow cadets and throw 2 of our fellow cadets under the bus. Being an unacclimated sleep-deprived taciturn non-prior, I think I was somewhere near (or at) the bottom of my flight's list. My flight commander, Maj Mask, calls me to his cubicle yells at me for failing, threatens dis-enrollment, puts me on SMS, and then tells me I'm going to be flight leader next week. One of the days around then something clicked; before then (and since then) I've averaged ~5.7 hours of sleep a night, but since "it" clicked I don't feel tired throughout the entirety of the day after less than 6 hours of sleep. So for the last ~7 days I've been up at 0430 leading a flight of 14 people (16 in total, minus 1 for myself, and minus 1 more for Cadet Smith who is a Squadron Officer this week and seldom falling in with my flight) until 1830 or there about. There are more meetings, emails, and middle-management than I can shake a stick at most nights, so sleep gets put off until 2230 or so. Anyway, it has been a strong, fast, and novel week as I've followed through on being the flight leader. The two flight leaders before me have been great helpers. Our flight commander (the Major) will often say "help each other, but don't carry each other. You understand the difference?" Almost everyone agrees and he goes on... I still don't know where the line is drawn. Next week looks like the most interesting one in the curriculum so far. M-9 Pistol qualifications on Tuesday, and the opportunity to earn marksmanship with it; I'll be delivering my first PowerPoint presentation here on Wednesday; some all-day leadership course called BELPS on Thursday; Friday sounds dull, but it might not be; and then Saturday morning has a trip to the Tuskegee Airmen Museum nearby.

No idea when I'll write next, but today marks exactly 1 month here (19 Jan to 19 Feb) and just over a month (33 days) until I get out! Miss you all lots!!

Picking up the pace

Good evening!

What a busy week--all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. 

Let me give you some of the breakdown. I'm at Officer Training School (OTS) going through Basic Officer Training (BOT). Each BOT course is divided into two parts: Total Force Indoctrination Training (TFIT) and Total Force Officer Training (TFOT). TFIT is ~1 week, comes before TFOT, and teaches (or re-teaches for prior service) marching, drill, customs and courtesies. TFOT is ~8 weeks and I'm still figuring out what it teaches (though it general its more scholastic or mental and less physical). We have 257 Cadets, 16 flights, 4 squadrons, or 1 wing. They said ~5% of the class drops out before graduation.

Before I arrived here I thought I’d be able to post an entry once every couple of days. After a week or less, I updated my belief that I’d be able to write an entry only every Saturday night or Sunday. Now almost 2 weeks in, I have no idea when I’ll be able to write entries. Everyone here had thought that Sundays would be our own; a free schedule (Saturday evening as well), but after spending 2 very busy Sundays here, and knowledge that this weekend will very likely not be any different, I will not guess when I’ll write new posts. These days, we’re up at 0430, have various tasks until 0550 or so (occasionally PT); sometimes the tasks are short and more sleep is possible, but not often. We march to breakfast, which would take 2-3 minutes, but marching is tremendously inefficient so it takes 10 or more. I’m thinking it’s training us to be patient, never complain, and/or lose our individuality. Breakfast goes from 0600 to 0700 for the whole wing (the whole school of us 250 cadets), We are allocated 10 minutes to eat, which is apparently just enough for me personally (11-12 on a slow day). After breakfast we have class until 12. I’m in a flight with 16 people and unless we are have a whole-class lecture, it’s the 16 of us in a modest sized classroom. Lectures vary from Warfare that cites Carl Von Clausewitz all the time to sexual assault prevention to being a good follower to how to organize our clothing and things in our dorm rooms. Lunch from 1200 to 1300. More lectures from 1300 to 1700, then dinner from 1700 to 1800. It seems like I usually get back to the dorm between 1830 and 1700. Often there some task for us after dinner too, but this isn't always so. Lights out is at 2300 but I aim to get to sleep around 2045, seldom happens with seemingly innumerable meetings and accountability (roll call) around 2100. All in all, I have about 3 hours of “free time,” but that amount of time or more is needed just for readings. Every so often, I find myself looking around and asking, “what am I doing here?” It still blows my

Also for reference, my address is

Cadet [First Name] [Last Name]
24 TRS, Class 17-04, Flight 2-11
550 E Maxwell Blvd Box 9000
Maxwell AFB, AL 36112-9000

Early impressions

OK! Started!

Day 0 - meet a bunch of prior service at 1400 (subtract 12 from the first two digits, add "pm") near check-in. Lots of laughter and moaning about how frustrating or boring the next 9 weeks will be. Head over to check in. In a group or individually, we got yelled at intermittently at for about half an hour. Then they ask for some documents, which in a classic move, I had forgotten in my car. After returning, I passed by an earlier seen Sergeant who decides this time to ask if I had driven there in my own car. Answering yes, he tells me to drive two other cadets to the barber and get a cut there myself. Fast forward, fresh cut, and not many hours of day light left. Our watches are instructed to be removed and stowed away, later I get questioned on a duration of time that's elapsed. After estimating the minutes I get reamed for inherent inaccuracy by someone that, a day or two later, I discover is a Lieutenant Colonel and the most scathing officer on base. Good move USAF. Dinner rolls around, MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) on the concrete courtyard with everyone else in silence. Rather shaken up, I find 10,000 year old pork sausage in cream sauce (or almost anything else) unapatizing. More yelling, then a meeting I think, and I meet my two roommates (prior enlisted guys going to be CSOs) and off to bed.

Day 1 - up at 0430, breakfast in the dark. Urine/drug test, blood test, medical record submission, and a couple lectures. Later, basic drill movements, lots of yelling and maybe some more things I don't remember. More drill after dinner then a dorm/class meeting: room inspections tomorrow, everything you have has to be put somewhere very precise.

Day 2 - lighting and thunder all morning. Damp breakfast in the dining facility. Some rooms were inspected after, but I don't think many (definitely not mine). The rain starts clearing, I go shopping and buy the rest of my OTS (Officer Training School) supplies at the BX (Base eXchange). Lots of yelling right before lunch, then intermediate drill maneuvers after. Probably got a bit burned (despite it being January and wearing sunscreen... Damn ginger-ness!). Dinner, and now I'm writing the last chunk of this!

I never know what's going to happen, nor when (still not allowed watches), that's a weird feeling. Also, my two prior enlisted roommates enjoy complaining much more than I anticipated.

Love you all,

On the way to into the blue

First post! New beginnings! Not sure which side of halfway to Montgomery I'm on, but it's somewhere close. Just finished dinner at Rosa's Café in Odessa, TX. Going to get another few hours on the road (I-20 at this point) this evening before calling it quits, now with battery life that isn't threatening to end anytime soon. When I get Wi-Fi I'll upload a few pictures to here: www.flickr.com/dcpetit. Much more exciting posts in the days to come, stay tuned.