Ok, so my last blog entry made it sound like I hate life. This is not really the case, it was just a long day/night before and I needed to vent. Really, life is pretty good right now.
School is going much much better than last year. I just switched teachers in math and can't understand a single thing the new guy is talking about so that grade may take a dive here before too long but other than that I have decent grades without too much stressing over them.
My plebe is good- though fairly high maintenance. Rare are the days that I don't spend at least an hour in her room for this, that or the other. She seems to perpetually be in trouble but if I tell her to do something she does it. On the bright side, the more she gets in trouble the more opportunity I have to help her and impress the chain of command (CoC). Unfortunately, basketball practices have officially started (the coaches couldn't be there before) so trying to schedule our time together is more difficult because she has no time.
While the APFT was a smoker, I did still pass it and will not have to be up running at 0530 every morning. However, it did serve as a wake-up call that I will not be able to sit on my butt much longer. I may still be young, but my body isn't as young as it once was and if I am going to keep up with the demands of this life something has to be done so hopefully exercise will be a bigger part of my life from now on.
I have a new calling at church (*cough-SHEENA-cough*)- branch missionary. There's a lot of exciting things going on in that area for such a strange situation. The missionaries aren't allowed in the barracks, nobody is unless they live/work in them, so there is really no way for them to find investigators which puts the burden on us as members to help the investigators find the missionaries. Last weekend we had a baptism for a new plebe who found the church by going to "Mormon" chapel time during beast. The service was beautiful, and she brought a friend who then came to church the next day. We'll see if she shows up tomorrow. The other branch missionary is a return missionary so I am really looking forward to learning from him and using this to help prepare for my mission.
That pretty much covers all aspects of my life right now. As you can see, I don't really have any room to complain. I have a roof over my head, even if the water is kinda cold sometimes, and I don't have to pay a penny for it. Food is never an issue, the mess hall is free for me. I'm getting a great education and getting paid to do all of this! So yeah, I'd say life right now is pretty great, despite the long days once in a while.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
TGIF
Today was a looooong day, thank heaven its almost the weekend. It all started last night when I went to the library to work with my lab group on a physics lab write-up that was due today. We got there and realized that USMA's internal mainframe was down. Since everything here revolves around the internal websites, including many classes, we couldn't do it! Sweet, its due tomorrow, we haven't started it yet and now we can't even get to what we need to do it...at least I can get some face time with my plebe and try to figure out some of this math stuff I don't get.
Went down to do FCDT(fourth class development time) with my plebe. My squad leader has mandated that we do at least 2 FCDTs a week, one my choice one her choice. Last week she had asked me if I knew how to make a particular style of bracelet out of 550 cord (parachute cord). Me?! Know how to make a bracelet?! Are you serious? But it was pretty simple so I figured it out and decided that we could do that for FCDT. Since her roommate's team leader hadn't done anything with her yet this week she joined us and in about 15-20 minutes we were almost done with the project, everything was going as planned- shoulda known, that can't happen here. My plebe's roommate's team leader showed up and started talking, no big right? WRONG! 2 1/2 hours into this project TAPS plays and I am forced to scrap the whole thing and retreat to my room.
Feeling relieved to be out of there and somewhat tired I shower quickly and try to rack out. Unfortunately, shortly after I fell asleep my roommates decided that 12:30 at night is a good time to watch a movie. Already I could tell that today was going to be a long day.
I had the first two class hours off this morning, an opportunity that usually means catching up on the sleep I didn't get the night before but this time it means going to the library and working frantically on a lab write-up. Since both of my partners are in class, I basically ended up writing the whole thing on my own, though one of them did get the chance to help a little. After writing the first 3 of the 4 sections I had to quit for class, physics no less. Upon walking into the room I notice the desks are in an odd arrangement and there is a test on each one. CRAP! I completely spaced the test! 30 stressful minutes later the testing time ends and we all get up to go see the answers next door. . .pretty sure I got somewhere between 67% and 70%- no bueno.
Spanish and lunch, then back to the library to finish this stupid lab. An hour-ish later it was finished and I headed back to the room to study for my last class of the day. After skimming the texts I took a 20 minute nap and headed to class. Luckily, the class was fun and relieved some stress.
Not so luckily, my company had an APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test) this afternoon. For those who don't know, I'm still just as lazy as I was before coming here. In fact, there are a few names for people like me, names like "slug" and "4-mile-a-year guy" ('cause i only run 4 miles a year, 2 two mile APFTs). Needless to say, these tests cause a little bit of anxiety for me since I've never been a good runner. I was one push-up shy of maxing that part, a few sit-ups short on that part- so far my score looks good. Then the dreaded 2-mile run. . .
2 miles isn't bad for people who run once in a while. In fact, a decent time for this distance is about 13 minutes, 12 is good and I know a few people who do it in about 9. 15 minutes of pain later I cross the finish line, ignore the person trying to hand me my time and run over to the railroad tracts where I proceed to lose everything I had in my stomach in front of everyone (that long after eating it wasn't much).
Well, at least I am now done with all the bad stuff for the day. One more mandatory meal and I the day is officially over! I waited patiently for a shower to open up and, courtesy of the wonderful West Point plumbing and lazy civilians who won't fix anything, took the coldest shower of my life. By a couple minutes in my entire body was numb, but just didn't care at this point so I stayed and waited until the plebes started calling minutes before getting out and getting ready for dinner. Unfortunately, the plebe that was supposed to be calling minutes was all jacked up and didn't show up until the final minute so I had 2 minutes to get out of the shower, dry off, get dressed and make it to formation.
Now the day is officially over and I am about to crash. Now if I could just get my roommates to quit harassing me about making bracelets...
Went down to do FCDT(fourth class development time) with my plebe. My squad leader has mandated that we do at least 2 FCDTs a week, one my choice one her choice. Last week she had asked me if I knew how to make a particular style of bracelet out of 550 cord (parachute cord). Me?! Know how to make a bracelet?! Are you serious? But it was pretty simple so I figured it out and decided that we could do that for FCDT. Since her roommate's team leader hadn't done anything with her yet this week she joined us and in about 15-20 minutes we were almost done with the project, everything was going as planned- shoulda known, that can't happen here. My plebe's roommate's team leader showed up and started talking, no big right? WRONG! 2 1/2 hours into this project TAPS plays and I am forced to scrap the whole thing and retreat to my room.
Feeling relieved to be out of there and somewhat tired I shower quickly and try to rack out. Unfortunately, shortly after I fell asleep my roommates decided that 12:30 at night is a good time to watch a movie. Already I could tell that today was going to be a long day.
I had the first two class hours off this morning, an opportunity that usually means catching up on the sleep I didn't get the night before but this time it means going to the library and working frantically on a lab write-up. Since both of my partners are in class, I basically ended up writing the whole thing on my own, though one of them did get the chance to help a little. After writing the first 3 of the 4 sections I had to quit for class, physics no less. Upon walking into the room I notice the desks are in an odd arrangement and there is a test on each one. CRAP! I completely spaced the test! 30 stressful minutes later the testing time ends and we all get up to go see the answers next door. . .pretty sure I got somewhere between 67% and 70%- no bueno.
Spanish and lunch, then back to the library to finish this stupid lab. An hour-ish later it was finished and I headed back to the room to study for my last class of the day. After skimming the texts I took a 20 minute nap and headed to class. Luckily, the class was fun and relieved some stress.
Not so luckily, my company had an APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test) this afternoon. For those who don't know, I'm still just as lazy as I was before coming here. In fact, there are a few names for people like me, names like "slug" and "4-mile-a-year guy" ('cause i only run 4 miles a year, 2 two mile APFTs). Needless to say, these tests cause a little bit of anxiety for me since I've never been a good runner. I was one push-up shy of maxing that part, a few sit-ups short on that part- so far my score looks good. Then the dreaded 2-mile run. . .
2 miles isn't bad for people who run once in a while. In fact, a decent time for this distance is about 13 minutes, 12 is good and I know a few people who do it in about 9. 15 minutes of pain later I cross the finish line, ignore the person trying to hand me my time and run over to the railroad tracts where I proceed to lose everything I had in my stomach in front of everyone (that long after eating it wasn't much).
Well, at least I am now done with all the bad stuff for the day. One more mandatory meal and I the day is officially over! I waited patiently for a shower to open up and, courtesy of the wonderful West Point plumbing and lazy civilians who won't fix anything, took the coldest shower of my life. By a couple minutes in my entire body was numb, but just didn't care at this point so I stayed and waited until the plebes started calling minutes before getting out and getting ready for dinner. Unfortunately, the plebe that was supposed to be calling minutes was all jacked up and didn't show up until the final minute so I had 2 minutes to get out of the shower, dry off, get dressed and make it to formation.
Now the day is officially over and I am about to crash. Now if I could just get my roommates to quit harassing me about making bracelets...
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Math Project
This semester the math and physics departments decided to work together to develop a project. Though the project wasn't too terribly hard (probably took less than 20 man-hours) and wasn't designed to be a pain, it almost killed me and one of my partners (the other one not so much).
We were given several weeks to do this stupid thing but, being the typical "I'm too busy" cadets we didn't start on it until a couple days before the due date. Not that big of a deal right? Divide the project into its separate parts and everyone can pitch in to finish it quickly. At least that was the plan. One person's computer had died so he automatically got stuck with the write-up, the only part he could do on his temporary computer. The easier part of the math went to the other partner and I got what was left. After many hours of running the equations, realizing an error and re-running the equations with the problem fixed my part of the math was finally complete and I was done by about 10 the night before it was due.
At 12 I got a call from the person who was doing the write-up telling me that the third member of our group, the one who got the easy math, had done it completely wrong. "Could you try to figure it out really fast?" Yeah, I could have, 2 hours ago when I was still awake! "No problem, I'll send you everything when I'm done with it." Thankfully it really was much easier and only took until about 2 to finally get it all done and sent to where it needed to go. That third guy effectively got away with not contributing ANYTHING to the project- worthless punk.
Completely unrelated to this that third individual had some disciplinary actions brought against him (breaking the honor code) and he gets to repeat yuk year and spend an extra year in this place! I think he should be getting kicked out, but still, life has a funny way of providing justice sometimes.
We were given several weeks to do this stupid thing but, being the typical "I'm too busy" cadets we didn't start on it until a couple days before the due date. Not that big of a deal right? Divide the project into its separate parts and everyone can pitch in to finish it quickly. At least that was the plan. One person's computer had died so he automatically got stuck with the write-up, the only part he could do on his temporary computer. The easier part of the math went to the other partner and I got what was left. After many hours of running the equations, realizing an error and re-running the equations with the problem fixed my part of the math was finally complete and I was done by about 10 the night before it was due.
At 12 I got a call from the person who was doing the write-up telling me that the third member of our group, the one who got the easy math, had done it completely wrong. "Could you try to figure it out really fast?" Yeah, I could have, 2 hours ago when I was still awake! "No problem, I'll send you everything when I'm done with it." Thankfully it really was much easier and only took until about 2 to finally get it all done and sent to where it needed to go. That third guy effectively got away with not contributing ANYTHING to the project- worthless punk.
Completely unrelated to this that third individual had some disciplinary actions brought against him (breaking the honor code) and he gets to repeat yuk year and spend an extra year in this place! I think he should be getting kicked out, but still, life has a funny way of providing justice sometimes.
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