I just need to get through _____ so that I can do ____. I am starting to feel a growing distaste for this phrase. It is depressing. It leaves no room for satisfaction. No rose smelling. No day-to-day enjoyment.
I said it in high school. Only wanting to get through it so I could go to college. And then I made it college... Now I catch myself just wanting college to pass so I can get onto my career.
Where does it stop? Do I just start enjoying my career? I have had a lifetime of "just get through it" attitude. If I don't purposefully start to change my attitude I could end up at the end of my life saying, "well I got through it". How terrible that would be.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Finally an updat from this summer
Many people have asked me about my summer. Usually if I decide to answer this question it takes me a long time to tell the stories of the last few months. So I have decided to give an update on the happenings of my life, specifically of the month I spent at Joint Base Lewis-McCord.
The back story: I had to go there this summer. It was only a choice because I chose to do Army ROTC in order to fulfill a dream of serving in the Army and to pay for college.
So I showed up at Fort Lewis and was immediately thrown into a platoon of random kids from all over the US. We had people from NYC, Seattle, Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin. Everywhere. The first few days were in-processing and paper work, and paper work, and paper work. Did I mention paper work? That pretty much fills up the first 4 days of camp. Then day 5 we took the APFT(Army Physical Fitness Test). I scored a 261, which is above average. I ran a 12:58 two mile. My fastest ever. All of this was taking place in Garrison, so we got to stay in lovely barracks from the Korean War era.
Shortly after we moved to the AA(assembly area), which was basically a big area with a bunch of tents and cots. We did several days of training from this area. Some of the main events included LRC(leader reaction course), US weapons training, and an all day culture training. The LRC is a lot of fun. You are put into squads, which is about 12 people, and have to complete missions on obstacle courses. US weapons was awesome. We shot the M203, the AT-4, M249, the M240B, threw grenades, crawled in and out of a Bradley, a HMMWV, and saw a Paladin.
From there we completed day and night land navigation. Basically they give you coordinates, a map, and a compass and tell you to walk around the woods and find little signs. Not much else to say about that except I did very well. No surprise there.
From there we moved to the TTB(tactical training base) which was set up a lot like a Forward Operating Base. It included gates and towers and the whole bit. We were there for a whole week, conducting training. Every morning of that week the wake up was 0330. For four days we conducted STX training. Squad Tactics Exercises are missions that a squad leader has to plan and conduct. Every day 6 people were evaluated at a squad leader position. Some of the missions given included ambushes, attacks, and recons. 2 days we did patrolling. This combined two squads together and added more leadership and longer missions.
That was the gist of my summer. I am purposely leaving out some stuff, because it was not important to my evaluation and this post is too long already. So here are some pictures I googled to let you know some stuff I saw or used or shot.
M203 Grenade Launcher
M240B
M249
Bradley
AT-4
Stryker
TTB West(I stayed here)
The back story: I had to go there this summer. It was only a choice because I chose to do Army ROTC in order to fulfill a dream of serving in the Army and to pay for college.
So I showed up at Fort Lewis and was immediately thrown into a platoon of random kids from all over the US. We had people from NYC, Seattle, Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin. Everywhere. The first few days were in-processing and paper work, and paper work, and paper work. Did I mention paper work? That pretty much fills up the first 4 days of camp. Then day 5 we took the APFT(Army Physical Fitness Test). I scored a 261, which is above average. I ran a 12:58 two mile. My fastest ever. All of this was taking place in Garrison, so we got to stay in lovely barracks from the Korean War era.
Shortly after we moved to the AA(assembly area), which was basically a big area with a bunch of tents and cots. We did several days of training from this area. Some of the main events included LRC(leader reaction course), US weapons training, and an all day culture training. The LRC is a lot of fun. You are put into squads, which is about 12 people, and have to complete missions on obstacle courses. US weapons was awesome. We shot the M203, the AT-4, M249, the M240B, threw grenades, crawled in and out of a Bradley, a HMMWV, and saw a Paladin.
From there we completed day and night land navigation. Basically they give you coordinates, a map, and a compass and tell you to walk around the woods and find little signs. Not much else to say about that except I did very well. No surprise there.
From there we moved to the TTB(tactical training base) which was set up a lot like a Forward Operating Base. It included gates and towers and the whole bit. We were there for a whole week, conducting training. Every morning of that week the wake up was 0330. For four days we conducted STX training. Squad Tactics Exercises are missions that a squad leader has to plan and conduct. Every day 6 people were evaluated at a squad leader position. Some of the missions given included ambushes, attacks, and recons. 2 days we did patrolling. This combined two squads together and added more leadership and longer missions.
That was the gist of my summer. I am purposely leaving out some stuff, because it was not important to my evaluation and this post is too long already. So here are some pictures I googled to let you know some stuff I saw or used or shot.
M203 Grenade LauncherM240B M249 Bradley AT-4Stryker TTB West(I stayed here)
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