A Day At COT

Well.

It’s been a while! Blog posting takes lots of time and I have not had a lot of time until tonight!

If you are my facebook friend you may have seen lots of pictures of all the craziness that’s been going on.  It’s now training day 15 and I haven’t blogged since day 0. So a lot has happened!

We had 3 written exams. One was all questions from the OTSMAN. One was 2 weeks later of questions from our many, many hours of lecture on the Air Force, leadership, teambuilding, professionalism, etc. and then the next one was a week later from more lecture.

The first 2 weeks of class were insane. Here’s a typical day:

0430 – official wake up time. There may or may not be someone in the hallway screaming at you to wake up. We’re officially not allowed to wake up before that time but I will leave it to your imagination whether people actually got up before or not.

0435 – line up outside your door, fully dressed (Either in PT gear or ABUs) and ready to go (so you might imagine that people would want to give themselves more than 5 minutes)

0440 – leave the dorms, line up outside, and march to the drill pad to learn how to march or to do PT (usually it’s PT. Drill was only the first couple of days)

0500 – start PT/Drill

0600: finish PT/drill, kill time marching while we wait for the flights before us to go to the dfac for breakfast

0635: march over to the Dfac, the flight leader has to report in “Sir/Ma’am, November Flight reports with a dining priority of 0635. We arrived at 0635”. If we were on time, we go in. If we’re late, technically they can send us away with MREs, but I’ve never seen it happen. Usually there’s enough of a backup to get in the dfac that even if you were 10 minutes late you could still enter the building with the rest of the people with the same dining priority as you.

0700: get back to the dorm to shower and change

0745: line up outside our rooms with our flight to go to class

0800-1300 – lecture either in the flight room or the auditorium. Struggle to stay awake while taking notes in class, struggle even more to stay awake in the auditorium. If people are falling asleep they’re supposed to get up and go stand in the back. It’s funny to watch the numbers go up as the day goes on.

1305: lunch. We line up outside in 2 columns, then file in one by one. We wait along one wall and two-by-two go up to get a tray. Then we turn and grab plates and salad bar stuff, moving down the line side-stepping and looking  straight ahead. (Hence it took a week to discover a rack of cereal at breakfast, a big rotating display of grapes and yogurt and milk at breakfast, and an assortment of cakes at lunch and dinner) Every time you step, you have to bring your heels back together, feet at 90 degrees. You slide down the line and get to the meal where someone puts way too much of some way too cooked meat or vegetable on your plate (there are always a few different meats and a few different vegetables and starches but there is a high rate of repetition) or you can skip that part and make yourself a sandwich. There’s a metal box that supposedly has corn bread in it but never does, a cookie stand, multiple freezers of ice cream, drink machines, coffee machine, milk machine, and if you were brave enough to look around, there was a soft-serve ice cream machine behind you (there is a lot of ice cream in this place. And the meal costs the same regardless of what you get so….). so then you pay and go eat.

I’m going to write a separate post on dining procedure but eventually (and by that I mean really quickly) the food gets in.

Then we go re-line up outside and once our whole flight is out, we march back over to the academic building.

1400-1800: more lecture. In the flight room or in the auditorium. Some days we have an hour set aside for our Flight Commander to deal with logistical isssues, and/or for our flight members to do the various extra jobs we were assigned (every flight has a logistical officer, finance, academic, photo, administrative, safety, standardization, etc)

1815: dinner. Same deal as lunch, exactly.

1900: get back to the dorm. Think “yey I have 4 hours until lights out to get classwork done” and then realize you need to spend 3 hours doing a million other things – writing reports, filling out paperwork, making lists of this and emailing them to that person, going to a meeting, going outside and practicing drill, etc. until a week goes by and you still haven’t studied a thing.

2300: lights out. Hope that tomorrow I’ll get something done.

Going to USAF COT

As if the med school acronyms weren't enough, I now get to deal with all the military ones. There might even be more military acronyms than med school ones.

So obviously I've been slacking the med school blogging...suffice it to say that I finished first year and I was very happy with my grades and wahoo wahoo finally done.

Anyway.
On Sunday I'll be heading to Montgomery, Alabama, to Maxwell Air Force Base to go through 4 weeks of Commissioned Officer Training.  Did I mention that it's going to be 100000 degrees and 99% humidity like the entire time? This is made worse only by the fact that I will be wearing long pants, combat boots, and a long-sleeved "blouse" ( = camo jacket) the entire time.

COT a lot of classroom stuff, where they teach us about the Air Force, a lot of leadership training, working in teams, problem solving, obstacle courses, sort of stuff, learning how to march and parade, and some PT (physical training).

If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page http://www.afoats.af.mil/OTS/COT-RCOT/admin_items.asp
then you can see what a typical day's schedule looks like.

I'm going to try to blog through the whole thing, but as you can see we are up rather early in the morning and not so early to sleep as to make up for the 4:30 wakeup time. So I'll do my best but no guarantees.

I'm excited to finally start this Air Force journey and finally go and get a clue what on earth I'm doing!
I've already connected with several people who will be in my class, and it looks like it's going to be a fun group!

So right now I have printed out a million copies of all the paperwork an documentation I'll need, bought and had altered (about $200 worth of alterations...that's how short I am!) lots of uniform, obsessively read blogs and official documents about COT and the AF, memorized some random creeds/songs/lists of words, so hopefully I'm as ready as I can be. No matter what I do It'll be a culture-shock experience I'm sure. But I'm ready!

AIR FORCE!

One day I randomly got a phone call from my Air Force recruiter saying they are having another board and am I still interested? I'm like ummmmm yes. I didn't know what that meant, because I was told I had a number, which made me think there was a ranked list and they would just pull people off of it as spots became available. but if that was the case, why would they need a board meeting? So I was just as information-less as before.

Then a couple of weeks later someone I had never heard from and have never since heard from left me a voice mail saying "The Air Force is prepared to offer you a scholarship". So I jumped on that one.

And then it was official! I was offered the HPSP scholarship! :-D

So happiness ensued. I went and signed some papers saying i still have never been arrested, still have not done any illegal drugs, and have not gotten any tattoos or been hospitalized for any deadly disease since last time I signed papers saying such. Then I got fingerprinted...in Applebees...and my stuff was sent off to the FBI so they could do a background check and make sure I haven't done anything bad ever. I haven't.

My recruiter told me that I should think of a cool/interesting place to get commissioned and he'd make it happen. Cool beans. After much thought and idea tossing out from myself and others, I decided to commission at Federal Hall, in Manhattan, where George Washington was inaugurated. It was gonna be cool

Unfortunately due to the hurricane, things got messed up, schedules got flipped around, and the powers that be decided everyone had to get commissioned by the end of the week. So I got a phone call on a Monday and my recruiter goes "Hey, wanna commission by Friday?" and I'm like, "I'm sorry, what?"
So We ended up pushing it back to the following Monday because it was not going to work getting my grandparents there on Friday.

So This past weekend I went to Boston-ish to visit some friends, and then sped back to NY to get to the office (short notice = couldn't finish the necessary official things that needed to be done to get Federal Hall) to commission.

Soooo yesterday, I was sworn in as a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Air Force. Wahoo!
By a Navy officer. ha.
It was funny, because they didn't have any 2Lt bars to pin on me. My recruiter searched far and wide and made lots of phone calls but nobody had anything but 1Lt bars. So I got pinned silver bars instead of the gold "butter bars" as they call them, and we just pretended they were gold. ALSO, funnily, the certificate they printed out for me said 1st Lieutenant as well. Accidentally, again. Apparently someone somewhere thinks I should really be a 1st Lt. I can't say I would mind the upgrade.

And then we had ice cream cake at the office, and then we went out to dinner and stuffed ourselves further.

It's incredibly strange to me what is happening here. I have been in the AF for just over one day. I have literally no idea what I am doing. I don't even know how to salute. It was a highly entertaining little episode when my recruiter saluted me, and then had to teach me how to salute him back...and I'm supposedly "above" him. I outrank people who have been doing their jobs expertly for almost as long as I've been alive, in some cases. And I'm clueless.  It's very weird and despite the higher rank, quite humbling, actually. Like...it really is an honor to lead people who have spent their whole lives serving their country, especially when I compare what they've done to how green I am at this whole thing. I have a lot of respect for people who can give respect to and take orders from a person they know is relatively clueless. It kind of drives me to be better at whatever I'm doing, so that I'm actually coming closer to deserving the position. Probably one of the worst things I could do is get a false sense of superiority.

Except in one scenario.
My little brother is in the Army ROTC. On the occasion that both he and I are in uniform, he is technically supposed to salute me. And say "good morning ma'am" if we walk past each other. I cannot WAIT to pull rank on my brother.

But everyone else I still feel like I should be saluting them rather than vice versa.


So the plan from here is...finish the year of school. This summer I will head down to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, for a month of Commissioned Officer Training. Yep. 4 weeks in Alabama in July. Not looking forward to that.
I did survive in the desert of Africa.
But deserts are dry. Alabama is probably humid.
I'll get over it.
Right now all I am is excited and I can't wait to go get my uniform(s) and I am wasting(?) a lot of time on the internet trying to learn all the random tidbits I can via blogs and what not, about COT and the air Force and HPSP.

Brought to you by the letter P

Ahem.

It SEEMS TO ME

that having an exam within the next 3 days is the best way to get me to write a blog post. I am so not in love with Neuro night now. Pathways, pathways, pathways. Starts here, goes to there, inhibits there, which inhibits there, so inhibiting the inhibition leads to activation there, and then it travels here, crosses over there, then crosses back over, over there...stupid brain. Too smart for its own good. LITERALLY.  Anyway.

P is for procrastination.
This is seriously the worst bout of studying I've ever done in my life. I don't feel ANY stress to study. Worse than last time. But we have fewer lectures, so I'm less behind  starting out than I was before, so maybe that's why.

I'm seriously beginning to wonder if my brain somehow knows exactly how long it needs to study given the time I have and the information it needs to cram in...and then is exactly as productive as it needs to be to achieve that?

Because I ALWAYS hit a wall the night before a test. This is just earlier than usual. But it's sort of like the night before a test since tomorrow is mothers' day and I'll be spending the day NOT studying, with my mother and grandmothers. Who knows.


P is for Press handstand.
"What on earth is a press handstand?", you might ask. An excellent question. I will show you a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEy5-dQVUk0

There you go.
It's REALLY DIFFICULT to do a press handstand. Like...REALLY. But I have AAAAAALWAYS wanted to be able to do one. Since...forever. And so I decided I am going to. I've been on this kick a few times before but it's never lasted for more than a couple of days. So I am going to set GOALS this time so maybe I'll actually stick to it. There's a bunch of different drills you can do to strengthen the various muscle groups needed at different points in the handstand so I'm gonna do those a million times a day until I can get myself up into that crazy handstand. So I know my goal is really unrealistic, but I don't really operate well unless I'm under some pressure, so I'm aiming for being able to do it by June 18 when my roommate goes back to California, so I can show her before she goes. As like, a going away present or something. :-P That's about a month, and as long as that sounds....the press handstand is really hard. especially when you start from sitting. So we shall see. ;-)

Oh yes and my HPSP (Air Force) application is IN and I should be hearing back within a couple of weeks. Can't WAIT!!

I know, I know, I'm slacking...

So it's been over a month since I last wrote!

Partly because I have been doing lots of things...but a partly because I don't really feel like the things I am doing make for really exciting stories, especially reading Heidi's Uganda blog and hearing about grasshopper sandwiches, rescuing cows from drowning, sleeping in mosquito net tubes, etc. So my life wouldn't make a great thriller or adventure story, but some pretty cool things have been happening nonetheless.

So what have I been up to??

Highlights/updates

So as I expected, we did a muuuuch better job of keeping people around after the first week this year than we have in the past. Most of the freshmen who we saw several times over the first week and came to XA the first night are still committed to the group, which is awesome. Small groups are going really well.

The second week we had seventeen people show up!!! but that number has settled down to about 8-10 each week. The first couple weeks we spent mostly getting to know each other, and had most people share their testimonies. I've never heard such a great group of them- story after story of amazing things God did in peoples lives and families, of how he pursued after hearts until people found true unconditional love in him. It was encouraging for me to hear, and I was especially thankful that a couple girls who didn't have much of a church background and are interested in seeking God got to hear such awesome personal stories about him.

My group is going through Luke, looking at Jesus' teachings/parables. It's been really great so far, we've had a lot of really good discussions, and I've been impressed with everyone's willingness to open up and share their thoughts...which has been a struggle in small groups at times. We've really been encouraging them to read the section beforehand and come to small group with questions and their own thoughts and things to discuss.

Chi Alpha started doing this thing on Saturdays where we play pickup soccer on one of the fields on campus, as a way for us to hang out with each other, but also meet new people. There's serveral non-XA people who've been playing regularly with us, which is pretty cool.

It was interesting for me because I haven't played soccer basically at all since the Kent Rec team in 3rd and 4th grade...and I missed half the year in 3rd grade because I was recovering from open heart surgery. But I've had more fun than I was expecting to have once I got over the "I don't want to play because I'm not actually good at this" thing...which is something I'm (unfortunately late in my life) starting to learn...I'm a perfectionist and I don't like to do things when people can see me unless I've established some level of mediocrity at it. Sooooo I'm trying to learn to suck it up and put myself out there and try new things and realize that nobody actually cares if you make a fool of yourself, at least you tried and maybe learned something.

This weekend is our Fall Retreat and i'm sooo excited because 1. EMMY is coming to be a nanny for Matt and Tracy's almost-2 year old daughter, so I get to see her little self and 2. I just always love retreats, good things always happen when we set aside a whole weekend to pay close attention to God and what he's doing. There's about 20 students from Cornell going, and about 50 people total, and Jim Bradford, the Assemblies of God general secretary is going to be the speaker. I've heard him before and he's great, so I'm looking forward to it. :)

I STILL haven't heard anything from medical schools...but I don't know when I'm supposed to hear anything from them...so I don't even know if that's fine or bad (as in, i'm missing paperwork or something) So I should probably do something about that...

I was home the other weekend for fall break and went into Manhattan with my parents to talk to an Air Force recruiter. DON'T think I'm crazy! People keep telling me "I can't see you running around with a gun or flying planes" and I say "Well good, because I can't see that either, and that isn't what I'm going to be doing!!'

There is a scholarship program where the Air Force will pay all your tuition, books, small equipment fees, plus a stipend, for medical school. In turn you work in an AF hospital, as a doctor, in whatever specialty you want, for 4 years. At the end of 4 years you can decide if you want to stick with the Air Force or go into the civilian system. Chance of deployment overseas in the first 3 years: no guarantees, but basically zero.

so I am applying to this program, so I can go to med school and be a doctor in the Air Force instead of a doctor in a civilian hospital, not fly planes. :-P

Here's a funny story to end this very long overdue post:

Monday, I was driving through campus to take my giant laptop, which decided to stop working, to Best Buy so they could look at it, when I stopped at a stop sign. I was in a significantly agitated mood since I had just had an agitating conversation with my sister, which resulted in me hanging up on her (anyone surprised?) (it wasn't illegal she was on speakerphone, I had both hands on the wheel the whole time!!) Anyways. so I was at the stop sign, and there was a crosswalk after it, so there was a good amount of road between where I was and where I would need to be to see if there were cars coming. So in my agitation I ...forgot?...to actually pull forward enough to see what was coming at me, and made the right turn. Turns out a TCAT bus was coming my way. (here's a tcat bus:http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/gettingaround/images/tcat.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/gettingaround/buses.cfm&usg=__tpZbBt0RsayAcDgbw_j_rNkcu5Y=&h=157&w=210&sz=38&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=ZTsFWZ3PjGZwyM:&tbnh=107&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtcat%2Bbus%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1014%26bih%3D487%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=149&vpy=98&dur=1142&hovh=125&hovw=168&tx=136&ty=75&ei=8azATP_2MML58AbnhIDlBA&oei=8azATP_2MML58AbnhIDlBA&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0

We made contact.

The Bumper ended up on the sidewalk

The driver's side headlight was smashed

The driver was perfectly fine, not a bump, not a scratch, not a whiplash

The entire driver's side of the car was perfectly fine

The car was even drivable!...though it made funny rattling noises because the hood wasn't sitting well on the frame.

So the car is at the doctor's for now and I'm just peachy. :-D

Lesson learned? Emmy put it well in her facebook status: "Don't yell at me, you'll hit a bus"

Thanks, sister.

oh! and a reminder...if you want to comment, just "sign in" anonymously so you don't have to make a google account, just remember to sign your name so I know who you are. :-D

Med School

So, I realized that I haven't mentioned this yet so I will.

I"m looking into the Military's Health Professionals Scholarship Program- where the Army or navy or Air Force pays for your medical school, as well as books, housing, plus a stipend, and in return you do your residency at a military hospital and then work for them for as many years as they paid for you.

It sounds wonderful- the idea of not having to worry about tuition or loans or debt, plus military benefits are wonderful...I just am apprehensive about making a decision to commit to 5 years of service, in 10 years. I don't know what my life is going to be like then, and I don't have enough information about exactly how the paying back time works yet to know for sure if that's what I want to do, or if ther are difference between the branches. So I'm playing phone tag with a Navy recruiter at the moment, hopefully we'll be able to talk soon so I can ask her my list of questions and make some sort of decision. Then hopefully she'll know about the differences between the branches so I don't have to re-go through this whole thing where someone calls me, asks me lots of random questions about myself, such as if I have any unpaid parking tickets, and then gives me another number to call, so i call and they ask me more of the same questions, and says they will send my info along. great. so then i get an email with an attached questionairre, to which i reply, then call the person a couple weeks later, who says he's not the medical person, but here is the medical recruiter. FINALLY! so it's been a bit of a process but hopefully this will be the last step before I actually get to know things. :)

My understanding is that you get all your stuff paid for, then you begin residency at a military hospital. Your residency pays back the years that you were in medical school, and when you finish your residency, you work at a military hospital as an attending, and pay back the years you got paid during your residency. I think. And during med school there is some sort of training you're supposed to do during the summer, but I have no idea what that consists of.

advantages: no $200,000 debt when I graduate

lots of benefits

guaranteed job?

disadvantages:

the U.S. Govt owns you for x amount of years

being deployed? ( i dont even know what the liklihood of this is)

limited specialties?

limited patient base -->limited experience? ( i dont know if this is the case)

limited number of hospitals and therefore locations where I could work

oh yeah, and the fact that i'd be doing thins until i was in my late 30s...i may have a family by then, do i want to make a decision that will affect my family like that now, when i'm 21? it's a big step.

so here are my questions:

what is the pre-residency military training?

what does it consist of? (PT, classroom time, etc?)

which hospitals could i work at?

do they only treat military personell and their families?

do you do student clerkships at your school's hospital?

residency:

chances of getting wanted specialty?

Chances of getting a residency in a military vs a civilian hospital?

what's the call schedule? Or does that depend on the specialty/hospital

is there a residency (specialty) they prefer you do?

What effect does doing a fellowship have on give back time? Does it count as giving back or accruing more time debt?

give back
is there a reserve, or just active duty?

what is the difference, in practice?

What are the major differences between working with the Army, Navy, and Air Force?

so there you have it.