Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Concert follow-up

So the concert was amazing! Definitely one of the best I've ever been to. I missed Easton Corbin because we got there a little late, but I heard Sara Evans, Darius Rucker, Jason Aldean, and Brad Paisley! If I ever get the chance to go to any of their concerts again I'll jump on the opportunity. I brought my new camera along and got some cool pictures too. This first picture is of Sara Evans during her concert. It takes some great low-light photos and that was great since a lot of the concert was at sunset and after it was dark. The picture at the end of my post is of from Jason Aldean's show. After the show we headed up to New Hampshire to stay with some friends who graduated from the academy this past year. There's four of them that live in an amazing house in the woods. If that's what I have to look forward to as an Ensign then I'm pretty stoked. Hopefully we'll have something like that (whoever I get stationed with) down at flight school!
All in all it was a great wee
kend trip, and a
great way to start off the school year (which looks to be another tough semester).













-Storm

Friday, August 20, 2010

Country Music Fest!

Tomorrow I'm going to the Country Music Fest in Massachusetts and I must admit, I am completely stoked about this! Brad Paisley, Jason Aldean, Easton Corbin, Sarah Evans, Darius Rucker, and more will all be playing there. They don't always get so many big names together like that, plus I've never heard any of them in concert before. I'm going with a lot of friends too, probably close to 20 of my friends are going to be there, and many of us will be all be seated together.

In other news, I bought a camera a couple weeks ago and finally got it this week. It is a Sony NEX-5 camera, one of the new hybrid digital cameras that takes near-DSLR quality pictures but is half the size of a DSLR. I've been playing with it quite a bit and I really enjoy it. Many people don't realize that I actually love photography, until this past week all I've ever shot with was a point-and-shoot cannon, which, although it did it's job superbly for the past 5 years, doesn't take the quality pictures necessary to do some real photography. I'm looking forward to using this camera a lot in the future (one of my friends is getting engaged next semester, it'll be awesome to record that whole thing in HD and then take some awesome pics later!).

Also, school starts next Monday. I'm only taking 17.5 hours this semester (as compared with the usual 20 or more), but some of the classes will definitely be challenging. Thankfully, last semester I found a study buddy in my major that I do a lot of homework with. Together, we were able to solve pretty much all of the homework problems for the entire semester. Some classes, Dynamics in particular, often had problems that most people couldn't get the right answer to. We normally figured them out, and if we couldn't we would collaborate with some other super-smart people in our major and eventually figured them all out. This semester should be pretty fun, or, at least I'll learn a lot.

I'll let you know how the music fest goes!
-Storm

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Finally done.

Yesterday marked the last day of swab summer for the incoming class of 2014, and they are now members of the respected corps of cadets, although they are not officially cadets until monday when they get their shoulder boards. I could probably fill 50 pages full with stories from being a cadre in their "boot camp" experience, but I won't at this time. Perhaps I'll put up stories from time to time. What I will say now, however, is that I learned much more going through it as a cadre than I did as a swab. Sure, going through it initially and being indoctrinated into the military is important, key, in fact, to surviving the military. But being on the other side was something completely different. It is up to us to mold these people into a motivated, high performing, teamwork-oriented, flawless group.

My classmates took this group of 35 kids fresh out of high school who didn't know each other at all and turned them into basically trained coast guard men and women in just over 6 weeks (with a week on a ship away from us). Finding the perfect balance of punishment and motivation each day is harder than I had ever imagined. If they messed up they had to be held accountable. And at the beginning of the summer we didn't worry about motivating them at all. That was the breaking down phase. But these last two weeks required us to mold them into a motivated, dedicated team. And if all we did was beat them to the ground they would never perform. In fact, I found that the tone we set when we woke them up had the largest effect on how they would perform for the rest of the day. One of my classmates, a great guy, has a tendency to be a hard ass in the morning, always yelling at them early in the morning when we do the morning cals, etc. So I tried to be the one to wake them up. I'd blast some rock at 0530, and as soon as they got up and counted off I'd say "4 minutes, head and water break, go". Nobody wants to do a lot of talking early in the morning, and even less people want to hear a lot of talking that early. As soon as they'd get back it would always be something like "Who's psyched for cals?! hoorah sir! It's going to be on the parade field, I want you all to fly out there like a bunch of badasses and freakin shake the earth with your pushups!! OOORAH!!! FOXTROT HUUUUUH!!" The pace we set in the morning normally set the tone for the rest of the day.

I learned lessons such as these almost every day about all sorts of things. Yesterday was sea trials. When I went through swab summer it was the worst day of my life. Not even kidding. To this day it was the worst day I've ever had. Going through it as a cadre it was still extremely hard, almost as hard as going through as a swab. We definitely make it a memorable culminating event for the swabs, they'll never forget yesterday. Ever. We ran from 0330 in the morning until around 1830, waking them up to the sound of an air raid siren (and me being in a rain suit with gas mask already in one of their rooms and yelling at them to push deck because their ship was sinking - yeah, it didn't make sense but they were so scared it didn't matter). It was so intense that morning that some compared it to reporting-in day, which as I'm sure you've all seen on TV or something, is super intense. We were yelling at them for everything, and if any one of them messed up on anything we made them push deck or do squats or something physical. We literally were killing them physically ALL DAY. Obviously there were times when they weren't doing physical things, but the majority of the day was spent doing something physical. Thankfully, we were able to instill a sense of pride and accomplishment by the end of the day that overruled the pain from the day and in some convoluted way, made everything we did that day worth it.

At one particular point, we had just finished making them run to an island, row huge inflatable rafts back to the Academy, carry them around the track, and form back up into a company. However, we heard one of the swabs tell another swab to "Shut the fuck up" while they were coming up with a plan on how to get everyone in the rafts and rowing. So for the next hour while we were taking them in twos to test them on sailing, we beat everything out of the swabs. It was literally and hour of intensive training in the dirt. If it hadn't have been for the fact that they had lunch right after that then I am positive they would have passed out on their run to the next event. Thankfully they got the message. You just don't talk to your classmates or teammates that way.

Like I said, I have so many stories and lessons that I could spend forever writing them. Perhaps I will, but for now that is all.

P.S. I've spent most of the day sleeping today!

-Storm