Well into Week 4

Sorry about the long silence–they’ve been keeping us busy here at Squadron Officer School. Lots of briefings, papers, and various group problem-solving challenges which range the gamut from indoor logic puzzles (I tend to do well with these) to outdoor obstacle-course type things (I’m not as good at these, since often they require a LOT of upper-body strength that, even as a relatively strong woman, I just don’t have in a way that can compete with one of the guys).

I’ve found a place in the group and I even speak up, especially in planning sessions when it seems like there’s an obvious answer and no one else wants to take the lead. I really enjoy the people I’m spending all this time with; I can tell already that I’ll probably have a sad couple weeks after we graduate and we all head our separate ways. At least at this point I’m used to it… every time you do military education it’s like this–you get super-close to certain friends, to the point of almost being emotionally dependent on them, and then it all just kind of goes away when the class ends. You write a few times and keep up with each other to some extent, but it all sort of fades away.

Actually, it’s quite a bit like it is when you make friends while you’re on deployment… they’re everything to you while you’re there, but when it’s over, it’s not something that you can resurrect in anything like the same form again. You have your own lives to return to; the things that keep you busy and occupied, the normal life things.

Hmmm. Hey, as a side note: my last paper came back and he mentioned that it was wordy! Wordy! Me?!? And that was while I was expressing myself with much greater than usual restraint…

Oh well. On I go to continue studying for a 50-question multiple choice test that we’re taking tomorrow morning… I never study this much for tests, and certainly not multiple-choice tests, but everyone else has me spun up about it so now I feel like I have to!

Week 3, plugging away steadily…

Well, I gave in and moved to base for the week–I’d intended to stubbornly stay at home for the entire time that I was enrolled in school on base, but the workload got to be too much. Actually, that’s not entirely true–it’s part of it, but really, I didn’t want to be left out of what was happening with my insta-friends in my flight for this class. Yes, I know it’s all very artificial, and the friendships, while quite intense at the time, have a way of dissipating rapidly, but it’s so nice to feel like I have friends that I want to spend time with that I’m taking full advantage of it for the moment.

Though I’ll admit–I could do with some down time just to get my feet back under me again. However, with only 2 1/2 weeks to go, I think I can just stick it out until the end, then take a couple weeks of leave so that I can collapse, alone in front of the TV, and regain my equilibrium!

I’ve spent today giving a briefing about what an analyst does in the Air Force: I was quite proud of myself for thinking to add an “attention step” that used this video:

It’s such a good thing for us math nerds of the world that CBS decided to play that show–there’s something in pop culture that you can play to show people what it is that you do when you’re providing a mathematical methodology for solving a problem.

I passed the briefing! Actually, everyone in my flight did, though we had a close call or two… My feedback was pretty good, though mostly it was along the lines of “Wow, your job sounds really boring–but because you smiled so much when you told us about it, it didn’t seem quite so bad!” Sigh. The legacy of a math teacher… where you have to attempt to charm your students into wanting to learn their trigonometry… What’s funny is that, when I’m actually DOING my job, it’s not boring at all; instead, it’s rather exciting.

This evening, I worked on mid-term feedback for every member in the flight, and on a paper that is due tomorrow (no time like the present to procrastinate, right?). Anyway, the feedback was fun to do. Part of it was numerical, and it’s pretty difficult to subjectively determine how well you think everyone did in the respective areas of leadership. However, there was also a field for written comments, and I sort of went to town here. I made sure that I said something positive about everyone, but also put in a carefully worded, “It might help if you did this” kind of thing, too. Since I always feel good when I’ve gotten well-thought-out feedback from my peers, that shows they’ve been watching me and paying attention to what they see, I thought I’d try to do that on the front end. Probably no one will appreciate the essay that I wrote for them, but oh well… it felt like the right thing to do. (And again it referenced teacherly skills–in this respect, putting together report cards and the comments that have to accompany them.)

My paper, the item that took a LOT of time both last night and tonight, was all about Lebanon and how the US is involved there. Being a Professional Military Education course, the writing isn’t really about good writing, per se, but more about how well you can follow all the little nitpicky rules about writing that they come up with. It’s harder to pull the wool over their eyes with a blindingly well-written paper in this circumstance, but still doable, as I’ve discovered before. I do my best to follow the rules, but when school rules counteract proper grammar as well as common sense, I usually opt in favor of the latter. (But heck, it gives them something to dock me points on!) I’m not supremely confident about this paper, since much of it was written in the grip of a massive sleep deficit, but it still seemed pretty good to me, all things considered.

OK, and speaking of massive sleep deficits… perhaps I shouldn’t go for yet another tonight!

Procrastination and resurrecting an old post…

Back in the days when I had a Xanga blog (it’s been long since deleted), I worked on this particular equation. I was tremendously amused by it and started a bit of a trend among my other blogging friends to develop similar equations. Bear in mind that I was also in a Masters’ level math/statistics course and working with this kind of stuff daily, so it seemed funnier to all of us geeks than it might to the average reader. Sigh. Anyway, I intend to give it a run-through and do some tweaking on it based on another 2½ years of experience…

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Let L_uv = Event that I like man X

A_x = Attractiveness of X
PL_x = My perception that X likes me (note: not whether he really does or not)
F_x = How fascinating I find X
E(t,s) = My emotional state depending on t = time and s = external stressors
MP_x = Mate potential of X

Then P(L_uv) = (0.005)*A_x + (0.01)*(PL_x + F_x + E(t,s)) + (0.02)*MP_x

where

A_x = [(Looks, 0-20) + (Intelligence, 0-100) + (Fiscal Status, 0-10) + (Articulateness, 0-20) + (Confidence, 0-50) - ("He's too perfect!" freak-out, 0-50)]⁺

PL_x = [(Special attention X pays to me, 0-20) - (Special attention X pays to other women, 0-20)*(Number of other women) + (How much X listens to me, 0-20) + (How interested X is in understanding me, 0-20) + 20*(Avg. # of times he calls/seeks time with me weekly) - (Stalker factor, 0-40) - 40*{(Avg. # of times he calls/seeks time with other women weekly) + (Avg. # of times he talks to me about other women weekly)}]⁺

F_x = [(Power, 0-20) + (Social Status, 0-10) + (Fame, 0-10) + (Foreignness, 0-10) - (Redneck Pride, 0-20) - (Materialism, 0-30)]⁺

E(t,s) = [(Long-term sinusoidal function E₁(t), 0-75) + (Short-term sinusoidal function E₂(t), 0-25) - (Increasing linear function E₃(s), 0-100)]⁺

MP_x = [(Responsibility, 0-20) + (Christian? 0 or 1)*(Knowledge of his faith, 1-5)*(Love of God, 1-10) + (Health, 0-10) + (Stability, 0-20) - (How much he wants a mom/provider, 0-100)]⁺

And once again:

P(L_uv) = (0.005)*A_x + (0.01)*(PL_x + F_x + E(t,s)) + (0.02)*MP_x

Note that originally I weighted all the five factors evenly, but upon reflection decided to adjust my weights, multiplying the weight for MP_x by 2 and for F_x by 0.5. This should still give me a valid probability for P(L_uv). I still need to run some numbers on it, but I’m thinking that this is a pretty good model.

Wow. Am I ever a nerd! Would you believe, I spent some time deciding whether I was going to attempt a Bayesian analysis of this with conditional probabilities, or if I wanted to construct a values hierarchy or perhaps set this up as a network problem to solve for maximum flow (which in this case would be attraction to X) . . . I’m still tempted to set it up as an influence network and run it on a program I have access to that would give me a sensitivity analysis and point out what are the key nodes.

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OK, this is current KJ again… now I should get back to my homework–trying to get a video into my powerpoint presentation and writing a bullet background paper about Lebanon. Anything else? Probably, but I’m not thinking of it at present…

One week down and all’s well

I’ll admit it — on Friday around lunchtime, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through all five weeks of this Air Force school… We’d just been beat up as a group, going through our weekly briefing, I’d done 4 consecutive days of heavy-duty running and, due to the fact that I’m a commuter, I’d been sleeping less than five hours a night. I was so worn out, so tired, and so done with the whole thing… and there were another four weeks to go!

But then, we got a group “wargame” (more a computer battleship-type game) to play, and I ended up in one of the “director” slots, and I got to boss people around, and it was fun and energizing. I think it’s probably not a good character trait that I was that enthused by being in charge, but I suppose it’s true to character. Anyway, that was good, and then there was a weekend to enjoy… I invited one of my flightmates (the other token female) to stay in my guest room at home, since it would be a little more personable than living on-base in a hotel room the entire time. (Yeah–don’t really have room for the 12 guys, so they’ll just have to fend for themselves.) And it was good to have her around, even if I never really got the for-real downtime that I’ll probably need to recover from this much intense people time.

I can see it already–I am going to be SO peopled-out by the end of this five weeks that I’m probably going to have to take a couple weeks off in order to return to sanity. I apparently scared my parents, talking on the phone to them last night, because I sounded so manic. I have to work myself up into a high level of energy / enthusiasm / excitement in order to do this kind of stuff, so it comes across sounding utterly unlike my real self when I talk to people who know me. I know myself well enough to recognize that I’m tapping reserves that I don’t exist in unlimited quantities, but the five months of irritable boredom that preceded this should be enough to fuel five weeks of manic people energy. I hope. (We’ll see.)

Though driving on base tonight (we had to meet to go over the next iteration of our briefing–and hopefully not be quite so badly reamed for it), my stomach twisted into knots of “oh no–not this again”. But it’s all good. I’m quite enjoying this break from the normal life, and truly, the experience of being a member of a team is enjoyable. I’ve mostly only had this during military training/education, and I always like it. I’m such an individual by nature that I forget that group dynamics and group identity can be such fun (in limited quantities).

OK, I’d better get going–yet another early morning tomorrow, and I don’t want to be dying by 3 p.m. the way I was some of the days last week!

Day 1: Surprisingly promising!

I’m going to start out with a blanket apology in advance for a month or so of light blogging. I just went to my first day of SOS, and realized that this school is going to be taking a substantially larger portion of my time than my normal job does. Despite all the scare tactics that they’re leveraging, I don’t think it’ll be terribly hard in terms of overall academic difficulty… but it’ll take extra work and longer hours than normal.

It’s very weird–I’m attending the school “in-residence” so they issued me a hotel room, only since I’m local I don’t have orders for this trip, and the room won’t be charged to my government travel card, but instead to the school. I’m glad that they’re letting me have a hotel room–multiple uniform changes throughout the day, and late nights (I’m assuming there will probably be a few) doing group activities might necessitate staying there instead of making the full commute. Weird–a hotel room AND an apartment, in the same city and either available at my convenience.

In school, we did all the introductory administrative stuff and met our flights–those are groups of 12-14 people who do all the activities together and with whom you’re supposed to bond and form a fully functional team. It depends on the mix of personalities that you have in your group, what your experience is like. Some flights are crabby and full of driven type-A personalities, and bicker with one another throughout. Others sort of ignore each other and disperse the second that they’re able. Others get cliquish, and so on. On first reflection, I’ve got to say that my flight seems fun. There are 13 of us (only 2 women, but that’s fairly typical for the military), and everyone was pretty laid-back and friendly today. Of course on day 1 you’re normally on your best behavior, so we’ll see what happens next…

I’m quite happy because this is probably the first time I’ve gone, as a stranger, into this kind of situation and felt almost completely comfortable. Somewhere along the line, I lost my shyness. I don’t care if they think I’m an idiot; I just enjoy talking to pretty much anyone. There will be some with whom I have little in common (one guy was waxing enthusiastic about signing up for marathons and triathlons during the time he’s here), and I might be tempted to be attracted to one or two of them (this definitely means they would be wrong for me–I have rather unerringly bad radar when it comes to men, I’m afraid), but all in all they seem like fun people who won’t make the month unpleasant. Which really, is a happy thought!

Another thought I have is more of a question. I wonder what role I’m going to fall into in this team? I used to always be the shy girl in the corner who eventually warms up to people, gets along with the group pretty well, and makes friends with a few of the others. It could still go that way, but I found myself doing a lot more circulating than I would ever have done in my younger, more self-conscious years, talking to people when they were standing alone looking like they felt awkward. I know that feeling and it’s not pleasant! And of course I got the immediate feedback from someone that I’m “just a happy person, aren’t you?” (Which is really hilarious and a testimony to how well I’m able to slip into a public persona these days.) I do feel just this side of manic, with a mixture of excitement and glee at meeting new people. We’ll see if it wears off and I go back to feeling glum and/or cranky…

Well, I should get going, because I have several e-texts to read and I need to get ready to go take a PT test at an ungodly hour tomorrow morning. (Thankfully, this is internal to SOS and even if I failed it–which I don’t intend to do–it wouldn’t have lasting effects on anything else.)

I got sucked in…

Well, even after I’d complained about the beginning of the election cycle, I found that I was quite interested in the Iowa results, especially since they were as quirky as they were. I find myself not entirely sure what to think. I think that the most traditional political result for the parties’ nominations would be Clinton and Romney, and I frankly find that head-to-head rather boring. (Yeah, I know she’s the first woman running with a serious shot at president, but… well, it’s just been expected for too long. Besides, being a woman doesn’t make you any less susceptible to being a predictable politician.)

But Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee??? Crazy! I guess I’ll be watching with interest to see what the rest of the states say as they have people weigh in. If I turned in my absentee ballot change-of-address form on time, I might even be tempted to participate in the primaries in Washington State. We shall see.

I find that I can’t let myself get too invested in politics–when I do, I can be horribly crushed if the guy I’m rooting for doesn’t get into office. My first and most vivid recollection of this was during the 1992 election, which happened during my senior year of high school. All of us had to volunteer a certain number of hours with one of the local political organizations for our AP Government class, that winter. Since I was a good church kid and military brat, I was about as conservative as a person could be, and thus was part of the Young Republicans. I’m not really an intensely-motivated political activist, nor was I then, but it was interesting, I got very involved in following the race, and was shocked and horrified when Clinton won the election. How could the American people do this??? I wondered, with the same sort of betrayed horror that most of the Seattleites I knew in 2000 evinced after the election then.

Of course, in 1992, I could stuff envelopes, but I still couldn’t vote (I was 16 at the time of the election). Since then I’ve tried to keep emotionally separate from the races so that, even if the American people get the bit between their teeth and barge forward on some idiotic path for the sake of CHANGE alone (or some other equally short-sighted motivation), I can smile and shrug and wonder how people can be so silly. (And not have to spend a few days in bed crying my eyes out.)

I tend to have rather intense loyalties, so when something evokes them (like politics), it can be a little out of proportion. I’ve found this with sports as well, and my extreme anger at even the outcome of reality shows at times seems to originate from the same source. Thus, for the most part, I keep out of that sort of thing. Why guarantee yourself extreme disappointment when you didn’t have to care in the first place? Though perhaps that’s avoidant…

Well, I’m not sure where I was going with this. I’ve been finishing up a sweater (my first!) and watching a marathon of America’s Next Top Model this weekend, which I’m allowing myself to do because I’m going to be starting a round of SOS (Squadron Officer School) on Monday. Oh joy–five weeks of obstacle courses and team-building exercises and learning about Air Force Doctrine and military history. Delightful… But at least I can be living at home as I do it (it’s held two buildings down from my office) so that means I don’t have to make special arrangements for my cats, and I won’t have to sleep in a strange bed. I never sleep well in hotels.

It has begun (officially)

I guess that today, the first round of the neverending election has officially taken place. Since the 2008 campaign has been waging since at least 2004, perhaps even 2000 (I’ve been convinced since then that Hillary Clinton was being primed as the ‘08 candidate since her husband’s last couple years in office; thus the Senate bid). Maybe, just maybe, if we can just get through the obnoxiousness of this for one more year–wait, wait… only 11 more months, thank goodness–we’ll actually have it behind us. I’d also adore to have all the shrillness of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton perpetual debates behind us for good, too. (Though I’ll admit that there’s one more George Bush I’d like to see considered nationally at some point in the future… )

One politico asks: “Why is the expected Republican turnout lower than in 2000, when it was, in my humble opinion, a weaker field?” I think it’s because this election has drained most of the enthusiasm out of its potential base because of its very extendedness. Besides, as the incumbent party, you don’t have the “get our guys in there!” motivation that you do when you’ve been the excluded party for the last 8 years. In 2000, Republicans were excited (much as Democrats are in 2008) that there was actually a real prospect of getting “their guy” into the top spot… and it showed through the whole election cycle. Maintaining the status quo is never as exciting a prospect as upsetting it… IMHO.

As an aside, is there a word that means “person intensely interested in politics”? I thought I’d seen “politico” used in a similar context to “techie” or “foodie / gourmand / gourmet” or “cinephile” or “balletomane“, but it appears to be traditionally defined as “a politician”. So what do you call a connoiseur of politics?

Ooooh–an aside to my aside–check out this cool word: logomachy, pronounced “le-GOM-uh-kee” and meaning “argument about words”. Sorry. Sometimes my word-loving nature gets a trifle out of hand. But who knew that there was a specific word for “an argument about semantics”? Because I’m always saying that about certain types of discussions, particularly in theological and philosophical realms. Now I can say snootily, “Let’s not sidetrack into logomachy,” when I get annoyed by such discussions… (Which will, I’m sure, make me lots of friends.)

Oh, but I had a point here, didn’t I? (Back when I taught high school, I was one of those teachers sadly susceptible to being diverted down rabbit trails by my students, given that it was an inquiry that I thought was interesting…)

Anyway, I am having a hard time maintaining interest in this year’s election… No, that’s not accurate. To put it more truthfully, I have long since passed the point of non-interest in the election; I have even long since passed the point of turning off the news with disgust when it inevitably returns to this tired, over-digested, irritating topic, like a dog to its vomit… I recognize, accept, and attempt to tolerate the need to maintain a free society with free elections and free political discourse, but my patience with the idiocy of the political process as it plays out in the public arena has long since been exhausted. I fear I could never be a politician simply because I’d be so done with the election by the time it rolled around that I’d roll my eyes and give the media attitude any time they asked me another one of the same questions they’d always asked before.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see an intelligent pre-election discourse, including selection of candidates appropriate to run the country? Instead, we get photogenic yes-men (and women) who either have never entertained a real thought or just have learned to conceal it, smalltalking vapidly in an attempt to avoid ever taking a stance for or against any major issue. Ick. And therein lies the heart of my frustration with the neverending 2008 election.

(Hmmm–I’m starting to realize that I’m not a political enthusiast by nature. BTW, half of this is not meant seriously… not completely, anyway!)