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.)
Posted by Kjirstin 
