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!
Posted by Kjirstin 
