Its Sunday. Another week down. This weekend was relatively slow. Our student squadron commander, Major Dieter (this guy is STRICT, but fair and very professional), decided to pull our base privledges for Saturday and restrict us to the OTS complex because we've been slacking ever since the upper class left. This whole thing is definately a game, and I think that was all part of it; give us some slack for a few days and then yank the leash back in real hard and jack everyone up for every little thing. Come to think of it, there were a few days where everything seemed too quiet. Usually commissioned staff sharks around on the "bomb run" (the long walkway between the academic building and the dining facility where flights hold and wait to enter the dining facility). They usually quiz flights on their knowledge, watch for flight leaders to make mistakes marching their flights to meals, "correct" officer trainees by "speaking loudly" to them, etc. But not for most of last week. Anyway, we (i.e. all of Class 13-07) were all told on Thursday that everything we were doing was not up to standards in terms of professionalism and procedures, and that it was going to start raining OTMRs (officer trainee memorandum for record). Those are essentially memos that go in your folder that document how you messed something up- and always require you to report to the officer who issued it. Often times this can start what is called an "OTMR Waterfall" where you go in to get an OTMR, mess something up in the process, and have to come back for another one, mess up again, and the process repeats. One kid in my flight got at least five OTMRs this way. Anyway, just my luck- I was on the schedule to be flight leader on Friday (remember we were told on Thursday that it was going to start "raining OTMRs"). I ended up with one OTMR that day for a mistake entering the dining facility- I forgot to call "as you were" when I wanted to cancel an order. Thats the second one ive gotten since being here. Not a huge deal because no OTMR waterfall ensued.
Aside from that, this past week consisted of one day in the field (I think I mentioned that in my last post), 4 days of classes, and our second physcial fitness test. This was probably our busiest week of classes so far. I don't think i've discussed academics that much yet, so i'll briefly mention those. We study three main subjects; leadership studies, profession of arms, and warfare studies. W also have some classes on communication, but none of these are testable so everyone, myself included, ignores them. This week consisted primarly of warfare studies lessons. We covered the history of airpower from Post-WWI through present. We also had some culture lessons geared at making us aware that we will have to go through even more cultural training if we ever deploy. These lessons covered all the combatant command areas of responsibility (i.e. central command, Africa command, northern command, pacific command, etc.). Fortunately (unfortunately?) these lessons are not on the syllabus for the next exam, so myself and many others did not pay attention. Since these were given in a lecture hall to all 130 something members of Class 13-07, rather than in our flight room, this seemed like the right thing to do.
We had a number of leadership studies classes last week that i'm finishing up homework for this week. The leadership studies curriculum contains subjecs geared towards managenemt, supervisison, and obviously leadership. Lessons include conflict management, leadership authority and responsibility (interesting- this dealt with the legality of issuing orders and the sources of an officer's authority), change management, effective supervision, and stuff like that.
The final sylabus area is profession of arms. That includes subjects such as military law, UCMJ, cultural awareness, enlisted force structure, and other topics pertinent to being an officer in the United States military.
As I mentioned, we also had our second (out of three) physcial fitness test. The test consists of abdominal circumference, a 1.5 mile run, 1 minute of pushups and 1 minute of crunches. My score improved from a 97 to a 98.7; the highest in the flight. I increased my pushups from 48 to 53, and my situps from 48 to 58 (58 is the max for situps). My run improved from 8:53 to 8:38, however this did not increase my score because I already had scored the max. Ab circumference was also maxed out. The only place left to improve is pushups. If I can do 15 more in a minute, for a total of 58, I'll max that one out too. We did well as a flight also; our flight average was above 95.
Our flight's PT score was enough to get us Athletic Flight of the Week, again. This is good because our flight commander likes that sort of stuff'- he was a college football player. Some other flight awards are given out such as academic flight and overall flight of the week. Other Goldhawk flights won those ones giving the Goldhawks another sweep this week, making the Goldhawks the squadron of the week, again. The rivalry between us, the Hoyas and the Tigers is healthy but the commissioned staff wants us to come together as a wing since the lower class will be here soon.
This upcoming week will be a busy one, and will be almost entirely in the field. We have M9 pistol qualification on monday. We have Baseline Expeditionary Leadership Skills on tuesday and wednesday (a graded field leadership measure) and a high ropes course on thursday. The week after that we have a graded informational briefing, which I should do well in as long as I follow the standard AF info brieing format, because I'm used to giving presentations at work.
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