My Weekend

Edited to add: Aaaaannnnddd.....I was assigned to medical staff! So for encampment, I'll be checking cadets for blisters and making sure they all stay healthy.

******************
I had a relatively interesting Saturday. It started at 3 am and ended around 11:30 when I crashed on a cot of dubious quality.

I applied for a cadet staff position at the NY Wing encampment, which is this July. Last weekend was an encampment staff workshop. Essentially, it's where the cadet and senior staff members get together, have some classes, and the cadets get evaluated and possibly interviewed for the positions they applied for.

So Saturday morning, my alarm started going off at 3 am. And I was disciplined and actually got myself out of bed right away and didn't fall back asleep like I typically do. Plus, it would have been embarrassing to show up late for my ride (or miss my ride!) just cause I didn't get up. So I got up. And I hopped into my BDUs, grabbed my backpack and sleeping bag, and gathered up some breakfast. My mom drove me up to Buffalo, and Hosanna came along to give us company. We found the rendezvous point without difficulty, and the other cadet who was riding there too showed up as well. Maj A, our driver, overslept by five minutes (ha! so glad it wasn't me!), but he got there right around 5 am. I got to ride shotgun the whole way out to Scotia. It was roughly a 4 hour drive...one 5 minute break, and the rest was straight cruising.  All I can say about the driving is I sure hope Maj A didn't pay too much for his music CDs. I hope someone gives him new music CDs for Father's Day. Hey...a person can hope, right?

We arrived around 9 am. We signed in with the registrar and plunged into a full day of activities and people. There were classes (held in the dining hall) and group leadership projects. For the classes, I propped myself up at a random table and looked awake and cognizant. I also took notes to help appear more functional. Some of the classes were on time management, what leadership is not, and goal setting.

The group leadership projects were more hands on. I was assigned to bravo flight, and we had 10 people in our group. We would go to the assigned location where we were given an assignment. We would go about completing this assignment (example: a treasure hunt, minus a treasure at the end, but complete with the difficult to understand, rhyming clues) while being followed by senior members with clipboards. And we did rather quite well, I thought. We came together as a team, we listened to each other, and we had some people who were able to stand out as good group leaders. And there's nothing like listening to  and participating in a 45 minute long guided discussion on fairness, justice, and leadership with a group of young teens. It made me feel better about the future of America.

We switched between classes and GLPs until about 6:30 or 7 (with breaks for lunch and supper), and then we watched a movie (Remember the Titans, if anyone's interested). Then it was time to clean up the dining hall (in which I managed not to fall asleep while sweeping), shower, and go to bed. I was assigned to Cabin 2, and I found an empty cot to stash myself and my stuff, and I slept quite well. Except for the crows. You know...some people have annoying roosters that wake you up before dawn with their noise. The Stratton Air National Guard Base doesn't have roosters-- it has crows, parked conveniently in the trees surrounding the cabins we slept in. And I detest every single one of them. Who needs alarm clocks when you have crows?

Anyhow, Sunday morning was getting up, packing, eating breakfast, and going home.  I got back around 2 or 3.

Obviously, the end result of the workshop was to be selected for staff. However, until the staff positions have all been officially announced on the NYWG website, I can't say what position (if any) I got. So I'm gonna just publish this as is right now, and when it's formally announced, I'll just to an "edited to add" thingy at the top.