With a Mission

It has been cold these last two nights. It's raining right now. The rain usually puts me in a good mood.

Lately I've been almost despondent and on edge and feeling as though I can do no right. I am stumbling through the week like a zombie. I am endeared to anyone and anything that can make me laugh right now.

I am still reading this book called I Was Told There'd Be Cake which is a collection of essays by Sloane Crosley (wow, it's so nice to reference something and not have to make an endnotes or footnote). It's terribly funny I keep on laughing out loud in my room as I read it. My roommate and I are on edge for different reasons, but nonetheless we are sort of grating on each others' nerves. It's slight, but in light of the current week it's like the straw that might break this camel's back. If I'm going to compare myself to a smelly desert animal with a tendency to spit.

I cannot believe how much work there is still left to do! There is an economics writ on Friday, and there is my Portuguese Oral tomorrow as well as the Rosetta Stone. It's gonna be a shit show getting all of this done. My thought process has been pretty bitter and unstable lately. I am somewhat volatile at mealtimes too. Not like I'm connecting with calming people or situations lately though. Still, today was taco wednesday (which also irritates me) and someone was acting so damn smarmy I kept snapping at him. Every successive snap I was more frustrated at myself for snapping. Then naturally Blondie my absolute favorite person in the world right now says,

"[My name] calm down."

leading me to retort with a lot of frustration,

"That is the most annoying thing you can say to anyone! Calm down? That does the exact opposite! Like saying, 'Stop getting riled up [My Name]'. You do it just to rile me up more, and you know that's what you're doing, don't act so innocent."

At which point... I became aware that I was getting the what-a-crazy-woman look. I can't stand it. I mean, I'm excitable, I'm passionate, I'm... foolish sometimes. Ha ha ha. Very funny everyone, you got me. You got the response you wanted, and now you get to give me the look like I'm the crazy one. I didn't start the conversation down this path in order to piss myself off. Still, in a more serious sense, I've got to get a handle on that.

It's not so much that I always have trouble controlling my emotions, but when there's some serious stuff roiling under the surface... I can't help but let it bubble out in different ways on the surface. Am I really upset by the talk at lunch? Do I really care if someone wants to be an absolute prick about everything I say about Mexican culture? Do I really get upset that the boys want to make yet another generalization about women based on the only two of us at the table? No, I'm used to these things and I'm okay with a lot of them and often see the humor. Right now though, I'm thinking about a lot of other things, and it's coming out in these seemingly small arguments and snaps of mine.

Tomorrow I'm going to ask for a regrade for my plebe who definitely deserves a better military grade than I've got or at least equal. There is nothing he did wrong. He is definitely above and beyond and he's cordial and he has experience and he's on top of things, there is no way he is 'B' material. I can take my B+ and I can roll my eyes and accept that it's probably because I have an attitude and because my grades were so-so this semester even though I significantly improved militarily and physically. I cannot however take him getting a B when he was the Regimental Soldier of the Quarter and has great grades (hell I wish I had his GPA at one point in my life) and he improved his physical performance too from an APFT in the 260s to one in the 290 range. That's a good job and deserving of an A or A- if you really want to be nit-picky. We have fair or tough graders. I've yet to get a grader who gives me a break. Everyone thinks women have it so easy, I wish I could meet the people who give women a break. I wish I had the squad leader who gives his girls an easy A. Girls rarely even complain if they get a lower than they wanted military grade because we don't want to rock the boat. Unless you're like certain girls who can quote the SOP by heart and who will do anything to make sure their grade isn't affected... but if you're not so obsessed and have a generally good and sunny outlook and are approachable... well you're probably not going to work to argue for that military grade. You will also probably never get a great grade because someone somewhere thinks that they don't want to appear like they are going "easy" on a girl. I imagine they must sit there right before entering the grade and their mental dialogue going something like this,

"Okay... this guy has a great APFT score, did his weekly reports okay, and is mostly B's academically. Militarily, recommend him for an A... maybe A-. Next guy has a great APFT score, did weekly reports, asked good questions, all B's typically academically. Recommend for an A... wait a second this is a girl. Did she do anything particularly amazing this semester? Hmm... it's not like I'm going to be playing favorites. B is a good military grade after all. I'll recommend her for a B+. Nothing particularly amazing here. Alright next..."

But I'm sure at this point I probably sound like I think West Point is SO hard, which I don't, just venting. I'm okay, like I said, with my grade, but my plebe deserves better. So I'm going to brave the decision of our TAC NCO sometime tomorrow. It may not be my favorite moment of the day, but it has to be done. At least I think I have proof that he deserves this.

More to do for my squad tomorrow too and hopefully another run for the week. Only two more days of academic workload... and then it's rest this Saturday for me and studying Saturday evening. I will be getting to bed at a good hour on Saturday too. Setting the mood for the upcoming week of Term End Exam's (TEEs).