A Slightly Different Tune: Helping

I continue to draw and talk and hum.  I am moving towards my goals slowly and surely.  I checked out apartments near Fort Lee.  Since Transportation OBC is sort of longer, I am definitely on the look out for a place I can really focus at.  I finally get my dream:  a room to myself, a glass of wine, and my laptop on a desk in a peaceful, private setting.  I mean that's all I need, all else will follow.  I've been looking at career opportunities and realizing all the things I've done that actually translate into experience:  my travels, my thesis work, my constant analysis of the world around me.  I welcome challenge and try to learn from people I've identified as intellectual giants in my life.

Today I identified a sharp new cadet girl.  She was quick, and asking great questions.  She was a much faster learner than her squad leader was a teacher.  I felt frustrated for her, but I hope she keeps up that enthusiasm.  She also just had the genuine and honest sound, not the stuck up pride of a new cadet who thinks they are the shit, and not the upwoundedness of a new cadet freaking out because of all the dumb pressure, and not the lackadaisical attitude of a prepster who just doesn't care.  I got her contact information and told her I would shoot her an email from my AKO account.  If she's as I perceived her to be, than I hope to be some sort of intermediate mentor.  She'll still get guidance from all the same Majors and Colonels who are at West Point, and still from the coaches and seniors of whatever sport she does, but I can hope too help with my current experience living the officer life from 2011.  I just felt the urge to be available to this girl.  It was the only way I could think of to counteract the frustratingly inadequate leadership of her squad leader.  No offense to him, poor thing, but he just wasn't enough and she was particularly bright.

Continuing my own pursuit of self-improvement I launched into Rosetta Stone Level 3 for German and was pleased to understand quite a bit.  It's been a great supplemental tool to all the practicing I do but am too shy to put into practice with my german-speaking friends.  I also tried some of the individual lessons for Rosetta Stone Farsi and was grudgingly able to admit they were decent review pieces.  I still wish I had time to write notes, which I guess I do except then Rosetta Stone likes to think I'm particularly dumb for taking so long on the pronunciation portion.  I know all this language work will pay off eventually.  I guess since I've gotten away from learning all the languages of Europe, that I'm headed towards the Strategic side of things.

I am still happy to have gone the military route, and still trying to figure out how West Point changed things.  A friend doing an internship in D.C. told me he was happy with West Point because what other institution would pay you to travel the world and just learn?  I guess he's right, but at the same time I cannot forget all the shit I went through at West Point.  The good far outweighs the bad, but the bad was frustrating many times.  Many of the individuals who go through West Point do so with the expectation that the world somehow owes them.  It don't owe you a thing... I have come to respect my Senior ROTC officer graduates who may have enjoyed a regular college life more often but who proceed with the intention of doing the best at their level having less control over where they go.

Of course whether West Point or ROTC, I prefer the company of individuals based on them caring about their job or - outside military matters - caring about something.  Basically not just plowing through friends and running straight for the stars whilst pushing over and back stabbing their peers for promotion and prestige.  I think the best thing for human beings to do with their lives if they can with even a fraction of their energy it is to make the world a better place for the oppressed.  It is not the same as simply bettering the world, any Capitalist could explain the economics of how his personal wealth improves the quality of the world, and while that person may be correct, it is the principle of the matter.  How have or can you help the bereft?

Music Art Life

In respect to my artistic goals I guess there's more to admit, I also want to learn to play the guitar. Mumford and Sons songs inspired me. I love the feeling in the music. Sometimes I'm not totally on board with their lyrics, but it's the guitar that's got me going.

Musically speaking, in the Netherlands, a friend had some music out and when I asked why she told me about her violin. She said she's not great, but she likes it none the less. She recommended I go to the Czech Republic if I'm looking for a cheap violin while I'm in Germany. I'd love to pick it up again. I believe this means I should look for an apartment that doesn't have restrictive noise measures in place.
My friend who is already in Bamberg, she lives in a great apartment but it's a little out of the way. I'd rather be closer to downtown and public transportation. I can't wait to really start my life. I know it seems like I keep looking forward as though what I have in front of and around me isn't really life. Yet, I feel like I do not waste what is around me, I just get impatient with it. Why can't this bit be over? Living only barely outside of Thayer Gate, why can't I really be free of West Point?

So I drew a new picture and am publishing it now.  I decided to make this a separate blog entry because I felt it detracted from the overall different tone and theme of the previous blog.  So this one may be a little bit of what you already read, if I do have any readers.  Also for those of you new, I have my Twitter account on the sidebar as well now.  If you enjoy any of these posts, or any of the art, please subscribe.  And if you want any particular topics feel free to comment or message.

Today was a particularly creative day at work.  First listened to a small lecture on keeping the Cadets from using the roads.  It's an ambitious goal.  Keeping Cadets off roads is difficult because the land navigation sites are just too big and it's too impractical to monitor all the roads.  In reality, the very existence of so many roads makes it almost a moot point.  If the roads weren't there, the Cadets couldn't use them.  The roads are there... I do empathize with some of the frustration, if it's there why not use it?  Because we're trying to teach them the basic blocks of skills they will need on land navigation courses that are more flat and not so easy to terrain associate with.  I've been thinking of another way to relate to Cadets (having been one so recently) the importance of true land nav as opposed to trail-walking.  I think it boils down to this:  when I tell my civilian hiking counterparts how our land nav course has trails, they laugh out loud at the thought of having to teach Soldiers how to read a map with trails.  I think we should aspire in our training to be able to do more than walk a trail.  We should come away from our training able to tell our civilian counterparts that we can wander terrain without trails, we should be able to say things like "Well on a linear feature you could resection to figure out where you were on a map, but man you better have a good map."

To be fair, I think when civilians envision land nav for the military they think of huge open woods or the heart of some tropical nowhere in the middle of the night, a Ranger silently wading in waist high water, rifle trained ahead of him and making silent hand gestures to keep his squad in line until the moment is right... then BAM! Bullets start flying, and our heroes have taken the enemy by surprise having navigated to this point with nothing but a gut feeling and impeccable sense of direction.

The reality of land nav tests is you have your map, which you are trying to keep dry because if it is not raining you are incredibly sweaty.  You have your plastic protracter, with maybe a string tied to the center to more quickly calculate grid azimuth.  You have your military grade magnetic compass with degrees and mils on it.  You have at least two kilometers to cover on an easy course.  You don't take off running, and you're not on a Sunday stroll.  You're somewhere between, power walking and trying to maintain your course.  You're looking around and trying to make sense of what you see around you with the lines of elevation on the map.  Like most things in life, it's been highly romanticized.  But I would like to impress on these Cadets they should not come out of this training with skills that would make an amateur hiker laugh at them.

My New Dream

My new dream (folly? pastime?) is to write intriguing, challenging articles until I can get my J.D. and then can write academic articles or be better qualified to get the kind of job I'm interested in.  I don't know where or how to start.  It sounds both simple and ridiculously hard.  I mean, I haven't got a degree in this sort of thing.  It sounds intimidating and fraught with failure.  But I told my friend about my fear of rejection and ridicule from editors or worse just being plain ignored... and he said that the ridicule and criticism could be good things.  People who aren't trying to spare your feelings are maybe the best way to make progress.  So now I'll start working on a couple articles on important issues to me.  Then see what, how, and where I can peddle these sorts of wares.