You know how any time you are looking forward to something--whether it is vacation, or moving, or graduating, or the birth of a child, or wedding, etc--you do a countdown, and as you are further away from whatever the event is (I'm dubbing it Milestone) it seems like the Milestone will never happen. Then before you know it, it seems like the Milestone is right around the corner.
The transition from years to months, to weeks, to days for me has always been so dramatic, that I often find myself wishing time would slow down a little.
My milestone is of course Basic Training. I began thinking of enlisting in October, with the intent of leaving for basic training right after New Years. Of course, that's not how today's military works, when they are trying to limit the number of people in, and be highly selective of the people who get let in. In December I took the ASVAB, and in January I received my results. They were pretty high, and the only part that I wasn't very high in was mechanics. So, I had a wide range of options. Because my score was so high, my recruiter suggested I take the DLAB to see how well I can learn languages. I knocked that one out of the park, even after a mild temper tantrum during the test* and scored in the top tier for the languages. This lets me learn languages like Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. I was kind of surprised that Russian was on a lower tier, especially since I was always under the illusion (I originally had the word "conception" in there, but that made me think of childbirth. Would that have been grammatically correct?) that Russian was one of the hardest languages to learn (though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHfroJBMlVM says that a drunken college kid can learn it in a trip). Right around this time, I swore in at the end of January. I spent the next couple of months harassing the recruiter every time the job list came out. In the first week of April I get my job, and have to wait until AUGUST, literally 4 months, to get to basic. Man, four months seems like a lifetime when you just aren't happy in your worklife. Around 2 months later, I get moved to full time at a different branch. Then life doesn't seem quite as bad, because I have a decent paycheck to combat the crazy job. But a few weeks later, I quit so I could go to Tokyo and spend time with the husband.
Originally I thought I would use this time to work out. But when you get in the vacation mode, and don't have work to come back to, it is very difficult to snap out of it. But when August 1st hit and I realized I had 20 days to get into shape, I still didn't kick my exercising into gear, but I definitely stopped eating bad. lol.
Then last week, I realized I had 10 days left. And then I have single digits left. And now I'm a week out. I feel like it was so long ago that I started this journey. But I feel like it is going by too fast. I have to start packing by bag today, and tomorrow I begin prepping for my going away party this weekend. Then after this weekend, I'm shipping. It's insane.
*When you take the DLAB there is no studying for it. If you look online, most people say that you'll either do well or you won't. The DLAB is in 4 sections. The first three are relatively simple, and if you have any kind of knowledge on how any language besides English works, you will do fine. The first section you listen for emphasis on syllables in a made up language. For example: They will ask which has the emphasis on the second syllable for the word gorgukta. GORgukta, gorGUKta, and gorgukTA. Obviously you don't get it written out. you just have to listen. Then the second section they apply a single rule like the adjective which ends in o comes after the noun which ends in a. Then you have to choose which is right in the sentence. It is a little easier because they take english words and add letters at the end. So which is correct: Redo Balloona, balloono reda, balloona redo, and reda baloono. The answer is the third one. Then the third section is sentence structure with ALL the rules of the second section. I am not even going to attempt to make an example. Then the final section is what tripped me up. To this day I don't know what the hell to do. They give you a row and a colum, then four pictures. You have to figure out from those, what the answer is. I remember the example being two tables as the answer, with tables on the top, and a bunch of weird symbols on the side. Somehow I was supposed to deduce that those combined were two tables. It was weird and unfair. I think I missed the instructions for it or something because I got the example wrong. And just like any test, you know if you get the example wrong you pretty much are screwed. In most tests, the question is which is a plant: a lion, a tiger, a bear, or a tree. But whatever. I took the test and got to the last section, got to the example, failed it, and was very upset that I couldn't figure it out, and that I'd be a civilian for the rest of my life. You can return to the original story now.
The transition from years to months, to weeks, to days for me has always been so dramatic, that I often find myself wishing time would slow down a little.
My milestone is of course Basic Training. I began thinking of enlisting in October, with the intent of leaving for basic training right after New Years. Of course, that's not how today's military works, when they are trying to limit the number of people in, and be highly selective of the people who get let in. In December I took the ASVAB, and in January I received my results. They were pretty high, and the only part that I wasn't very high in was mechanics. So, I had a wide range of options. Because my score was so high, my recruiter suggested I take the DLAB to see how well I can learn languages. I knocked that one out of the park, even after a mild temper tantrum during the test* and scored in the top tier for the languages. This lets me learn languages like Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. I was kind of surprised that Russian was on a lower tier, especially since I was always under the illusion (I originally had the word "conception" in there, but that made me think of childbirth. Would that have been grammatically correct?) that Russian was one of the hardest languages to learn (though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHfroJBMlVM says that a drunken college kid can learn it in a trip). Right around this time, I swore in at the end of January. I spent the next couple of months harassing the recruiter every time the job list came out. In the first week of April I get my job, and have to wait until AUGUST, literally 4 months, to get to basic. Man, four months seems like a lifetime when you just aren't happy in your worklife. Around 2 months later, I get moved to full time at a different branch. Then life doesn't seem quite as bad, because I have a decent paycheck to combat the crazy job. But a few weeks later, I quit so I could go to Tokyo and spend time with the husband.
Originally I thought I would use this time to work out. But when you get in the vacation mode, and don't have work to come back to, it is very difficult to snap out of it. But when August 1st hit and I realized I had 20 days to get into shape, I still didn't kick my exercising into gear, but I definitely stopped eating bad. lol.
Then last week, I realized I had 10 days left. And then I have single digits left. And now I'm a week out. I feel like it was so long ago that I started this journey. But I feel like it is going by too fast. I have to start packing by bag today, and tomorrow I begin prepping for my going away party this weekend. Then after this weekend, I'm shipping. It's insane.
*When you take the DLAB there is no studying for it. If you look online, most people say that you'll either do well or you won't. The DLAB is in 4 sections. The first three are relatively simple, and if you have any kind of knowledge on how any language besides English works, you will do fine. The first section you listen for emphasis on syllables in a made up language. For example: They will ask which has the emphasis on the second syllable for the word gorgukta. GORgukta, gorGUKta, and gorgukTA. Obviously you don't get it written out. you just have to listen. Then the second section they apply a single rule like the adjective which ends in o comes after the noun which ends in a. Then you have to choose which is right in the sentence. It is a little easier because they take english words and add letters at the end. So which is correct: Redo Balloona, balloono reda, balloona redo, and reda baloono. The answer is the third one. Then the third section is sentence structure with ALL the rules of the second section. I am not even going to attempt to make an example. Then the final section is what tripped me up. To this day I don't know what the hell to do. They give you a row and a colum, then four pictures. You have to figure out from those, what the answer is. I remember the example being two tables as the answer, with tables on the top, and a bunch of weird symbols on the side. Somehow I was supposed to deduce that those combined were two tables. It was weird and unfair. I think I missed the instructions for it or something because I got the example wrong. And just like any test, you know if you get the example wrong you pretty much are screwed. In most tests, the question is which is a plant: a lion, a tiger, a bear, or a tree. But whatever. I took the test and got to the last section, got to the example, failed it, and was very upset that I couldn't figure it out, and that I'd be a civilian for the rest of my life. You can return to the original story now.
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