Struggling to Stay Awake...and a New Look

As the third week at COT rolled around, we were subjected to our second test, CWT #1 (Comprehensive Written Test). This one covered all of the testable material from lecture up to that point. We spent an agonizing weekend (aside from the spirit mission, of course) compiling all of the SOBs (no, not that -- Samples of Behavior, which were essentially the main points that we were supposed to take home from each lesson). Some of the lessons were easy to recall, but others, e.g. Principles of War and Tenets of Air and Space Power, were more cumbersome to memorize. Overall, though, we all did well; our whole flight passed the test, as did 97% of the class as a whole. Go Class 09-05!

After that, a lot of the rest of the week was spent in class again. Many days, we had up to 9 hours of class. It wasn't so bad when we could switch between Boyd and the flight room, but there were several times when we had 4 hours straight in Boyd. Cue the Jolly Ranchers and caffeine gum. During this week, we learned more about supervision, feedback, and the total awesomeness of the Air Force through its history and its role in the world today. These were definitely interesting lessons, but again, the drag of continual nights with less than 6 hours of sleep and hours upon hours in comfy red chairs led to tempting circumstances...

Don't worry, these are not Sidewinders.

Our fun exercise of the week was WELPS, the Wingman Exercise in Leadership Problem Solving. Before I move on, I have to admit that I made up that name. I mean, I know it was called WELPS, and I know it was something about wingmen and leadership, but I can't remember what the rest of the acronym stands for. That's the danger of using acronyms constantly, I suppose. Anyway, WELPS was a little like Project X in that we were put in teams of 6 to complete 20-minute missions, but this time, a leader and assistant leader were designated for each team. Also, the missions had more of an orienteering bent: we had to learn to find an azimuth, count our paces, and use hand signals, because the scenarios often involved enemies at close range waiting to fire. At one point I even got to use my belt as a tourniquet for a fellow team member who was shot in the leg by a sniper. I had a lot of fun at WELPS, and it seemed that our flight grew even more as a team.

Most WELPS briefings sounded like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book: "You have 20 minutes before the enemies arrive. HURRY!"

Week 3 also marked the first time we got to wear our blues, since our nametags had come in. It was really exciting; everyone looked so sharp! I think we all felt extra pressure to look good, too, because our marching became much cleaner any time we were wearing our blues. We were also subjected to the pain of pinning rank and insignia onto our full dress uniform. Again, without Lt Weller and a good ruler, we would have been completely lost. We had the opportunity to show off our good looks for flight photos and for our briefings. Each of us had to give a 5-9 minute briefing on a topic of our choosing; the only guidelines were that the topic needed to be confined to a single region of the world and that it needed to have some relation to the U.S. military. I chose to talk about India's space program. Go figure.

Sssssilly Sidewinderssssss showing off their sssssstuff.

The end of the week was marked by the PFA, the Physical Fitness Assessment, the real deal. We all had to do the push-ups, sit-ups, 1.5-mile run, and waist measurement again. Happily, it seemed that most of my flightmates were able to increase their scores from the PFB. I was excited because I shaved 20 seconds off my run, even though I felt dead tired and had already maxed out on the points I could get from the run anyway. We all felt proud of ourselves going into hall call #2 that afternoon. Although Sidewinder Flight did not win any awards, we were able to gloat about our falcon-stealing mission. I'd take that over an award any day. Also, hall call was exciting because we received second class privileges: that's right, we were able to leave base during the weekend.

It probably sounds ridiculous. We had only been at Maxwell for 3 class weeks, which is only 2 1/2 weeks total. What's the big deal about leaving base? Freedom. We could drive our own cars, wear our own clothes, eat anywhere and anything we wanted, loiter outside, walk (rather than march), and just be ourselves. It was easy to tell how well the Air Force had already trained us, though, because at restaurants and movie theaters, we couldn't stop saying ma'am and sir to everyone we talked to. We also tried, but mostly failed, to call each other by our first names. Rank and last name had become so familiar by then that it was hard to break the habit.

On Friday night, we went to a Mexican restaurant and just hung out. It was amazing. We laughed and joked giddily all night, enjoying our food and drinks on the patio in the perfect summer night air. We got to see each other in civilian clothes for the first time since the frantic TD-0 and TD-1, when clothes were the furthest things from our minds. It was such a bizarre sight to see flightmates look like normal people; we had only gotten to know each other in uniform, and it was hard to imagine at first what it would actually be like to know each other in a non-Air Force context. The next night, we continued to enjoy our freedom by eating at O'Charley's and then catching a movie at the theater. Despite another CWT looming on Monday, we were determined to take full advantage of our newfound freedom and the ability to be normal people for a few days.

Civilian clothes felt nice after only being allowed to wear uniforms for 2 1/2 weeks.

Sunday was another frantic day of studying. We had had our fun for the weekend; this was the day to hunker down and get ready for the looming CWT #2. We didn't completely forsake fun, though: some of us went to the base pool to study. I admit that we probably didn't study as hard as we could have, but it was nice to be in a more relaxed environment and be able to have fun and get work done at the same time. I was also able to go to church on base again. Each Sunday morning, Lt Puderbaugh and I headed to Chapel 1 for the Catholic Mass. The priest was awesome -- he incorporated church teachings, the military, and the readings of the week into each of his homilies. It was so cool to see how everything intertwined, and so compelling to hear him speak of it. Also, we enjoyed the donuts and coffee after Mass. It was another opportunity to act like normal people and socialize with others, something that was not possible during the tight meals of the first few weeks of COT.

Lt Puderbaugh and I were church buddies. It was really nice to have a fellow flightmate to go with each week.

A few of us stayed up late on Sunday night finishing our morale letters and getting in some last-minute studying for CWT #2. This may have been the only work night when we stayed up until mandatory lights-out at midnight. It was a heck of a finish to a very busy but exciting week, and we knew that it was the final push before the real fun began...