Anticipation Apr 3-9th

Another week, another exam passed. NSS kicked my butt. I went in there running off 1 hour of sleep, a cup of coffee, and just prayed that I recognized the information. I did second-guess myself on quite a few questions but I still prevailed! Being that I was drained I was not thinking about any work besides going to sleep when I got back to my room. On the plus side that trip to Atlanta is looking nice this weekend.

Now before I get this much needed sleep that I have been missing we have a major event that evening. It was going to the Admiral’s house for a semi social evening. It is nothing new because every BDOC class on both east coast and weat coast are “invited” to the Admiral’s house of the region for Surface Warfare. Easiest way to say this is the “big boss” of surface navy for east and west coast. That night was pretty nice and I can say I’ve met my 4^th Admiral in just 4 months of being a commissioned officer!

The lessons we are learning right now is Division Officer Fundamentals. I thought NSS was bad but this section has so much information and too many acronyms. It is really teaching me how to understand the systems present for my sailors and I. Big thing is that I need to keep everything that could possibly be put in my record up to date. I am now a real adult and responsible for my career and noticing any discrepancies.

You can only discus work so much and there are things I cannot do until I actually report to my crew. The information presented to me of all the other task I am in charge of just means that I need to take time out and play on all these systems. The “B” in BDOC stands for basic so they only scrape the surface of everything we need to know.

I will push a lot of that stress to the side and just enjoy that I passed my exam and Atlanta is a few days away. One of my friends who is also military and I went to this grilled cheese spot. We have been planning this meal for a week and the day has finally came. Now they didn’t sell some bread and melted cheese but there was definitely bread and melted cheese in the mix lol. I must say that the sandwich and fries I had lived up to the hype of what he told me. Better part is that they aren’t cheating you because neither of us were able to touch the second half of the sandwich (he’s bigger that me). All that meant in my book was that I have some lunch for tomorrow.

This week I also ended up trying something way out of my norms. One of the girls in my class told me that there was a lady teaching Zumba at the gym everyday at 5:30. I haven’t done Zumba since 10^th grade and that was in a closed area. I arrived to zumba thinking that the lady was teaching in a workout room…NOPE. Right in the middle of the gym (basketball court style gym), this woman has her huge speaker, colorful gear on and literally flagged me down when I walked in. Now I thought it was a joke of where we were going to be dancing but no we were in the middle of the court dancing. The people surrounding us who were lifting weights or on the machines had the same impression I did. I did feel super awkward at first since it was only 4 of us total dancing but if I never had confidence before that surely boosted it. The lady treated it as a real class with so much enthusiasm and all that yelling and clapping lol.

That class made me question every ounce of rhythm I swore I had. As soon as I got good at one move she transitioned. I looked foolish but didn’t care, I had fun while looking foolish. Cool thing about this was after the class I spoke with her and she is an African American Marine Corps Officer that loves Zumba. I would have never knew the Marine part because I usually expect them to look angry and never dress in bright colors. You hear Marine and think the only thing that makes them happy is giving everyone an angry look, yelling, shooting, and working out not dressed in bright colors teaching Zumba. Officers do have lives outside of what branch they are in and what they do for a living. Plus the female marines that I have met in the past can be a pitbull in public but have super girly lifestyle when not saving the world.

Am I Ready?

Knowing that my job is so much bigger than having my own division is kind of nerve racking.  Will I be a good leader? Will my division be successful? What if I mess up? There is much more to the surface and the question I think to myself is am I actually ready to be this great leader. We are fortunate enough to have panels from chiefs and other junior officers so that we can pick their brains. As many questions that we could ask we still have to remember that everyone’s experience will always be different but good advice will help us in the long run.

Of course being a good leader is important but everyone has heard about what the US has recently done to Syria. That’s really what can get any of us new ensigns nervous regardless if our ship did it or not.  Shockingly there are a few people here at the school that are on the two ships that did launch those missiles. Even though they are in school they have a lot on their plates on what they shall encounter in the future once school is over. It is events like this that will make any person nervous of what the future holds for them.

Crew Link Up😝

The day has finally came and we are headed to Atlanta. I got out of class and hour early, had my bags packed, and got enough rest so that I can drive my portion. This trip is pretty important for many reasons: first major girls trip since all of us graduated college (except little T shes a year younger than us), Candis' birthday, and this will be the last time big T will get to be with us before she goes on deployment. Either way we all are together minus Kay and this weekend was epic. It was like we never left each other last August. Cool part is there were other officers there too! Melanin everywhere this weekend even though most of us will have to go back to our military lives, different jobs, or school on Monday morning.

The birthday girl enjoyed her time, I had a great time and loved being with the girls and their shenanigans. That Sunday I think we all realized that we have gotten old and probably partied too hard.  Since we all have real jobs that we “treated” ourselves this weekend with no regrets. You do what you want when you're popping, right? This is one of many trips that we will make as the crew and I already know it will get better each time especially when we all have our warfare pins and rank up. No one will be able to tell us nothing by then lol. We survived FAMU and all of us are surviving in the real world. It's the little weekends like this that make any stress that we are going through not matter for the small amount of time that we are all together.