This
week has been fairly eventful – as in, full of events. I’ve had a special event
or meeting nearly every day. Most of them were purely business; I won’t bother
mentioning them here. But a few deserve special note:
On
Tuesday, the former SECDEF Chuck Hagel came to speak at the Kennedy School, and
beforehand he had a Q&A session with cadets and midshipmen which I was able
to attend. It was very interesting to hear his perspective, and it also
afforded me the chance to see/meet members of the other ROTC programs,
including a cadet from Texas whom I’d met at a Harvard event in San Antonio over
the summer.
On
Wednesday, Vice Admiral Cullom came to speak at our battalion lab. He was a SWO(N),
and his brief on the Surface Warfare community was interesting and very well-presented
(he understood the great merit of punctuating powerpoint slides with videos
early in the morning). In the evening he came back to MIT to join a few of us
for an informal discussion at one of the pubs near BU (I was technically the assistant
officer in charge), which was very enjoyable. It’s amazing how many Admirals
and other VIPs I’ve had the chance to meet during my time here.
Well, that
was the excitement of the week up until now. Today is my chance to catch a
short breather, and then we’re conducting qualification boards for the freshmen
all weekend, and I have to be present for all of them, so that will take up the
majority of Saturday and Sunday. I’m also headed back to Portsmouth tomorrow
morning for the second part of my commissioning physical. It’s been a very
ROTC-heavy week. So I’m taking my weekend a bit early; today is a study-work
day, but tonight I’m going to see Dr. Strange, which I’m looking forward to.
My
thesis is slowly taking shape; I can figure out the general flow of my background
research and somewhat how to parse all the different considerations, but I
haven’t had enough free time to just set aside a day and ponder it all until I
figure out what I want to say. Hopefully that will happen sometime in the next
couple of weeks; if not, maybe I can use the plane ride home for Thanksgiving.
At the moment, though, I usually just have enough time to get done my work for
the week ahead.
You
might be wondering what ever happened with that logic pset from last week. It
did not go well – but it didn’t go well for the vast majority of the class,
either, so I’m not too worried. We’ll figure it out eventually, and now that I
have the answer key, it’s much easier to make sense of. We’ll see how the next
problem set goes.
What
else? How about health and wellness? I’m a little sick; I don’t know if it’s
due to the weather change or the fact that I haven’t been getting as much sleep
as I need for the past few days. On top of that, being under the weather makes
me not hungry, and I have to keep reminding myself that man does not live by vitamin-C
supplement alone. Hopefully I can get some sleep over the weekend and it’ll
wear off. I did finish my first workout program – you can tell it was designed
for males; my upper and lower body strength are pretty out of proportion – and started
a new, more tailored, one, which is exciting.
That’s about
what’s happening here. And no, I didn’t do anything for Halloween; I stayed in
and studied. Hopefully in a couple of weeks, though, things will ease up, and I’ll
have time to plan a few trips and spend some productive time alone with my
thesis. I wish everyone a crisp and chipper November, and I’ll talk to you all
next week!
Pictures: I always have more pictures of foliage to share. :)
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