But something tells me that this will be it. I don't know if it's like, a cosmic feeling (like, it HAS to happen this time) or if it's just intuition based around how this past week has been (which I'll get to here in a second). I'm surprised that my usual lingering doubt that has accompanied me throughout this whole process isn't present today, or at all this week. I feel so strongly that come Monday the 11th, I'll be finally sitting down with a few of the Army's finest and pleading my case.
The same routine has applied all week: Long runs, hard workouts, mental jump-roping possible question scenarios; what will I say when asked this? Remember eye contact, remember posture, smile, but don't be too pleasant. Don't be adversarial, even if pushed in that direction. As Admiral Akbar would say "it's a trap!"
I have this one fear, a truly gripping, ice-cold fist around my heart-sort've fear, that I'll lock up while sitting in the chair at the board. They'll ask me something, and I won't be able to find the answer. I'll KNOW the answer, but I won't be able to dig it out of my brain in time, or when I do, it'll come out as gobbly-goop and I'll look retarded.
That's my number one fear right now.
But what affirms my suspicion that this is "it" is how frantic my recruiter, Sgt. Steve, has been this past week. All week, at least once a day, a guy who would, if ever, seldom contact ME (I was always contacting him) has been sending me texts, emails and the occasional phone call.
I guess my "good to go" packet, hasn't exactly been so.
I've had to furnish extra copies of college transcripts ("they're telling me they're too dark," Sgt. Steve told me) and when I couldn't ("Uh, you have my only copy, unless you want me to call my school and have them ship out another copy, but I don't know how long that will take...") I was told that he'd "make these work" meaning, ... I don't know what that means.
Yesterday tho, yesterday was a trial.
I had been on the road, running, for about 40 minutes when my phone chimed. Sgt. Steve had sent me a text wondering what the exact date of my enlistment with the CG was. When I got home a short while later, I texted him the date. He calls about two minutes later, asking about some sort of paperwork that shows I enlisted as an E3, PLUS! (And that's not all!) I had to re-write my essay on "Why I Want to be a US Army Officer."
"Uh, why?" I ask.
"'They' are telling me the original essay you wrote is 'too old.'" Ahh, huh.
The thing with the essay is that, you need a typed copy and a hand-written one. I'm told that it's because they want to make sure you wrote the essay and didn't get it from online someplace, but... seeing how I could easily just print one off from online and copy it by hand, I see this as a moot point.
More than likely, it's so the Army's Officer Candidate Selection Board can judge you on your handwriting. And my handwriting is embarrassingly bad.
At the same time all of this is unfolding in my sweaty, yet-to-be-showered lap, I get a call from Jill, who needs some important documents scanned and emailed to her for work.
Over fifty pages of documents.
I want to explode, my ears throb as my blood pressure spikes. Suddenly, what was going to be a mundane Wednesday consisting of me running, doing chores and errands, then going to the gym before my evening writing class, was now going to be a scramble to get a bunch of shit done that I hardly felt I had any reason to be doing.
But you know what? When I get into the Army (as an officer, knock on wood), this type of shit is going to happen all the time. I'll have nothing to do, and then suddenly, everyone in my chain of command is going to want something from me, and as fast as possible. It's all about adaptation.
So I set to work looking for, and scanning completely unrelated documents to two totally different people, trying my damndest not to cross cables and send one thing to the wrong person, all while typing out a short essay that I have the unenviable task of having to hand-write as soon as possible, while making it all fit on one piece of notebook paper, and legible, with my crap hand-writing.
The clock starts on this at about 1030... I wouldn't be mission: complete until about just after 3pm.
I finally submit my stuff to Sgt. Steve and tell him, just as a heads up, the hand-written essay is a bucket of awful. I had spent an hour on it alone, trying to make the words small enough so they all fit on one page of paper, and legible enough to read. Also, as soon as you screw something up (say, you meant to write "and" but wrote "the" instead) the whole project gets scrapped, crumpled up, and thrown into the waste basket. Countless times I had gotten halfway down the page, only to do that very same screw up, and have to start all over again.
So I contact Sgt. Steve and let him know not to get his expectations high on the hand-written copy.
"Jack," he starts. "I already wrote it out for you."
I'm sorry, what?
When I sent him a typed "rough draft (and I put that in quotes because it was more along the lines of a final draft, I just wanted him to make sure I had hit all the finer points and didn't sound too much like an asshole)" he took the liberty of hand copying it.
That son of a bitch.
I tell him that, I'm relieved and irritated (good naturedly), that he didn't tell me he was hand-writing out the essay, because it would've saved me some time in the end. He says that I can email him my hand-written essay if I want to, and I initially tell him I'm fine with him using his own work.
But then a thought comes across my mind....
I tell him, I'll send mine along, and I'll "trust [his] judgment" on picking out which one looks best. I can already taste those words, actually.
But with all this scrambling, at the last second, with a packet I've been told countless times was "good to go" I can only surmise that this HAS TO BE IT. We're closing in on the end zone, finally.
The board is scheduled for Monday and is being held at the UNH Dover campus. If all goes according to plan (Government Shutdown be-damned) I'll post one more time the night before, and then again afterwards.
Wish me luck.
Below, while attending my writing class, I drew out how my day was, in line graph form:
The 11th is my husband's birthday and I consider it one of the luckiest days of the year!!!
ReplyDelete