Week 2: Death By Powerpoint Cont'd...

First of all, for everyone who has wanted to see a picture of me in my uniform, here it is, not the best photo but it'll have to do for now! 

So death by power point as really set in.  Yesterday we had a 'leaders and communication' lecture that lasted into the afternoon followed by an older gentleman who was an entomologist and talked about arthropods for an hour and a half...hilarious!  (mostly bugs we might encounter in the middle east).  He was so excited to speak to us about something, you could tell he was passionate about, he was giddy and smiled the entire time.  Then we had two more briefings that I can't even remember the topic they were so boring!  Today I went to the dental clinic so no PT for me!  Myself and two other guys from my plattoon all had to go, I was the only one with a car so I drove us there, or at least attempted to.  We got lost rather quickly after the roads they told us to take were close for a company run.  The map they gave us was also horribly mislabeled and wrong and the dental clinic wasn't even listed.  So after lots of google searching and phone calls we got ourselves in the generall viscinity but still could not locate the building.  A quick stop in the shopette for one last attempt for directions and we made our way there, assuming we would be the last of the 20 of us from the company to arrive.  We soon came to realize that only one person had arrived before us!!  Still late but not the latest!  After that we had several different JAG officers brief us the entire day on different topics, some very interesting, so incredibly boring.  Hopefully I learned a little something! 

Few things I have learned so far in this course: NO FRATERNIZATION!  We get a lecture on this almost daily in some form or another, and the fastest way to ruin your career is to start a relationship with an enlisted soldier.  Second fastest way to ruin your entire career and lose your RN license is drink and drive.   

Something else that's important to know: some of the branches have different ranks, and to make matters worse, they all have their rank on different places on the uniform.  The Army puts it right in the middle of the chest, easy to find, easy to see, the Air Force is on the sleeve, not easy to see from a distance coming head-on, the Navy...well, we're still trying to figure that one out.  It's all very confusing, we think it's on the collar but often times see other emblems there as well.  Hard to salute someone when you can't figure out their rank that quickly!