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I Love Days Like This

(Overcoming Challenges, The Cadet Experience, Class of 2012) Permanent link All Posts

Saturday, January 10, 2009

I love days like this – the day of formal room and wing. The official formal room and wing lasts from 0800 to 0900 on Saturday mornings, but the cleaning starts around Thursday through late Friday night (into the wee hours of Saturday morning). I didn’t like standing at attention this morning, waiting for my room to be inspected and anxious about the results. But I did like taking a four hour nap after liberty was granted and going out on liberty having finished the most grueling cleaning one may ever do. It is sort of like handing a research paper into your professor, or finishing a test and then being allowed to let your brain relax. I don’t like cleaning that much, but it’s funny how good of a time we have. Not only do we have to clean our rooms, but fourth class clean “common spaces” as well. I usually help clean the bathrooms, and since there are only five fourth class girls in my company, the guys help us clean our bathrooms. With the radio blasting, we sing, we clean, and we dance. I must say that I get more out of the bonding of cleaning a bathroom than I get out of physically cleaning and wiping down the walls and the toilets. And there is nothing like starting out the new semester by winning first place! Hoorah Gee-olf Company!

Monday, January 19, 2009

It’s been so cold outside! And in the two weeks since we have been back from Christmas break, we actually have had snow! We are currently in the time referred to as the “Dark Ages” – everyone is supposed to be somewhat depressed and gloomy after returning from Christmas break and being forced back into the school year. (The short days don’t help either!) But I am actually finding that this semester I am more confident and filled with a little more hope as we have some time off each month (except in April) and by May we have a week left of finals before summer training begins. I didn’t get to take the long weekend (for Martin Luther King’s Day) because I had a swim meet yesterday, but I am at my friend Rebecca’s host family’s house today and I went out on liberty Friday night. On Friday, we went to the mall, and then walked to Olive Garden and ate. It was ridiculously cold, snowy, and late and we were trying to make the bus at Target at 10:20. If not, we would be stuck for another hour with nowhere to shop, as all the stores were closed for the evening. We cut it close…too close. As we stepped out of Olive Garden, we saw the libo van at Target and watched it as it slowly drove away. We “ran”…the libo van would leave and cross the highway to the shopping center with Michael’s and Borders and then back down to the intersection we were running toward before heading on. My friend, Katie, was ahead, with her bags, purse and extra breadsticks from Olive Garden in hand, running through a patch of fresh snow. Suddenly, there were breadsticks strewn across the snow; the bag broken. I swiped the bread off the ground and we arrived at the corner as the van was slowing – out of breath, frozen cold, laughing hysterically, and so happy that we had made it.

Friday, January 23, 2009

We had a comedian come tonight. It was pretty interesting…not the show in and of itself but the whole idea and presentation. The comedians were “funny”, but the funniest thing about the night was as we say in English class…they appealed to the wrong audience. Things “normal college students” find hilarious, we didn’t find particularly humorous. For instance, since we have such a serious honor concept, making fun of someone being disrespectful or someone cheating is not particularly funny – someone here could get kicked out for that.

The funny stuff was the ad lib from us the true audience, bringing in our pasts and the things we all could relate to and thought was funny, smallpox for example. A writer writes for an audience…he knows his audience inside and out if he is good. Though I know this is a little drastic for a comedian who wants to tell a couple of jokes, get a few laughs, and boost our moods, it is the truth. We have our own stupid things we laugh at here that no one else would dream of. The comedians found it funny that we laughed at things that no other audience had ever laughed at.

Katie.M.Schumacher@uscga.edu

More about Katie.

Posted by Leann Strickland at 2/7/2012 3:58 PM