Cadets on leave struggle to survive without Giant Voice System

Cadets are guided to lunch by the giant voice system

Cadets on leave are in a state of panic.  At the Academy, daily ques are given to cadets via the Falcon Voice system to direct them through their day.  In the morning, a 5 minute warning to MAF followed by a start to MAF announcement are made. A bugle sounds for class, ACQ, MCQ, taps, reveille, and lunch. When cadets go home, they find it difficult to adjust to a life of relative independence.

We followed one cadet, Errand Queen, for the story. "I was lying in bed when I noticed the time was 8:15 AM. I realized I had missed MAf" stated Queen, a half assing 19er.  "I texted my element leader, but no response.  Accountability is a growing issue at USAFA" remarked Queen.  When asked how he responded, he stated that he would be writing himself a form 10, but would not provide any further information.

Another cadet, Kayla Elms, stated that lunch time was quite confusing for her as well.  "After I finished memorizing the details of the noon meal, I realized there was no information update to discuss the formation" Elms stated.  "I frantically assumed it had been cancelled and productively used the time to get ahead".

Disgruntled cadet Steve Miller discussed issues with his sleeping schedule.  "It felt like I had been up awhile, but I thought little of it.  Then, I saw the sun rise.  It was then I realized that TAPS never played" remarked Miller. "I find it difficult to sleep without the sweet sound of TAPS, and my parents do not want to play it for me" He stated.

Another cadet who wished to remain anonymous was spotted standing at attention at 4:45 outside of his home in Tennessee.  "This is when retreat normally sounds" remarked the anonymous cadet.  "I'd like to think that even though I can't hear the national anthem, it's playing somewhere, so I'd better stop and honor it" he continued.

As Cadets return to the academy, the sweet comforting sound of the Falcon Giant Voice system gives them hope. "This is a test of the base giant voice system. this is only a test" blares the loudspeakers. Cadets erupt into a thunderous applause as their hero returns. Mitches tables were hoisted higher than ever, and for some unknown reason, all the freshmen were frantically chugging hot sauce.  "The Giant Voice System reminds me what I'm working towards while I'm here" remarked Queen.  "I can rest assured knowing that I'm safely under it's care".

6 day week mentality

It's the beginning of February here at the Air Force Academy.  I was reading an article that rates February among the top 10 worst words in the English language because of it's misplaced R. Perhaps that explains the start to our month...

We just finished up a Saturday AM Inspection (SAMI) that wasted most of our weekend. So naturally this school would ease up on the gas right? No. And if you know much about USAFA, that probably doesn't surprise you.  In fact, this week is a 6 day school week.

There is a convention of everybody who works at the academy, or at least I would like to believe this is true.  They inform everyone of their intent to have a 6 day school week where everyone goes to class as usual on saturday, and request that each person creates an event to waste our time.

First, we start with the athletic department.  Although their ranking (the PEA) is worth little more than a "nice job!" sticker from your kindergarten PE teacher, they run two brutal fitness tests referred to as the AFT and PFT.  AD decides these tests will both take place during the same week for the first time ever, and it will be during the 6 day week.

Next up is the Cadet Wing.  As cadets can never be too prepared, they create an exercise called exercise "swift falcon" and put the whole school on FPCON Charlie.  This means less parking and lots of recalls.  An exciting time to be alive, no doubt.

The Sexual Assault Prevention Response group (SAPR) was not missing out on their chance.  While I in no way intend to insult them or their work, they might have picked the worst possible time to schedule a 1.5 hr briefing.

The faculty, despite getting an extra day of school, was not done yet.  Nope, this week naturally has to occur on lessons 9-12, which happens to be "GR week", which means we all take a ton of tests and write papers and such.  This is of course exciting because I have no weekend to look forward to.

As I return to my room after taking the PFT in the snowy windy sub freezing temperature, I wonder if noon meal formation will be cancelled.  The answer, of course, is no.  We form up in the fog and I can't even see most of the formation, but we're there anyways.  I get to mitches and my frozen ears are not at all shocked to hear the news that a generic slab of chicken and subpar rice is for lunch because of what is now being called the "six day week mentality". It essentially means that any and all attempts to succeed or find happiness will be brutally crushed by this school.

Cold Cadets traverse the frozen TZO 6 times this week

A cadet goes to get butter.  He says "wow, there's only this crappy smart butter. couldn't they at least get some decent butter for this crappy meal?" I tell him "It's the 6 day week mentality, man". He laughs. Even though I've never explained it to him, he knows.  we all know.

Aim high, warriors.

4000 training the 3 degrees

It's a new dawn at USAFA, and training staff has so much in store for us. If you're curious as to our last battle with training staff, see the previous post relating to morning PT. Now for the backstory. The training staff, as it were, despises 4 degree training in all it's forms. Despite the last 58 or so years of training freshman, it has now become a disenrollment level offense to train or challenge them in any way, shape or form. Instead, the wing has placed the training focus on a class that has already earned recognition: the 3 degrees of 2019.

This morning, a random 2 degree with the authority of an acorn developed a life changing revelation: We should make the 3 degree cadets take K-tests.  The same tests taken as a freshman.  He must have missed my prop and wings, but what can I say... I've only had them for 8 months.  Subsequently, another lad sent us an email requiring our presence at a briefing.  Instead of ending it with a simple have a great night, he opted to launch numerous threats at our class should we dissent.

Many classes debate who had the hardest freshman year.  Mostly, they're the same and there is very little separation.  However, there is one argument that cannot be discredited: 2019 has the hardest sophomore year.  And what a time it has been.

One of the upper 2 insists that the 2019ers return to the strips

We return from winter break for another high flying semester of Air Force academics.  Will the condition for the 3rd class cadets improve? Absolutely not. Instead, we are told that we can no longer have non-issued bedding of any kind. My fitted sheet is now a luxury I have not earned, and I'm pretty sure I already used the issued sheets as napkins.  Oh well...

As we trudge towards recognition for the class of 2020, I hope that my class can enjoy a second recognition of sorts, one in which we get our old privileges back. I guess 3 degree year really is the forgotten year.

Monerogenesis Theory

Monerogenesis Theory

Keep in mind, that although this article is titled as "theory", it is as factual as facts get. This is a record how our species came to be. You can toss all that Darwinism BS out with the rest of the riffraff. Modern science has shown that he was using the most impure form of PCP available anywhere in the New World when his was staring at birds, but that's another factual theory for another factual day.

Now, try to read this theory to the tune of the Big Bang Theory opening theme. I bet you can't, especially because I won't format it to make it easy for you:

A Typical Medium Aged Bacterium

This Earth was formed from randomly flying and hilariously colliding space bullshit  around four and a half billion years ago, a date which I frequently think will have increased since I last referenced it, but never seems too. Lightning struck some mud, coacervates were formed, and life sprung up in the form of microscopic bacterium. For billions of years, these bacteria propagated and lived as fulfilling lives as they could muster under the tyrannical reign of the Sun. Until the year 1974, when all of the bacterium evolved at once. When this evolution event took place, the bacteria had different ages, hence referred to as bacterial age. A difference in age on the order of mere microseconds became the difference in the near instantaneous transformation into a six year old man and a 46 year old man, while differences of seconds made the difference between a man and a cow and a 15th century Gothic structure Western Europe. The youngest of these bacteria transformed into disgusting bacteria. They were the same as before, but now were the kind with little hairs all over them.

Events before that occurred before the year 1974 are one of two phenomena:

Shared bacterial memories. Some imagined human events have a counterpart that did occur in the primordial world of bacteria. For instance, the moon landing was actually the bacteria to human memory evolution of the first bacteria to summit an undersea coral formation that was several meters higher than the surrounding coral formations. So I suppose in a way you could say that the moon landing wasn't fake.

The second force behind these made up events is why I inform of this factual theory today:

Indisputable Evidence of a Government Cover-up

There exists a shadow government the rules over us with evil and tyranny rivaled only by that of the Sun. This government lies to us to hide the existence of our bacterial past, while conspiring with the disgusting hairy bacteria to revert all of existence back to its bacterial form. As I type this in my underwear, experiments are being conducted jointly with the bacteria at a secret underground base that the Air Force for some reason operates under Groom Lake, Nevada. The have already succeeded in making people much hairier than they would have been otherwise. Using my own means and expenses I have even gathered photographic evidence of these experiments in the form of very blurry and underdeveloped photographs. The end goal of this conspiracy: to once again make all life subservient to the Sun. However, there is a way to stop this plot.

Among all of the allies and evil organizations the bacteria have formed, none is more vital to their plot than the EPA. Almost all lifeforms require a supply of nitrogen to respirate properly. Optimal performance requires a one-hundred percent concentration of diatomic nitrogen present. However, the bacteria require a wretched chemical covertly referred to in secret experiments as "oxygen". Oxygen deprives normal organisms of full functionality, as well as reduces human life spans by up to six-hundred years. The EPA is all that stands between us, a healthy atmosphere, and the destruction of an evil plot to rejuvenate solar subjugation. So I say, dismantle its ass.

Method of Atmospheric Ejection

As a side note the next sudden bacterial evolution is expected to (as is certainly will) occur in the year 2035, at which point all life on Earth as well as other random objects will be thrown into space in a mechanism similar to the bouncers Sonic the Hedgehog uses to get to elevations that would normally be unreachable without the presence of strip of land that curves gently into a vertical wall. At this time, a new generation will begin. The question is, how will they remember us? As heroes, or as slaves to the largest concentration of mass in the Solar System?

Pull Breath, Kick Glide

Pull Breath, Kick Glide. These are the voyages of the 3 degree mandatory swim class. our 8 lesson mission.... to swim lots of laps while a bunch of stubborn swim coaches yell at us repeatedly.  They keep telling me that I can swim faster, but they have yet to prove it to me.

It's a frigid morning. I had hoped to sleep in, but it's my swim go, so I go down to the pool.  I form up in my swimsuit and salute a shirtless lieutenant and say "class reports ready to learn". He responds with "ready to swim". I concede that my terminology will never please AD, I plunge into the water, and immediately my acorns become sesame seeds.  Fortunately, this makes me more streamlined for swimming.  I remark at the lack of shirtless women, only dudes, and then I plunge my gorgeous face into the water.

We begin every class with the 250 meter swim.  It's an amazing opportunity for me to show my teacher that I am not part of any gilled species and there is a reason that we are in the AIR force.  After we proceed to learn and practice the legendary, "life-saving" efficiency strokes.  There are three.  The breathstroke, the elementary backstroke, and the sidestroke.

The breathstroke is a very well known swim maneuver.  The shirtless lieutenant proceeds to demonstrate the moves for the class.  First, he pulls his arms through the water.  Then he breathes as his head breaks the surface of the mini chlorine infected ocean.  Next he kicks his legs in the fashion of a whip kick, and proceeds to end the sequence with a steady glide.  Hence, the 'pull, breathe, kick, glide' was brought to life.  The elementary backstroke is pretty much the same except upside down.  The objective is to drown you while you can still see the light of day above the water.  The sidestroke is again meant to deprive you of comfort and air while you attempt to streamline on your side while your body disobeys and sinks, your ears fill with water, and the living water attempts to take your beating heart once again.

Swim class at the University of the Sciences And the Fine Arts (USAFA) is no joke.  AD takes this course very seriously, just like everything else.  I hope to improve the efficiency of my newly-forming gills and use them to support the greater good of mankind.

I'm excited for the opportunity to increase my warrior ethos through the next USAFA aquatics class I will take called Water Haze.  Check back soon for another aquatic adventure of just 'nother cadet.

Thanks for reading, if you're actually reading this for some odd reason.

Much love.

-Just'nothercadet

Flying towards PROG

It's October at the United States Air Force Academy.  We all know what this means... lots of work and really nothing else to do.  Weather that is cold one day and hot the next.  the return of mandatory A-jackets on the Tzo. Need I go on?

A cadet prepares for PROG

Soon our prog grades will come back disappointing, the dark ages will descend upon us, and Mitches will bring back jerked turkey. Tell then, all we can do is reflect on this extraordinary grind that lead us to this point.

Today, I went to differential equations, where I wrote out high flight and drew a smiley face on my pop quiz. I failed. then, I had a pop quiz in MSS. I got a 40%. I turned in my English sonnet late.  I cost my squadron 11 points in noon meal formation, 10 for not bringing the unit colors and 1 for moving at attention.  I received a C for IP points in the easiest class in existence, MSS.  I spent 2 hours on my matlab regrade, only for it not to be able to publish. I received no points for my efforts. I comprehended no information from ECE.

The cadet wing was also informed we would be restricted by tomorrow if the class crest was not returned by the freshman.  It's a 3 day weekend, and my family flew out.

Despite the failures of this day, I remain focused on one goal: maintaining a prog GPA high enough for my family to include me on the Christmas card, for USAFA to retain me, and to wear around that sweet little star that says you're on the deans list. I also hope to pass the sleep quiz the PEERS sent out earlier. That's important too.

The other extraordinary part about prog is that we get to do midterm feedback. I've already taken the time to destroy my classes and their brutal grading in the feedback links.  I've spammed the squadron and wing google docs with all the sarcastic feedback I can think of.  All that lies ahead is the actual formal feedback procedure.  Let's see how low I get ranked this semester. To put it in perspective, there are fewer 3 digs in my squadron than my ranking last year (some ranked ahead of me quit USAFA), so it will only be better this year.

My MSS (military and strategic studies) teacher just called on me as I was writing this.  I said something about attacking oil.  Works every time.

Valor to Victory,

JustAnotherCadet

Training Staff Strikes Back

The day was September 28th. The time: immediately following lunch and cutting into my afternoon nap. The swallows groggily filed into the SAR for what they anticipated would be another action packed M5 briefing. Strapped in, quiet, waiting, innocent to what was about to occur. It was, and always will be remembered as, morning PT.  A genius concoction by perhaps the most foolish training staff ever assembled.

The Swallow Seven training staff announces morning PT 

(CS07 photo archive)

96 swallows watched the training staff assume command at the front of the room.  As the eyes of the try-hards and the huahs lit up, the other 94 of us sat in utter silence. Our minds raced. Even for the kiss-ups who often assemble at M5 briefs to assert their dominance and obtain higher MPA's, this was too far.

"You may think I am just taking 2, 30-minute periods of your morning away from you each week. Wrong," remarked one of the training staff.

He spent the next 30 minutes explaining how that was exactly what he would be doing. I guess you can make that 3 30 minute periods for the week. Now don't get me wrong. I enjoy feats of strengths as much as the next guy. What I don't enjoy is waking up early to travel to the quad with my whole flight and marvel at the beautiful concrete as I do some jumping jacks and then go to class sweaty and without breakfast.

Then, in an even more genius move, they decided we need MORE briefings. One extra per week, actually. If that's not great enough, they also announced that to compensate for this extra training, there would be LESS freshman training. So in these thirty minutes we earned morning PT, more briefings, and less badass freshmen stuff that all of swallow seven's hardcore 3-digs went through. The least they could have done is re-award us the Air Force training ribbon. All we have left to do is hope. If you're out there and reading this, avenge us. Quickly.

Wing at ease.