Oh boy, what a wild few days. It's 1:30 in the morning over here so I'm going to make this quick. They're working me hard here but I'm loving it. Where else do I get to prove on a daily basis that I am every bit the officer these NCOs want me to be and more?
Well, Tuesday rolled around and a lot of neat things happened. That morning, bright and early, or rather dark and cold and early, I took the PT test. I was a little worried about my performance especially since I hadn't done well at PT the morning prior but I was hoping for the best. And wouldn't you know it but I exceeded my expectations! I didn't do stellar, but I did perform better than I thought I would. So I guess I'll chalk that up as a win and put my sights on the next PT test. For my PT test on Tuesday I was able to complete 71 pushups in 2 minutes, 81 situps in 2 minutes, and a 2-mile run in 14:43 which gave me a total score of 275 out of a possible 300.
Then immediately following the PT test we got to take the DLAB: the Defense Language Aptitude Battery, a test that measures how well you can learn and understand languages. It was such a blast! The test was a complete trip and consisted entirely of made-up languages. The questions relied heavily on audio pronunciation and asked students to identify stress patterns in words, translate sentences into a made-up language using contrived rules of grammar, and describe various pictures in a made-up language using only a handful of examples as clues. It was like a giant puzzle, very cool. According to the instructor the maximum score possible on the DLAB is a 145, a passing score is 95, and I scored a 136! Pretty happy about that but we'll see if it means anything for my career. Right now it's just another really cool notch on my belt.
Also, for those who care, I finally found out which days I have off:
-11 to 14 Nov (Veterans Day)
-25 to 28 Nov (Thanksgiving)
-24 to 27 Dec (Christmas)*
-31 Dec to 03 Jan (New Years)*
-14 to 17 Jan (MLK)
-18 to 21 Feb (President's Day)
*Christmas and New Year's are a little odd because the Army's weird. Basically if I don't want to take any time off then I only have the two 4-day weekends listed above. If I'd like to actually take a vacation during Christmas then I either need to take leave (identical to taking vacation days) or agree to work at a recruiting station while I'm home or some combination of the two. So I haven't figured out yet what to do.
And lastly, I finally have an address at which I can receive any sort of mail or package. It is as follows:
51 Arizona St, PMB 208
Ft. Huachuca, AZ 85613
Damn, I can't seem to keep these short. Hope y'all are doing well!
Nathan congrats on your PT test and DLAB, you are so awesome!! I am completely fascinated by the DLAB training and test, it sounds so crazy awesome!! I am so glad to hear you are doing well, we really miss here. Take care and have fun. Love you!
ReplyDeleteThanks for doing a blog, son! Now I can find out something about your life! Don't apologize for making the blogs long--write more! Haha! Love you, son, and think about you all the time. Praying for you, too, of course.
ReplyDeleteI miss you, Chocolate Bear!
ReplyDeleteYou had me at the first paragraph... "where else do I get to prove on a daily basis that I am every bit the officers these NCO's need..." Yeah baby, that's what I'm talking about. That's the kind of confidence God wants a man to have!
ReplyDeleteThe photos look terrific. Thanks for posting. If it works for everyone, would you like to coordinate a Christmas dinner?
I love you son, and respect you in all you are doing.
-Dad