Is it still considered a vacation if you are unemployed?
Posted by Gypsy on Feb 28, 2007
I recently spent five awesome days in New York City, with a side trip to New Jersey for an Oscar party/poker game, attending my first View Askew vacation of the year. This vacation celebrated the one year anniversary of my first VA vacation where I actually connected with other people from the message board. The whole weekend centered around the NYC Comicon, which my lazy ass refused to get up early to go to, so for me the weekend centered around the surrounding events and meet-ups as well as just relaxing with friends. The trip started off at dinner at Junior’s, a restaurant near Times Square with some of the best cheesecake I ever had. I went with Crystal, Ed, Adam, Joe and Nicole and even though I was exhausted from taking the red-eye the night before, I still had an amazing time.
The next day, Brett and I decided to do some sightseeing and head downtown to Ground Zero, a site I haven’t been near since 1999. While we were there we went to the visitor’s center and got to see some artifact’s taken from the fallen World Trade Center. An interesting and emotional experience to say the leave. After that it was time for dinner at Virgil’s, Adam’s favorite BBQ joint (again in Times Square) and where he takes everyone when they are in NYC. Diners included Jon, Dom, Crystal, Nicole, Gavin, Adam, Joe, me, Brett and Matt (needing to be different by kneeling):
As with every event, the fun really happens at night, and this event was no exception. After catching up on sleep the next day, we all head off for the evening’s events at a bar called Stitch, where we had the Taming of the Askew, which was basically a fancy name for a night of drinking and debauchery. I’ll refrain from posting the more scandalous photos (not that there are any, of course) and stick to this tame one of Nicole and I.
Again, a full day of recover was required before heading to New Jersey for my last night on the East Coast. The night was meant to be spent playing poker and watching the Oscar’s, but somewhere in the night I forgot all about poker in favor for Oscar fun and lots of wine drinking, as can been seen by the wreckage Ming is looking through:
And the causes of said wreckage: Amy, Matt, Shane, Jen and me (note the glass we are using as an ashtray and the plastic wine glasses, we are so classy):
All in all, it was an awesome weekend from which I’m still recovering from lack of sleep. Check out all the photos on my Flickr page.
And yes, I’m working on another installment of the series I’ve been writing. I just need one more day to recover.
Looking back, part 3
Posted by Gypsy on Feb 19, 2007
Getting a job as a journalist in the Army isn’t easy. It’s considered one of the “smart MOSs” because you have to do well on the military entrance exam to get it. Beyond that, often the career counselors at the processing station and recruiters often don’t mention it mainly because they don’t know about it. In all his years as a career recruiter, my recruiter had never put in a journalist until me. Of course, I have to be different, so I refused to sign until they gave me the job. Not once did I do this, but twice. I figured I might as well do something with all those English and writing classes I had been taking at FLCC.
The school for journalists is at Fort Meade, Maryland. It’s the Defense Information School and is where all military public affairs people go to learn about telling the military’s story. And that would be my home for 13 weeks as I worked with people in all branches of the military to learn my craft. Arriving there was pretty uneventful. We got there late in the day, got smoked a little bit, filled out paperwork and settled into our rooms. On the first day of school, we marched the eighth of a mile or so to the school house and joined our fellow students. There were 48 of us, most straight out of basic training or boot camp. Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. One of the first things they said to us was that not all of us would pass because the class was going to be hard and we were going to have to work hard to make it through. They then split us up into 4 sections. We would take classes as a large group, but for the more intensive parts of the class, we would work in smaller groups of 12. Each day, at the end of the day, we would march back to the company area and be released for the day.
It was one day in the second week, as we were coming back from lunch for a class with everyone, that I sat next to this cute Marine. We spent every break, and even some of the lesson time, chatting and joking back and forth. As we were walking out of the schoolhouse, he asked me when I was going to dinner. I told him after formation and asked if he wanted to join me. From then on, Jeremy and I were nearly inseparable. We ate lunch and dinner together everyday, since that was all I could really do at the time. When soldiers first get to job school, we are under nearly the same rules as in basic training. No civilian clothes, no going off post and strict curfews. At 4 weeks, all of these restrictions are taken away except that we could only leave post on the weekends and could even spend one night a weekend off post. So for two weeks, we could only spend meals together and even then I was always in some sort of uniform.
Once I finally had the freedom to actually leave post, every weekend Jeremy and I would get away. Most weekends were spent in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, where most of the students at DINFOS would go to escape. The longer weekends we would go to Washington DC. The days we couldn’t get away we would spend at the mall or hanging out on post enjoying each other’s company. Some weekends, when we were still on post, we would wake in the mornings and run around the golf course and many evenings were spent sitting under the tree by his barracks talking until I had to go in. DINFOS romances were a standard joke among the cadre and students who were in the longer courses. Romantic relationships built among students because most of us were fresh out of training and young and horny. There were couples who even got married before their classes would end, which became a running joke between the two of us. Our relationship was just fun and it was understood we would part at the end of the class, which made our jokes even funnier to us.
Even after we had professed our love for each other, we still made the jokes. Mid-way though the cycle, we were given our new duty assignments, mine sending me to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and his sending him to Camp Pendleton, California. But the jokes had become half serious and the thought of breaking up started to sound awful to us. One evening, while sitting at the Hard Rock Cafe in the Inner Harbor, the jokes went from half serious to completely serious and we got engaged. Within two days he had given me the most beautiful ring I had ever owned and soon after we told our parents and made plans to finally meet each other’s parents, mine at graduation and his after.
In early August, we finally graduated. Graduation from job school is an exciting time for soldiers. The Army is the most strict of all the branches of service when it comes to troops in training. It’s not until we finally graduate from job training that we are finally officially soldiers. It’s both wonderful and scary. Wonderful, because we all finally get a break. This is when we finally get to take leave and visit family. This is also when we can finally be soldiers and not have to be under the constant watchful eye of a cadre of drill sergeants. But scary in that we now have to be a part of the real Army. We are now at risk for deployment. And we now have to go out there and actually do the job we were trained to do. And we have to do it all with people we have never met before in a place we’ve never been before. Exciting and scary.
Looking back, part 2
Posted by Gypsy on Feb 15, 2007
Want to force a group of total strangers to work as a unit? Throw them in a barracks, take away nearly all contact with anyone not in that group and make them work together for 9 weeks. Throw in a bunch of authority figures screaming and yelling at everyone and mission accomplished. After more than 200 years, this country’s military has it down to a science.
To say basic training was culture shock is downplaying it. I had spent my last few months of freedom partying and smoking two packs of Marlboro reds a day. A lot of other people had spent it working out and getting ready. But I was quick to adapt and even had a good time, with the exception of the nights we spent sleeping outside in a tent made of two shelter halves.
The journey from civilian to soldier is only nine weeks long, but in that nine weeks I learned so much. I learned how to take apart and clean my weapon, how to create a semi-dry place to sleep with only the light from stars and the moon, and how to keep myself motivated and working even when my mind and body were so tired I wanted to collapse. There was never a time to rest. Even on Sunday mornings, when the other platoons in my company were enjoying some personal time and a chance to chill, my platoon was on the drill pad getting a preview of the next week’s training. My drill sergeant wanted to make sure we were more than prepared. Especially since the War on Iraq had officially begun on March 18, 2003, not five weeks after we got to training.
Basic training culminated with a three day and two night field training exercise we would have to march to and from, starting hours before dawn. The memories from this are the most vivid for me. This is when we were tested on everything we had learned during the previous weeks. But it wasn’t all work. Or at least it didn’t seem that way. Somewhere after midnight on the first night, we were attacked. The drill sergeants, deciding to have some fun with us, kidnapped a couple soldiers. It was on from there, with us trying (and failing) to kidnap a drill sergeant the next night.
Waking up that third day left us with one more task to complete before we officially met the requirements to pass basic training. A 15 km ruck march with full gear. While waiting for the other platoons to get ready, my platoon was given a chance to rest in the shade and actually relax. After nine weeks together, we’d all gotten to know each other pretty well and before long a few of the more comedic soldiers in the unit began doing their impressions of other soldiers and of our drill sergeants and commander. Luckily, the drill sergeants were in a good mood, not only laughing along but making the soldiers do their impressions of people from other platoons over the radios so the other drill sergeants could enjoy them as well.
I think they were just letting us have a little fun because they knew how much the rest of our day was going to suck. Around 8 p.m., we set out to walk back to the battalion area. Mind you, 15 km is 9.3 miles, so it wasn’t going to be an easy or a fast walk. It was hard and often the only thing that kept my feet moving was knowing that when it was over I’d be done. And I’d get to finally sleep. Exhausted, tired, sweaty and cold we arrived back shortly after midnight, only wanting to sleep, and were told it would have to wait. There was a formation once all the companies had returned and one more was still on their way.
Not knowing what we were in for, we dropped gear, turned in our weapons and head up to the battalion field. But it didn’t look like the same field we spent our mornings exercising in. Instead, there was a large projector screen, a podium, the battalion guidon and an American flag. This wasn’t just a formation but a ceremony to celebrate another cycle of civilians becoming soldiers.
I wish I could describe how emotional that night was for me. And how motivating it was. I don’t remember a single thing that the battalion commander said in his speech. I don’t remember a single image from the video we watched. But I also don’t remember how tired I was that night. All I remember was how proud I was to have finally accomplished something in my life. How excited I was when my drill sergeants came up to me and congratulated me for making it through training.
The next week was spent cleaning our gear and rehearsing for the final graduation. There was excitement in the air as we all got ready to walk across the field at graduation with our families watching. We were finally soldiers.
Looking back, part 1
Posted by Gypsy on Feb 13, 2007
Yesterday, four years to the day from when I left Western New York for basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., I became a civilian again. As I stood in front of my company yesterday morning and listened my commander read the certificate for my Army Commendation Medal, I thought back on what it took for me to get to this point and how the last four years have changed me.
More than five years ago, I met this guy. I was 19 and he was kinda cute. His name was Ian. When we met, he had already enlisted and was heading off to basic training himself in little more than a month. At the time, I was flunking out of college, working two waitressing jobs and living in a crappy studio apartment partying it up. But over the weeks, as he told me why he had enlisted, and it sounded more and more logical with each day. So one day, I got up and just walked into a recruiter’s office and within a week I up at the processing station signing on the dotted line, taking my oath and given a date to leave for basic training. That was fall of 2001.
Unfortunately, due to mistakes made by me, I was unable to leave that February day in 2002. At the time, I thought that my life was over. By then I was counting on the Army to get me out of my small town and off doing something with my life. When things got better and I could finally try again, it seemed like everything was working against me. The doctors at the processing station wanted nothing to do with me and no matter how many times I sent them documentation saying I was healthy enough to join, they just weren’t having it. But, after a discouraging six months, they were finally willing to see me. Anyone less motivated would have just given up, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted it more than anything. This experience would see me though many bad days during the last four years.
Finally, nearly one year after that first visit to the processing station, in September 2002, I went back and was able to enlist again. My new ship date? Exactly 364 days after the original one. Fearing something would hinder me again, my recruiter had me checking in nearly weekly just to make sure I was still able and willing to ship. This time, nothing was going to stop me.
I can’t even begin to explain how I felt the day I left for basic training. Saying goodbye to my family was probably easier for me than for them because I was always looking for a way out of my hometown. For the rest of my life, I will always remember watching my father hold back tears while hugging me and telling me how proud he was of me. I’ve always been a daddy’s girl and after dropping out of high school, flunking out of college, getting knocked up at 20 and basically wasting my life, I’d finally done something he could brag about. Hell, I’d finally done something I could brag about.
