Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Drowning

So, the thing about life is that you're constantly learning new things, even if you don't realize it. Life experiences turn into lessons learned and it's because of this most people realize that they've been progressing in life. Remember what you steadfastly believed as a teen? Is it the same now?

Even in the professional area, you're always learning.

I've been an Airman now (E1-4) for about 4.5 years. It's be just about five when I sew on my Staff Sergeant stripe and become a Non-Commissioned Officer. During those four years I've had good supervisors, I've had bad supervisors, and I've had supervisors that give a lot of lip service.

In all three instances I have learned what I like, don't like, and REALLY don't like and I hope to apply those to my airmen when I get them.

For instance, right now I'm in Airmen Leadership School, the kind of place that epitomizes the "take a drink from the fire hose" mentality and it's hard to keep up and I feel like the things that I'm reading, I had access to for the last 4.5 years. I was just never told to read them, never told to start practicing these skills. The rank of Senior Airman, where I am right now is supposed to be a position where your supervisor is grooming you to be a leader by having you do these things.

And they aren't TOUGH things, they're just a LOT of things, but honestly, how much easier would all of this be if I had access to just the outside sources used in class? We have study guides for in the class and I understand they wouldn't want us giving those to our airmen, but we also use publications that I have seen but never paid attention to and maybe that falls on me, but I was never told to pay attention to them.

Anyway, I've been learning and I hope when I come out of it, I can hurry up and finish something that needs to be done and then I'll deploy, and while deployed, my cross training paperwork is going to be turned in. I hope to come home to find orders to go to a new tech school and learn a new job and I'll get some new airmen.

But as for right now, I'm just going to school, reading a TON of stuff, taking ltos of notes and trying not to drown.

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