Rikki Feightner

Senior year vs. Rook year; 2nd Semester

Final blog of February. You know, I’ve gotten to thinking about how soon we’re graduating, and it brought up a couple of funny thoughts about what second semester was like as a rook compared to now, as a Senior. And as we head into March, I’d like to share a few of those thoughts with you;

As a Senior, there are actually quite a few academic things you WANT to go to. Todd Lectures (not all, but some), thesis presentations, workshops offered by the school… maybe it’s just me, but I find myself attending a lot more of these now that it isn’t mandatory…

You get more sleep as a rook. Period. I covered this last blog, and though it seems paradoxical, by the time you’re a Senior the extra “stuff” you’ve taken on has the definite power to knock your sleep down to five hours a night… or less, if you aren’t careful.

How old the seniors looked as a rook vs how young the rooks look as a senior. I don’t really know how to better articulate that unless you’ve been through the Corps.

You can go to chow in “civis” (non-uniform clothes) starting Friday night, but half the time you’ll be there after 11am on the morning anyway. As a Rook it was encouraging to go as soon as possible just to get out of uniform.

On a contrary note, as a Senior you’re so used to wearing the uniform that especially in the Winter, it’s not uncommon to find yourself not noticing (or minding) that it’s 8pm and you’re still in it. Being a Mentor vs. a Mentee. It makes you really think about the image you’re giving.

And finally, the feeling of “college will last forever” vs. “Where have the last 3 years gone?!”. Seriously. We’re less than three months away. It's a scary, but awesome thought.

See you in March!

Respectfully,

Rikki Feightner, NU Band Co. '15

February boredom busters - at NU!

As February comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on the year’s shortest month while spent at NU. Ask a student here, especially a Cadet, what the most miserable month on the Hill is. Chances are, they’ll likely say February; the snow, the short, bitter cold days…. As much as even I’m a fan of arctic scenery, it isn’t always the most appealing. But even though every week we hear the same complaint, of  “nothing to do”, by the time the weekend comes around, you can be sure that there’ll be plans made.

So in the spirit of the weekend, here are some February events as Norwich;

Winter Carnival typically happens the first weekend of February and consists of a special meal from Sodexo and a nightly party in the Mill/outside at the Rail Jam, where a miniature ski/snowboard jump is built next to the WCC “green” (in quotations because it’s currently an outdoor ice rink) where you’ll often see students skating or, more commonly, trying out some amateur hockey. And if you like hockey, Norwich’s nationals-winning men’s team plays every other week, with the highlights of their season often being in February. The games are free for the students and at other points in the week you can also watch the women’s and club teams take on their competition.

Hockey not your thing? There’s a variety of other snow sports to do around the area, including snowshoeing and sledding available across the street at the Shaw center. And having gone snowshoeing for the first time just this week, I can confirm that it’s a blast.

For those looking for something warmer, there’s always the option of working out, basketball, swimming, or billiards at different spots on campus. Usually, they’re open on the weekends to those looking to blow off some steam. And who doesn’t love preparing for beach season?

And this is all on campus, too. If you’re looking to get off campus, there’s a ton of amazing spots to discover that are both native Vermont fare, like sugar on snow, for example (look it up!), and more nationwide pursuits like the Ben & Jerry’s factory outside of Burlington. If you’re looking for something with a little more giveback, the center for civic engagement is always ready with service projects off campus throughout the state that lets you get some air while doing some good.

Personally, I like to occupy my weekends by catching up with friends, exploring new places in Vermont in search of the best coffee (Sorry Dunkin’…), and hitting the gym so I won’t feel guilty about that bit of ice cream at dinner.

Moral of the story? Even though February can see like a gray month, as long as you’ve the will to make the most of it, it can be the best!

 

Respectfully,

Rikki Feightner, NU Band Co. ‘15

THE WEEK OF MIDTERMS

It’s Friday! Finally, and the week of Midterms is nearly over. It’s been a long and difficult week to be sure, but with tests behind me, it’s one week to regroup and plan before Spring Break.

This week brought, on top of normal assignments,  a total of one paper due, one presentation, and three midterms… almost one every day, with my most jam-packed day being yesterday, which contained three! But as long as I keep the weekend in mind, follow my study tips, and remember the sleep/work ratio, it flows pretty well.

But it started off pretty well; Monday, I received confirmation that my payments when through alright. Last week, I paid off $5300 of my loans/college debt, all with my own money, all by myself. It’s not even a third of the debt I’ll have when I leave Norwich, but being a student that has relied exclusively on Air Force/Norwich Scholarships these four years, I can happily say that I’m living proof that it –IS- possible, and even doable, to put yourself through college here. Just stick with it!

When studying, I’ve found from observation that everyone has their own method. Studying in a Café full of people with a notebook may work for some people (they say that white noise helps), but for me as a social extrovert, I’m sure to get distracted. My optimal routine, I’ve found, comes from secluding myself to my room and plugging in headphones and some ambient tracks from Youtube… it’s easy, free, and effective! I’ll also take a quick break whenever I feel like it… scheduling breaks works for some people, but it doesn’t seem to motivate me.

With that, I’ve also learned that sleep is essential. Seriously. No sleep + PT at 0545 = Bad Time… I’ve learned this before and I unfortunately reaffirmed it on Tuesday. Even someone like me who tries to squeeze every minute out of the day… you’ve got to get at least six hours. Funny to think that some of the most sleep I’ve gotten while at Norwich was has as a Rook….

But on to the fun stuff. Montreal, where I’ll be visiting for the first time over Spring Break, holds all sorts of excitement for me. And with that, the opportunity to actually relax, plan some things out for next semester, and get back into things that I enjoy, like crafts and photography. Montreal is supposed to be a pretty photograph-able city, too, so I’ll make sure to share some cool snapshots that I take when I return.

Finally, I’ll be taking another look at my “stuff” this weekend, in the interest of skimming down the amount of possessions I have with me. As someone who doesn’t live too terribly close to Norwich, I’ll be taking all of my stuff home in a minivan at the end of the year. Word to the wise; when you become an upperclassman at Norwich, a lot of people fall into the trap of trying to make things feel more like “home” by purchasing a lot of stuff. Don’t do this. By keeping the amount of possessions you have at the dorms low, you’ll save yourself a ton with less to store, less to move, and less to carry with you when you leave. It stops headaches from these issues and saves you the potential heartache of throwing things out when the year ends!

Respectfully,

Rikki Feightner, Band Co. '15

"A Day in the Life"

Since we’re talking about a typical week, let’s start with a typical Monday!

0515: Getting to PT (Physical Training) on time is important, so I wake up a little early to change, brush my teeth and hair, etc.

0545-0645: PT with Air Force ROTC at Plumley Armory. Each day has a different routine, but Mondays typically have a cardio/upper body focus. In the Air Force Dept., I’m a Cadet Squadron Commander, which entails watching over the two flights I’m assigned to and PT’ing with them. At the end of PT our Cadet Wing commander meets and gives out any announcements for the week, and then we’re on our way.

0655-0720: Showering, putting up my hair & getting into uniform, not forgetting to grab my Norwich ring, and then it’s downstairs and out to get ready for formation.

0735: Open ranks inspection, where uniforms are checked to ensure the members of Band Company are ready for the day. Followed shortly by morning Formation.

0745: Accountability report, followed by formation, followed by a quick day’s announcements from the Cadet Colonel.

0750-0830: Off to breakfast! Best to go a little closer to 0800 as the rush will have died out a little.

Academics vary from day to day, classes typically following either a Monday-Wednesday-Friday or a Tuesday-Thursday pattern. T-R classes are typically a bit longer to compensate for only being two days a week. On M-W-F, I don’t have class until 11, so I’m free to study, do independent research, or whatever else strikes my fancy until 10:45 when it’s time to pack up and go to class.

1100-1150: Political Philosophy with Prof. Andrew. You need to do the reading here! Prof. Andrew is a great teacher; I usually get the best notes from his class. Currently, we’re finishing up Hobbes’ Leviathan and moving into the works of Adam Smith.

1200-1235: Upstairs in the Wise Campus Center (WCC) Skybox, planning out the rest of my day and again waiting out the crowd downstairs in the Chow Hall (Dining Facility) until the lines are easier. Then, it’s lunch, which fluctuates frequently in terms of what’s offered. (Sodexo has gotten much better the past few years in terms of variety and ingenuity.)

1245-1350: Class prep time.

1400-1450: Chinese Military History with Prof. Kim. (She’s fluent in three languages!) We’re just finishing up Romance of the Three Kingdoms and moving into studies on types of Chinese armor in that time period.

1500-1600: An hour of leisure time, in which I normally hang out with the Band guys as we wait for practice.

1600-1800: Band Practice! We’re shifting out of the Concert Band pieces for winter and sampling a few different styles as the Band- and Colonel Edwards- gear up for our St. Patrick’s Day Parade in NYC, where we’ve been invited to play in an overnight  trip.

1800-1830: Dinner.

1830-1900: I usually sit in on Battalion passdown (weekly announcement of events, policies, etc) just for fun with my Company Commander/1SG… it’s just good to know firsthand what’s going on.

1930-2000: Company passdown with the Band. I help keep the Corporals in line while the 1SG gets things announced, and we attend to any in-company matters before breaking out for the week.

2000: Done! 8pm and I’m finally changing out of uniform, attending to any homework and seeing friends before going to bed around 2330… after all, there’s PT for us again on Tuesday and 0515 is an early start!

 

Mondays are one of my busiest days, but a good way to set up for the week to come. Talk to any Cadet on the Hill and you’ll find that their schedule really varies from day to day. One day you may have 9 hours of classes (personal experience) and the next, no class at all(also personal experience)! It’s your own adventure.

Here’s to a great weekend, and the week ahead,

Respectfully,

Rikki Feightner, Band Co. ‘15

Back to the Hill

Back to Norwich, back to my life, back to the final semester of college. And all of a sudden I’m looking at moving costs and graduation announcements (kidding, I don’t buy those!) and parting ways from my friends, possibly forever…

Let me tell you. It’s terrifying.

But I’m back at Norwich. The entire first week I had this big stupid grin on my face, like, I’m actually –excited- to be back here. And so, I find, are some of the other kids who studied abroad. Because we had the option to leave, having the luxury to come back and suddenly be in the thick of Senior year is almost unreal.

First of all, getting saluted is.. cool? Odd? I’m the Platoon Leader for Band Co., so it’s not that I’m a high-ranking officer. But just being one in general is different. So is being one of the older cadets on campus. The rooks look so.. young. And not for the first time, I find myself wondering if we looked that young when we were freshmen? I’d give $20 to look through their eyes for a day, to see if we all look as old as the Seniors seemed my freshman year.

In our Air Force class, we’re slowly preparing for life in the real world. Finding out last spring that I was destined to be among the 36 other cadets that got chosen nationwide to be an Air Battle Manager (ABM) was exciting, and now I know that my initial 10 months of training will be at Tyndall Air Force, Florida. We’re all growing up.

Planning out my last Spring Break of college, writing final research papers, watching my friends prepare for their first duty stations… It’s finally getting there. Four years, and we’ve got out rings and we’ve got our jobs. Now, it’s the long haul through this last Vermont winter and a sprint to the finish that is graduation and commissioning.

But really, I don’t mind it.

Six months out of the loop!

Coming back to America wasn’t quite what I’d expected. Six months lost on news, songs, movies… not that I’m terribly up on those usually, anyway. The news at Norwich wasn’t so new, because of the VPN I’d been using and contacting friends all through the semester.

My first impressions?

• It was weird to see so many white people. That might sound funny, but while I was in Kunming, it’s not too much of a tourist haven and I usually avoid the expat areas because they’re expensive. Rural Ohio, on the other hand… not too much diversity, but on the opposite hand. It was humorously almost the same type of feeling like when I first landed in Beijing, like, where did all these -people- come from?

 

• The food was both a relief and also hard to get used to. While I was more than happy to pig out on my dad’s home-made gourmet (he might as well be a chef), I admittedly was missing my host mom’s food (most of the names of which I don’t remember) as quickly as the first few days.

 

• People no longer looked at me funny because of my hair or my height. Being just another face in the crowd again was, to be honest, really relieving.

 

• For the first time in months, I became acutely aware that soon I would be going back as a Senior in the Corps., this time for real. Which meant uniforms with stars and (much more importantly) meeting the new generations of Band trainees…

But needless to say, I’m more than happy to be back.

On from China... for now.

Once we’d returned to Kunming, it was a week-long scramble to prepare for the regional symposium and our group’s representation as the Yunnan provincial delegation.

The conference was a mock-meeting of the GMS countries in an ASEAN-style forum. Our group represented the Yunnan Provincial Delegation- a challenge in itself as we represented not only the needs of diverse Yunnan, but also had to stick to the norm of overall CCP (China Communist Party) policy. Other members of the symposium included Thailand, Laos, the Asian Development Bank, and the WWF. One week may seem like ample time to prepare for a six-hour conference, but let me assure you that even working hard, it was a scramble to finish everything on time.

In the meantime, I was mentally preparing myself to leave China. It was strange… as excited as I was to go back to Norwich and see my friends, my “family”, my school… I wasn’t experiencing the type of culture shock “high” that some of my friends were. It was my third time leaving China.. and this time, I weirdly felt almost like I was leaving home. Leaving home for home? Something like that.

Saturday came, the day before I left for Shanghai, and I went back to my family for dinner. Walked around the track a few times near my homestay house. Went and had a solo coffee at my favorite place near the dorms. It was quiet, it was peaceful. I guess I was saying goodbye to Kunming in my own way.

The conference came and went. We had a nice dinner, and all too soon, I was saying goodbye to everyone. And suddenly, there I was, standing there at the bus stop with Becca (my first and only ever RA and by the semester’s end, a close friend) and getting on the bus to the airport.

On the bus, finally hit me. I’m leaving China, this place that’s been my home for almost a year in total. And I won’t be back for years… and who knows when I’ll be back? And it’s funny. China gets harder to leave every time I leave it. Sure, there was an excitement and relief to go home, but first I was in Shanghai, visiting familiar haunts, alone for a few days with six months of memories, and well, now what?

Fortunately, that low hit a sharp sort of high when I’d been on the plane for about 9 hours and got up to look out the window. We were far from landing, but as I looked down below at this beautiful, forbidding landscape, I realized that I was staring down at Canada.

Canada. I was almost back home.

Thailand and Laos

January almost gone… it’s incredible. I’ve been in the states again for a month and a half, and yet China feels as close as ever. Today was the SAGE study abroad conference, which got me thinking again about my experience…

At the end of our semester program, we took an extended mobile learning trip. This was, in short, a 19 day trip through Thailand and Laos that was the culmination of our regional studies… not just of China, but of the Greater Mekong Subregion. And now it was time to get out and see what we’d been talking about, to follow the Mekong through the nearby countries of Thailand and Laos and learn about their culture, their people, and their relationship with and around the Mekong.

We began our 19 day adventure flying out of Kunming to Bangkok, Thailand. My journeys in Thailand could almost be a month’s worh of blogging in themselves… the Wats(temples), the backpacker district of big-city Bangkok, followed it up by a visit to sunny Chaing Mai and a stayover at a small village, where it became apparent just how privileged we were as college-going Americans.

After that, we took a boat down the Mekong down to Laos and spent a few days in Luang Prabang (spelled sometimes as Louang Phabang), in the old city; another UNESCO World Heritage Site. We spent four days there that I can only describe as the most peaceful, idyllic days of my life. Kayaking, Elephant Riding, waterfall swimming, massages, and plenty of fresh pineapple. It was a short mini-vacation, but powerful and beautiful. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

After that, our final destination was the capital of Laos, Vientaine. The night market here was beautiful, though not as full of “ethnic crafts” as the Luang Prabang markets were. The food was SPICY!

All the while, the students, local guides, and our Professor were giving briefings and classroom sessions on the history, politics, economic systems, and culture of the places where we were. It was amazing to see something, learn its past and what it really meant to the people who lived there, and then see it again through new eyes. I may not have taken as many notes while I was there, but the learning opportunities were second to none.

Finally, we flew back to Kunming. And all in all, it was amazing.

Study Abroad with NU! (Photo)

Not a regular post, but just a bit of fun with my camera.Sometimes, Study Abroad is a bit like this. You're excited for everything new, but in the end, you can't help but miss The Hill a bit...

Tiger Leaping Gorge; A weekend on top of the World

Wednesday! It’s midweek, and with the extra time I have, I can finally sit down and describe to you the amazing adventures of my weekend. And what a weekend. I’m going to a-typically include several pictures I took at the end of this post- the trip was far too beautiful not to.

 

Last week we had sort of our mid-semester Break.. no class on Friday and an early-ending class Thurs, which left us free to explore the magical world of a three-day break with travel wherever we’d like. (In-country, or course…. But China’s a big country.) As such, several of us decided that we were off to Tiger Leaping Gorge, located near Lijiang, which is one of Western China’s most popular tourist destinations for its beautiful natural scenery and re-created Old City, a large section of ancient architecture and cobblestone streets (which was beautiful, by the way). But for us, or at least for a classmate and I, it was barely even a part of what we’d experience when compared to the Gorge itself…

 

We started out late Thursday night, taking a ‘Ying Wo’ or hard-bed sleeper train, which made the 9-hour journey to Lijiang overnight. About eight of us went, but myself and a classmate named Henry split off from the main group in search of a faster (and quieter!) hike through the Gorge. We arrived Friday morning and took the bus to Tiger Leaping Gorge, which is located right in the heart  of Shangri-la county, Yunnan.

 

The first thing you notice when you start your ascent to ‘the High Road’ are the mountains. And not just like the ones that we have in Vermont; they’re giant, craggy mountains, gray points jutting out of the earth, a few dotted in snow at the top, far above the treeline. They’re breathtaking. The second thing you notice, quite shortly after, is the climb. From the Qiaotou side, which is where we started, it’s a grueling four-four hour ascent, up the mountainside and then through the nearly vertical ’28 bends’, which was almost a Paine Mtn. climb in itself. And guess who decided not to pack light? That’s right, our truly. I basically rucked Tiger Leaping Gorge.

 

Henry and I walked the Gorge to sleep at Halfway House the first night of our trip. Pro tip; if you’re ever fortunate enough to hike in Tiger Leaping Gorge, you have to do more than one day, and you –have- to sleep at Halfway House. There are plenty of other guest houses in the area, but undeniably, Halfway is the premier location; scenic, remote, and holding true to their promise of “the world’s most scenic toilet” (you’d have to be there to see what I’m talking about…). 

 

After dinner under a sky blazing with stars and an equally amazing breakfast on the top porch, where we watched the the sun eventually overcome cloud-topped peaks, we started off again for the second- and undeniably longer- portion of our journey. We walked up, and down, and across waterfalls… and up and down again, before exiting the tourist-intended middle portion of the Gorge altogether and into the lower section, where I was able to look back and get one of the (in my humble opinion) splendid shots that you’ll see at the end of the post. That night, we made it to a tiny village of well under 500, whose quirky townsfolk hadn’t seen a Westerner in years and whose name refused to even register on Henry’s chinese GPS.

 

By the time we’d made it back to Lijiang and were reclining in the beautifully-tailored streets of the Old City on Sunday afternoon, we’d hiked about 23 miles in total (counting for both the vertical and horizontal distance). It was exhausting, and one of the most endurance-demanding things I’ve ever done in my life, but despite the walk, and the heavy pack, Norwich had well prepared me to “embrace the suck” and instead focus on the good. As a result, despite the bad times, I had a blast… and someway, somehow, I’m going back some day.

 

Things like these? That’s why I’ll recommend study abroad every time. Over and out!

Very Respectfully,

Rikki Feightner, Band Co. ‘15