Contracting

For those of you who do not know what contracting means, it is when a cadet on scholarship, or a junior in college that wants to commission, signs forms saying he wants to commission and is committed to the process and to work for the military for so many years after.  In exchange, the military pays the cadets monthly stipends and if you have a scholarship, pays for school.  I contracted with the Air Force on Tuesday with eight other cadets.  Our contracting was a bit different from everybody else because we got to contract in front of the entire Air Force cadet wing, when usually it is just done in the office.  Now that I am contracted, I have to take an airplane, a F-105 Thunderchief, to all Air Force related events, such as PT, class, and whenever I go down to the detachment.  I also have to know about the aircraft so that whenever someone in the wing asks me about it, I have answers.  I will also now get to wear contract cords, which for Air Force are blue and gray, Army are black and gold, Marines are red and gold, and Navy are navy blue and gold.  I am looking forward to my scholarship as well, the Air Force offers express scholarships for 3.5 years that pay 100% for people majoring in electrical engineering, nursing, and international studies with a Chinese minor, and my major is electrical and computer engineering.  For the express scholarships, you apply after you get to college and the Air Force looks at your grades, PT score, and AFOQT score.

Other than contracting, I am getting back into my routine.  Its a little difficult to do so right now though, because we have corporal cadre.  This is when corporals that think they might want to be cadre next year shadow our regular cadre staff and they also get to lead us and do room inspections and stuff the cadre do.  There are different groups and they rotate on 2 week intervals, so after next week, we'll have a new group.  I like the group we have now, they seem to know what they are doing and they can take control effectively.  As privates, we are also learning to lead, in our squads which contain about eight people, we break into two fire teams and each fire team has a leader that is responsible for knowing where the fire team members are during formations and making sure they pass room inspections.

Classes are going well, my intro to politics class is interesting, we are looking into why people make what decisions they do and what affect they have on other things.  My programming class is also fun, we are starting out by learning to make small programs that can do math equations.  Air Force is also going well, we just took a PT test this week and I got a 91, I improved on my sit ups and push ups, but I didn't max the run this time, because I wasn't able to run for about 2 months while I was figuring out what was wrong with my knee, but it is now getting better.

Well, I need to get ready to go eat, on the weekends, the chow hall only serves a late breakfast and dinner, so we don't eat until about 1000-1030 on weekend mornings.  It is cold outside, this morning when I got up at 0530, it was -6 with a -21 windchill and now at 0924 it is -8 with a -15 wind chill.

Thanks for reading,

Seth

Here is a picture of the plane that I have to carry around, a F-105 Thunderchief, a close ground support fighter with bomber capabilities from the Vietnam War.

Comments

[Char & D.C.]

Seth: what an exciting time you are having at school. Congrats on signing your contract and committing to many years in the Air Force. You're going to look back someday and laugh at your F-105 episode! Enjoyed the pictures of your friends during Christmas break. Just wanted to let you know we are thinking of you and hope you don't freeze your buns off! Good luck this semester and keep up the great work!
GO COLTS! Bye, Char & D.C.

[Mary Carr]

Hi Seth - Congratulations on your Scholarship and on Contracting! It sounds so exciting! Did you apply for a scholarship while you were in highschool prior to coming to Norwhich or did you just wait until this year? Thank you!