17 August 2011

The Tortoise and the Hare

Blood is pumping a little faster; nerves are jumpy; palms are getting sweaty. Yes folks, we are officially 72 days away from graduation. While this may seem like quite a few days, for those of us who have been at this for almost a year, it’s more like the blink of an eye.  At this point, C has remaining 2 checkrides (one next week), 17 flights, and 1 sim.

So, what happens next?

Coming up in less than 8 weeks is the night that most of our active duty pals await even more than graduation: Assignment Night. This is the event where each student finds out their first assignment – aircraft and location. Some people say that first assignment makes or breaks a career; others say it’s simply the first step in a long journey. Either way, it’s a pretty exciting deal. Personally, it’s a little anticlimactic for us (much like track select), since we already have our assignment, but we are thrilled to discover the fates of the rest of our UPT family.

Two weeks later, the real celebrating begins during the graduation festivities – concluding with the much-anticipated pinning of the wings.

But wait! The voyage doesn’t stop there. After graduation, our journey continues almost immediately. Before returning to our home base, C will attend three follow-on trainings. As we have just received our dates, we learned the C will leave for SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape – Combat Survival Training) and Water Survival five days after graduation. During these, he will learn survival techniques in a classroom setting and then actually survive in the wilderness.  Upon his return, he immediately leaves for Pilot Initial Qualification training. Another training? Basically, pilot training works like this: First, they teach you how to fly a plane (the Air Force way); then, they teach you how to fly a plane similar to your assignment; and finally, they teach you how to fly your actual designated plane. The upside is that C will only be about three hours away for the 4-6 months of PIQ.

It all seems like such a whirlwind. Here at UPT, we all seem to be trapped in a dichotomy of time: while some days/weeks/months seem to crawl by, it’s hard to fathom that a whole year has gone by since we began this process. It’s coming to an end, and yet, it’s not.