So, I’m living in Ohio, snacking on MREs and becoming good friends with the Syrilankan (I have no idea how to spell the name of that country, apparently off of the coast of India), the shuttle driver from the Wright-Patterson Billeting (Inn) to the Commissary, where I can buy food to smuggle into my room and cook in my awesome electric skillet. Suffice it to say, I’m not exactly eating very well around here, but at least now I have a mountain bike I can ride to various locations on and around the base.
I am thoroughly enjoying my time spent in the classroom, bugging my companions by constantly raising my hand and asking basically the same questions regarding how I am supposed to get reimbursed for the thousands of dollars I have already shelled out to pay for military stuff. I keep getting answers, and I will sit and think on them for a minute, then decide that they are either incomprehensible or contradictory to previous answers. So, as soon as I talk to somebody else about finance, I’ll ask the same question. I imagine the information is written down somewhere, but frankly I have no idea where and nobody ever seems to volunteer that sort of information.
Computer training was pretty comical, since I always seem to get behind a step and eventually end up in a completely different spot than my fellow students and the instructor. You see, I kind of get stuck on things that I don’t understand, so a teacher had better be pretty darn clear in their instructions so that I don’t think too much about anything in particular while we are going through a lot of information. Plus, the fact that the Air Force has decided that it should still be using a computer program that is over 30 years old doesn’t really help much, since I run much better with user-friendly, color-coded menu-items that have explanatory pop-ups when the cursor moves over them.
Steph is doing great in Utah, having fun with her folks and with Braeden. She is excited to be finished with her classes soon, which I don’t really understand because I was under the impression that she just loved them all to pieces and wanted them to last forever. She managed to buy herself a long-coveted camera in celebration of me finally receiving a paycheck that wasn’t equal to 30% of our cost of living. I keep telling her that she should drive out here to visit me and bring me Milk Duds (that is the name of my truck), but so far I have been thoroughly unsuccessful in convincing her that a 30-hr drive with Braeden in my enormous machine “wouldn’t be that bad” (Busey, B. April, 2010). J
COT was great, and now I seem morally impelled to call everyone “Sir” or “Ma’am” and respond to personal inquiries about how I am by stating in a ridiculously loud tone “OUTSTANDING, SIR!” I also keep trying to convince my fellow students to column up and perform the ludicrously loud and elaborate building-entrance column procedure on the way into the hospital every morning. So far, no luck. Maybe I can convince my family to do it at the grocery store, instead. We’ll need more kids, though, to make up a proper formation. Steph, let’s get going on that; we’ll have a Flight instead of a family.
So, why did nobody tell me that if I had driven to COT and Ohio then I would have been reimbursed like over $3400 for the trip? Geez! It’s like I forewent thousands of dollars for the pleasure of being able to go absolutely nowhere and do nothing fun by myself for four months, plus the hassle of dragging around ten thousand pounds of gear through six airports along the way.
Photo of Daniel Prather, 2d Lt; Ben Busey, 2d Lt; COT Class 10-03, March 2010
Military nursing seems MUCH more laid back than civilian nursing. Everybody is on salary, they have plenty of nurses on staff stateside, which translates to being a pretty low patient load most of the time. I’m excited for the opportunity to train techs, educate patients, and do a quality, detailed job with my patients! It will be an awesome learning opportunity to not spend 100% of my time scrambling just to complete the bare essentials of my job on the floor, like I would if I was doing floor nursing in the civilian sector. No wonder all of the military nurses I’ve met have been so competent; they actually got a good start in their career.
