So, I have been meaning to do this for a while, but no excuses. Here she goes.

I made a mistake in following instructions twice for a Spanish project, the first one I cheated because the instructions said individual effort, oops. Restarted, and then still didn't follow the correct format. I told my teacher what happened the first time cause I wanted to be honorable, and then he said we needed to meet to talk about making mistakes. Uh oh, this can't be good. This teacher is a major in the Spanish air force and he used to be special tactics as a "JTAC". I thought I was in deep poo poo. I went in and he congratulated me on my last quiz score (83%, even the teacher thought I would fail) and then told me my project, which was a Spanish essay, was done really well but I needed to understand what mistakes can do.

Immediately I begin compiling my defenses and excuses for why I missed the instructions, because as a cadet you have to do that to justify yourself. Turns out I didn't need to do that, he wanted to tell a story. This could be just as bad as a short chewing out because now I have to stay awake. He began saying how he was reassigned from being a pilot to being in the special forces and how daunting it was to be in charge of really scary men. But that he adapted and soon had a mission to organize. The mission was rushed so planning was as well and the weather was not helping. He said he was in Bosnia and had to go somewhere. While on the road things didn't seem right. After talking to his NCO (a sergeant) his NCO said something didn't feel right either and suggested sending forward two scouts. He did just that, after a bit one of the scouts saw a huge snake to his right and right by the snake was a mine. The scout called a halt and said to look around for mine related items. My teacher said six inches or so in front of his boot was a trip wire. They immediately evacked out of there and my teacher went to his mission planning board because the board showed safe zones and unsafe zones. My teacher had believed in his rushed planning that the route he chose was a completely safe zone, but after looking a bit closer saw a "red dot" signifying an unsafe area. He then told me that he could have blamed a lot of things for that mistake, but in the end, it almost killed his whole group and at that point there would be no excuse for the mistake. So while it might be daunting, it is expected that I be perfect and don't make mistakes unless I can handle the consequences. It was one of the best lessons I have learned here and it wasn't even a chewing out. The teacher was super nice about it and told me to learn and keep performing well. I thought it would be good to share.

For a fun thing, today was what we call R&R, which stands for respect and responsibility. The main thing I got from it was to be a good leader I need to exercise the golden rule. Having grown up in the church, that is obvious to me, but it doesn't mean I can't improve. And then we had fun by climbing on ropes courses and doing rock climbing walls. Turns out I am a pretty good rock climber because I never failed at making it to the top when a lot of people did fail. But the big story I want to tell was about two Thunderbird pilots. The first, a captain, landed, did a back-flip out of his plane and then told the NCO he had exceeded the G-limit and left it at that. When a plane's G-limit is exceeded a six hour inspection must be done, so this NCO made sure that this arrogant pilot's plane was not fixed for a long while. The second pilot was a lieutenant. After landing his plane he humbly climbed down the ladder and told the NCO "I exceeded my G-limit, what do I need to do?" the NCO said "Sir, that's my problem don't worry about it" The lieutenant responded "no it's my problem and I'm gonna help" "Sir, the only thing you can do is hand me tools and read a checklist for six hours" and that's what the lieutenant did, and then he ordered pizza for the NCO and made sure he had plenty to drink. After that, the NCO would actually canabalize higher ranking officers planes to make sure that lieutenant had a working aircraft. I thought that was awesome.

That's all I got for now.