Listening to: Tauren Wells: "Love is Action"
NEEDTOBREATHE: "No Excuses" & "Hard Love"
Drinking: Water, 128 oz a day
I keep telling myself to stop apologizing for everything, but here I go again: I'm sorry. To those whom I was doing stuff here on DA, I kind of just dropped everyone. I did not intend that.
But, I'm sure it's more of a question of why. Am I right?
First, my computer is crap. Utter crap. I HATE PCs with a massive passion. But they're cheap. I upgraded to windows 10 in hopes to elevate some of the issues. It did, but then came other issues, one of which I can't seem to solve: Win10 sucks up all my freaking RAM, especially when I get on the internet. Doesn't seem to matter the browser (but I like my browser, for the most part, for all the security features.) So, I'm still solving that issue.
However, that's not all.
Monday, August 8th, my mom forcibly drove me to the recruiter's station for the US Marine Corps.
I really did not feel prepared for this AT ALL. I admit, I wanted to wait till I was at least 5 lbs lighter and got my run time down even more. The Staff Sergeant there was all (facial expressions, mind you), "Are you real? Are you lost? You do know this is the UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS, right?"
But we talked for a bit and he asked me to come in the next day. I came back and took a few tests:
1. AQFT: 77/100
● 74 is eligible for officer candidacy
● Which is 4 shortened versions of 4 ASVAB subtests
2. Crunches: 74/110 in 2 minutes
● 40 is passing
3. Flex Arm Hang: 37 sec
● 15 sec is passing
4. I've finally made weight
● I lost 10lbs earlier this year and 10 more this past july.
He was excited, I think, because SSgt. is a rather low-key guy, so his excitement seemed tampered. I think he was mostly excited beoause he said, "Girls don't come to the Marines. You're rare. And because you want to be an officer, with the quals to be one, even rarer. You're a f***in unicorn."
He called the Captain in the next town and had me go visit him. Now, the Captain is super hard to read, but apparently he really and I mean, really liked me (not the romantic way), but he wanted me to go reserves. He even (apparently) called the Major to get me to go to bootcamp in October when they were already all booked. Apparently the Captain doesn't just do this for anyone. But, he did say that I'd start in enlisted reserves and then go to the OCS (Officer Command School) selection board come summer, but it was my run time that was killing me. I need to run an 8 min mile and right now it's around 10 or 12 minutes... However, I decided to say no to that option. I'd rather go active enlisted, get my leg up in experience that way, and then try and earn officer status. Besides, enlisted always respects officers more if they've been enlisted first.
These past 2 Thursdays, I've been going to PCS (I have no idea what it stands for) and the first time, I apparently did way better than some of the guys that have their first try at it, so I'm really happy about that. (Then I was stupid and strained my pectineus muscle and SSgt. was nice and didn't make anyone run last Thursday. But next time...eh... he said it's going to be the hardest ever.)
I took my ASVAB yesterday. And it's a new kind that requires either a verification test or a confirmation test. The verification test is simply to say, "Yep, these are my legit scores. I didn't cheat." It's if I got within 1-19 point improvement on my final score from my AQFT. So, if I got a 90, from my original 77, I'm good because it's only 13 points. But if I scored a 99, 22 above my 77, Then I have to take the confirmation test, which is longer and a bit more challenging. If the scores don't match up in either verification or confirmation, I then have to retake the entire ASVAB at MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station). And that's a 3+ hour long process. I don't want to put SSgt. through that and I don't want to do that... so I'm continuing to study math. I hate math. I hate formulas. Studying math legitimately all I've been doing these past 2 weeks.
The only thing that may hold me back is my height. I thought I was 5'0". SSgt. has me at 4'10". MY WHOLE LIFE IS A LIE. SSgt. said MEPS tends to mark people lower on the height, so they might put me at 4'9" and that's 1 inch below what's allowed. I'm freaking terrified that I won't be allowed in just because of 1 stupid inch.