FINALS WEEK (14-19 Jul)

. . Wow – what a week! It started off pretty good - I had just had my final TMO pickup and sold my car so I was walking around base, quite content to having no keychain to worry about loosing, and really the only thing that I had to actually do is show up… by Monday evening I’d finished two of my finals, one I felt I ace’d and the other I felt I bombed! All was well by Wednesday when I picked up my parents at the airport… but then…
. . The final class was Thursday afternoon and all day Friday when I had the most to do to finish my Korea preparations. My parents were able to help me take care of a lot of things while I was in class, but certain things they couldn’t do, like get the tickets for the Tournament of Kings (like Medieval Times) dinner/show at the Excalibur. Will Call required the card the tickets were purchased with and photo ID, and with Friday’s class scheduled to get out at 5pm, there obviously would be no way to get through traffic and drive from the base to the Strip, by the required 5pm on the evening of the event. We had never been briefed on how that final class was going to go, so were unprepared for the assignment that came down Thursday afternoon, and most of us had to stay late, and I worried I wouldn’t be able to get the tickets… then we, as a class, decided our final group presentation would be at 2pm… which held until about 1pm… it was quickly pushed back to 3pm and eventually to 4. Our 20 minute presentation lasted almost a whole hour and I actually had to leave when the instructor was still giving feedback to some of the students so I could make the show on time. I was able to make it down to the strip just in time for the show, and it was awesome :-)
. . We went home to pack and get some sleep (ie. download more books!), then had a slew of errands I had to accomplish Saturday morning before graduation. I got a letter from a good friend in Iraq with my held mail, which made me smile, though I was then scared because I hadn’t been planning on holding my mail… silly really, since I wouldn’t have been scared if I just didn’t receive it. The graduation was a small affair with only 19 of us “walking” but it was very nice. Our class speaker covered the diversity of our class and had compiled how many days, flight hours, sorties, etc we’d contributed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which amazed me, and then ended on a happy note with a compiled “top ten reasons” :-) The guest speaker basically gave us an academic lecture on the MSGL program, how it started and how its been used since – which was actually really neat and interesting, with its military roots and such. The food at the reception was pretty good (it was at the Red Rock Casino), but with all the pictures and knowing I wouldn’t see most of these folks any time soon, I have to admit I got a little choked up. My folks drove me back to billeting and I took a nap until our graduation social. I was surprised at how late my parents and I stayed, though only a handful of students showed up, everyone had their families, and we ended up playing team SuperScrabble... it was so fun...