Spring 2011

I think a majority of the students at the academy either shudder at the prospect or their past experience of the daunting spring semester of sophomore year. Many say that it is likely to be the hardest, most challenging period of our time at USAFA. We take the second year of Physics, Chemistry, a hybrid mutant of Linear Algebra and Differential Equations, as well as manning the CQ desk around the clock. Trying to avoid absolutes my advisor and I were determined to take 8 classes this semester, 25-26 credit hours. I didn't think that would be too much of a challenge since many of the classes were fuzzy classes like Econ, Law and Spanish.
I missed the first four days of the semester because of the Botswana trip which didn't sit well with a-lot of the professors. As an example I emailed a Chemistry assignment from Botswana because of the very strict late policy that the Department maintains. I failed the, clearly perfect, assignment because it was emailed to the instructor. He told me that it was too much work for him to print out my assignment and grade it, but he was glad I didn't turn it in late..... Needless to say I had a rocky start to the semester, but it would only get better from there.
Although it caused me to be extraordinarily busy, debate took me across the United States this year through 9-10 tournaments. The first of my three favorite tournaments was our trip to Burlington Vermont for the United States University Debate Championship. The University of Vermont is located on beautiful Lake Champaign in a suppeeerrr liberal small tourist town. Most notably to me it is the home of the Ben and Jerry's factory as well as their first store. For those of you who know me at all you probably know ice cream is my favorite staple food. My infatuation and love of ice cream was however outshined by my friend Everett’s favorite food. On the trip to the Denver Airport Everett was determined that Vermont was known for waffles part of Everett favorite duo chicken n' waffles. We were all kind of confused since Vermont is known for Maple syrup, Ben and Jerry's and very open people. Everett stunned at the lack of logic in the vehicle explained that Vermont is known for syrup; therefore, it must be known for the medium, waaaaaaaaffles. So for the rest of the trip he was looking for waffles and maple syrup. Besides food the tournament was great. The debaters represented the top schools in both the U.S. as well as the U.K. bringing multiple perspectives as well as amazing talent. All of our teams did well; two of the senior teams to include myself were four points from breaking to the out rounds at the tournament so hopefully next year we will make it that far. Our novice teams also did great they missed breaking to the novice out rounds by a slim margin. I think they would have enjoyed debating the topic, “This house would allow brothels on military installations"; like I said there are very open people in Burlington. At the end of the tournament there were some parties at the local club. I think we missed out on most of the fun since we were eating out relatively late and we were still in debate clothes. At the end of the trip we went to IHOP so Everett disappointingly settled for their chicken n waffles.




     My second favorite trip, in no particular order, was to San Francisco with my friend Dave. This was a bit of a spontaneous trip, it was canceled at first because of the government shut-down, but eventually we were given funds to go. So the trip consisted of just myself Dave, and our coach. Dave and I went 10-0 at the tournament winning in the final on a 2-1 decision. This win secured a bid to the 2011 National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence which only invites the top 60 teams in the nation to compete. I always have a great time at the University of the Pacific, because of its wonderful campus, but this year the tournament ended relatively early so we were able to spend a day in San Francisco. We spent all of our time at Fisherman's Wharf eating a ton of seafood at pier 39. I think my favorite part of the tournament was returning to school Sunday afternoon and still having Monday off.

A few weeks ago we concluded the season with the annual "Dean's Team" dinner at the Dean's house. There were tons of burritos and desserts at the dinner, and we weren't in uniform so it was much less intimidating than usual. There was also a surprise appearance by General Clark which was interesting. He was explaining how he is trimming my class down which was a bit awkward. At the end of the dinner it was great to hear the Dean list off all of our accomplishments this year. To include top-twenty team in the nation, and NPTE qualifier. The Dean made sure we were back studying ion our rooms by 7:45 so that we didn't miss ACQ.

Now that I have made it through sophmore year there are a-lot of cool things I am able to do in the future. Most notably I am transferring to the US Coast Guard Academy for the semester which should be interesting. Additionally this summer I am going to Greece, Bulgaria, and Istanbul to learn about international migration which is good because I am doing an, ENG-499. Independent study about rhetorical empowerment and international migration concluded with a speech at the National Literature Convention in New Orleans.         

    

  P.S. Colorado Runner's Guide has hit the treadmill due to feet issues :-)