Four Fronts
My time has been battling on four fronts for the past week; school, work, family, and PT. School has been busy as ever, and more so because finals are fast approaching. It's been a struggle to keep up, even after cutting slack and quitting calculus. I'm not doing as well as I thought in Components; my partner and I have done solid A's on our homework and projects, but I had forgotten how much weight the midterms carried. I always count on computer-related classes to be an easy A, but this class and its tests have really challenged me.
Work has been keeping me busy. A lot of the other drivers have effectively started to refuse runs because they need time to study, and so I've been asked to take on more and more. I'm such a nice guy that I'll take almost anything from Ava, and I certainly don't mind the money. It just keeps me a lot more busy than I like.
If that weren't enough, there's a PT test at the next drill. When they mentioned it at drill last week, it became clear that I didn't have a month to prepare, I had two weeks. Well, in the past week I've been pushing my legs hard, probably the hardest they've worked since I got home. SPC Pritchett also takes classes at CU, so he's been helping me train. He's one of the fastest guys in the unit, and I really appreciate his help. I feel hopeful about this PT test, if not confident.
Yesterday, I had a small break in the action. After I help Ashley and Jackie set up their garage sale, I drove down town to the Denver Coliseum and met up with my sister and her church youth group. They drove all the way from Los Alamos to attend the Acquire the Fire event. It was much different than any event I've ever attended. They had a lot of messages for teens, including an eye-opening perspective on "branding," or imprinting consumers with a particular archetype and getting them to buy products based on that cultural stigma. The example they really pushed was MTV's "Mook and Midriff" branding scheme. Every teenager knows that the people on MTV are cool, young, and sexy, and MTV subtley encourages teens to emulate this lifestyle in order to sell its wares. The worst part, says ATF, is that this is not overt advertising, where MTV obviously pushes these products. It's very subtle, and makes teens think that it's what they wanted in the first place. I'll let the reader do their own research and form their own opinions, but the conference made some striking points.
Today I mostly helped with the garage sale, and we made a little bit of money. Enough to buy a lawn mower and a weed whacker, maybe.
Work has been keeping me busy. A lot of the other drivers have effectively started to refuse runs because they need time to study, and so I've been asked to take on more and more. I'm such a nice guy that I'll take almost anything from Ava, and I certainly don't mind the money. It just keeps me a lot more busy than I like.
If that weren't enough, there's a PT test at the next drill. When they mentioned it at drill last week, it became clear that I didn't have a month to prepare, I had two weeks. Well, in the past week I've been pushing my legs hard, probably the hardest they've worked since I got home. SPC Pritchett also takes classes at CU, so he's been helping me train. He's one of the fastest guys in the unit, and I really appreciate his help. I feel hopeful about this PT test, if not confident.
Yesterday, I had a small break in the action. After I help Ashley and Jackie set up their garage sale, I drove down town to the Denver Coliseum and met up with my sister and her church youth group. They drove all the way from Los Alamos to attend the Acquire the Fire event. It was much different than any event I've ever attended. They had a lot of messages for teens, including an eye-opening perspective on "branding," or imprinting consumers with a particular archetype and getting them to buy products based on that cultural stigma. The example they really pushed was MTV's "Mook and Midriff" branding scheme. Every teenager knows that the people on MTV are cool, young, and sexy, and MTV subtley encourages teens to emulate this lifestyle in order to sell its wares. The worst part, says ATF, is that this is not overt advertising, where MTV obviously pushes these products. It's very subtle, and makes teens think that it's what they wanted in the first place. I'll let the reader do their own research and form their own opinions, but the conference made some striking points.
Today I mostly helped with the garage sale, and we made a little bit of money. Enough to buy a lawn mower and a weed whacker, maybe.
Comments
Post a Comment