13 April 2011

            The day after the APFT meant a height/weight session bright and early.  Unlike normal height/weight days where no PT follows, the class met afterwards for about 25 minutes to work on running in formation while calling cadence.

            TJAGLCS has a school-wide run next Monday known as the Panorama Farms Run.  It takes place on a 3-mile course built onto a sprawling farm about 10 minutes from the school, and is the site where UVA (and area high schools) have their cross-country meets.  The run will involve our class, the grad class, the warrant officer advanced class, the NCO Academy, staff and faculty, and members of the National Ground Intelligence Center, which is located in the area.

            That sort of attendance means that we have a high likelihood of embarrassing the mess out of ourselves if we didn’t take the time to practice simple things like running in step before hitting the farm.  For a group that’s barely run in large formations at all, I was pretty impressed with how well everyone did.  The only downside was that, with a massive formation of 114 people, it’s tough for those in the rear to hear the cadence caller, which meant that the center of the group was loud, but the back end simply mumbled loudly.

(Unless we're intent on recreating the formations seen in 'Stripes,' practice was entirely necessary.)

            Today was one of the busiest days I’ve had while here in C-Ville.  The family law exam happens tomorrow at 0810, and we have the other two major LA assignments due within 72 hours of each other.  Morning class began with two hours on survivor benefits, which was yet another chapter in the book titled “LT Harper Has Been in the Army for a While, But Doesn’t Have a Clue About His Benefits.” (It’s a working title). 

(A second bestseller by LT Harper?  Indeed. Well, it'll be a bestseller if the list happens to track the top 4,000,000 books in the country.)

            We followed with a two-hour block on credit protection and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.  This was my favorite class in this block so far, by far.  It mainly dealt with the restrictions placed on debt collectors in their activities to collect debts (i.e. when they can call you, what they can say, etc.).  Given how many soldiers become involved with debt collectors at one point or another (including myself), it was great to finally get educated on the handcuffs that the law places on those companies and individuals.

            The afternoon went an hour longer than usual today, and began with an hour of instruction on Soldier Readiness Processing (SRPs).  These are the stations set up to assist soldiers getting ready to mobilize, and have stations such as legal and medical, which soldiers rotate through (slowly).  A ton of my reserve component classmates have already worked SRPs, and were able to give valuable insight into the process.  I was pretty amazed at the amount of services that are crammed into these things-let’s hope I can keep up with the flow once I’m thrown into one.

            The last two-hour block branched off that class, and dealt with notarial powers and powers of attorney.  This was yet another area on my list of things to learn more about, and even though I’ve got a ton to do tonight, I’m glad we plowed through it.

            We still weren’t done after the class, as cadre conducted a 30-minute briefing on DCC afterwards.  Most of our questions were answered in an email sent by DCC cadre from Benning, which included a ton of attachments, including a schedule.  The briefing mainly involved travel questions, and I’ll address those in a separate post.

            Today’s action didn’t take a break, even after class.  Our class softball team had it’s next intramural playoff game at 8.  Sadly, it was our last game in the league.  We came up against the UVA law school team that dominated and won the law school invitational tournament.  I’d like to say we fought the good fight, but unfortunately after keeping it close for 2 innings, we were promptly crushed.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

(One of the deleted scenes in 'Forrest Gump' involves an extended speech at the Reflecting Pool where he continues speaking about our team's incredibly poor performance.)

            My night also involved prepping for the family law exam by highlighting and tabbing my deskbook, using a two-page focus slide sheet given to us by the professor.  The bulk of my time was spent working on my response to a debt collector practical, which will be 1/3 of our LA grade.  The letter was actually a lot of fun to draft, as it was basically a shot across the bow of a fictional shady debt collector.

Fortunately for all of us, my day (and this long post) ended after that.  I may have lost some sleep, but I’ll be glad when tomorrow is over and we finally make it to the weekend.