Dichotomy

This week was spent in lovely, picturesque Vicksburg, Mississippi... If you've ever been to Vicksburg, Mississippi, you would know that "lovely" and "picturesque" may not be the best two descriptors - but then again, I've been known for my sarcasm.

So Vicksburg is where a decent sized US Army Core of Engineers (USACE) center is located. I wouldn't call it a base because frankly it lacked anything that one would expect to find at a base, including military personnel. I was sent here with 4 other folks from the 30th to do a training (I should point out that the other 4 are all significantly more senior than I am, which I guess means I get to roll with the big dogs now). The course was titled Contingency Engineering Management - ideal for a group of engineers about to do some serious management in a contingency environment... or so we thought.

It's now that I should mention that the Army does things a LOT different than the Navy. This was my first true interaction with them, so I had no idea what to expect. First, it seems that their engineering forces aren't actually composed of engineers - in the Navy, if you want to be in the Civil Engineer Corps, you have to be an actual engineer (or architect, we look the other way for them). Shocking application of logic there, I know, but it seems to work pretty well for the Navy.

What this created was a class aimed at very high level officers, teaching very low level information. The kind of information CEC officers get at their basic indoctrination training. The kind of information that we either already knew, or didn't care about because it was USACE specific. The kind of information where you can see the presenter's mouth moving, but would be hard pressed to explain what you learned.

So then - the subject of this post - the worst part of it all. The entire time spent sitting in class, the majority of my energy was dedicated to staying awake, and successfully so (more than I can say for many of my classmates). But as soon as I got out of class, I wasn't tired - even pushing midnight I couldn't fall asleep most nights. Of course, this only makes the task of feigning consciousness even more difficult the following day. A deadly spiral indeed. Although, I have to admit part of the staying up late is on account of the small bar in the middle of a Louisiana corn field we found - Daiquiri World - run by the owner's 20 year old son Brandon with Miss Cricket working the bar. Middle of freaking nowhere, sketchy pre-fabricated building with cheap beers and probably 12 teeth total before we got there. But somehow it's southern charm and cultural oddities continued to draw us back for two consecutive nights.

The second dichotomy is why I'm even here. While I understand the original intent of sending us, all five of us are also in a similar class next week. So while we sat here learning nothing, we missed out on the trainings and prep work taking place back with the rest of the unit, and will continue to miss out due to next week's training. Then it's maybe 1 or 2 days left to pound everything out before it's wheels up. There's a lot to get done, and not a lot of time to do it...

And so it would seem that, even with ever growing lines on my "To Do List", I find myself stuck at the Jackson, MS airport, waiting for a flight that's some 4 hours away. Tomorrow is a family brief and BBQ, and my parents will be present. It should be good for them to meet the leadership I'll be deploying with, and say their final goodbyes... a part of the otherwise exciting weekend I am not looking forward to.