My brain... is like a bowl of pudding.

*SPLORT*

That's the sound pudding makes when it gets poked.

Aside from that discovery of the day, here's Paul news! All Paul, All the time.

Two things of note recently... one was FTX, my ROTC trip to Alpena, and the other was my Calc Exam that took place an hour and a half ago. Let's... do the Calc first so we end on a good note, shall we?

I studied hard for the last couple days, writing a notecard to use during the test, and summarizing the chapters the exam was on. I was feeling pretty good about myself, because I was working through the problems decently on the practice exams, and I felt like I understood the concepts.

Until today...

The test I just took was a Math test on steroids, protein shakes, and LSD. None of that means anything, I just felt like comparing it to things that make it sound ridiculous. Essentially the test WAS the basic concepts I learned, but worded so difficultly, that my brain overthought things, made me work too hard, made me forget simple formulas until minutes later... essentially it ate a bit of my soul. Or so it feels like. Out of the 9 problems on the test, I did not finish 2-3 of them because I ran out of time. I ATTEMPTEd all of them but... ran out of time. Time time time. And here I text Mike after the test where he is, and he's already back in the room playing Computer games. O.o <-- Picture that as a face I would make. I sincerely doubt he did any better on the test than me, even if he did get the concepts better. There's no way to finish that test that quickly, accurately. We'll see when the scores come out. Luckily the grading is strongly in my favor... some of the past exams had 60s being Bs. I'm thinking that if all the parts I actually answered were fullycorrect, I'm gonna get very low 80s. It was that bad. I don't even think studying would have helped me more here, it was just time that got me. *sighs*

On to a happier note though, my previous weekend. FTX! Field... Training Exercise... Or something like that. Basically, we went up late Friday night, stayed through Saturday, and left at 5am Sunday morning. However, being the military, we went to bed at 9-10 both nights, so we got enough sleep. Basically, Saturday, we woke up at 630 and were marching by 7. First item of the day was a briefing on M16s. We learned how to take them apart, some basic safety issues... we spent about an hour or so on that. From there we split up, and my group moved to the MOUT course.

MOUT stands for Military Operations in Urban Terrain. Basically, they taught us how to clear buildings, cross streets, and the like in Urban Terrain. It wasn't too in depth, but it was fun, and once we had the basics down, we ran through three scenarios. Our group was split up into three squads of five. On the first scenario, our objective was to raid a building and capture a 'terrorist' for interrogation. My group was the actual infiltration squad. I was on point. We went into the building with our only 'intel' being that someone on the first floor most likely had a weapon. I went into the building, and we cleared the first room pretty quickly. I moved in, weapon up (These were airsoft rifles by the way, replica M16s that shot small plastic pellets on Semiautomatic or automatic. Officers got to use automatic. Guess what we used?) I rounded a corner, and there was a terrorist, I pointed my weapon at him, and he started asking questions and the like, asking what I was doing, why I was here, trying to convince me to lower my guard. Eventually my squad subdued him, then went upstairs and captured the terrorist. We cleared out that scenario in less than ten minutes, without a shot fired. It wasn't till after I found out the guy I had found HAD a rifle, he just didn't grab it because I had him in my sights. Nice ego boost there. Second scenario was similar, but with actual hostiles. There was a helicopter crash with two pilots. We were supposed to retrieve them. We found one, then had to clear out a building to find the other. That also went really well, but we had one casualty because my squad leader stood directly in front of an open window. I shut it after he 'died' so no one else would. Smart thinking, am I right? The third scenario was the worst for us. Basically, there were lots of hostiles, and we had to evacuate to a building, clear it, and hold out for 15 minutes. Little did we know that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the officers was in there. We got slaughtered. I was on cover duty outside, waiting to get the ok to move in, when I get drilled in my facemask. Dead. We fell to pieces, I don't even think anyone made it to the second floor. We were told after that if that was a real mission, the Army would use a whole BATTALION to secure tha area, then send in Special Forces, if they wanted the building. Otherwise they'd just airstrike it. Us, with semiautomatic rifles and no grenades, didn't stand a chance. The 4th scenario was just for fun, cadets vs. officers. I was one of the survivors. It was fun.

From MOUT, we ate MREs (Yum...?) then went to the shooting range. I'm purposely NOT talking about the MREs because we weren't allowed to heat them up, and they weren't too pleasant. In the shooting, range, we shot stuff. First time shooting a rifle for me... needless to say I didn't do all that well. Well, I did DECENT but... not enough to qualify for Expert. I was in the middle-low range of our group, with 27 out of 40 hits. The people who hit 35 got to shoot a 50 cal. sniper rifle. It was RIDICULOUS. Shockwave, cloud of dust... Several inch long used shells... sheesh.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Totally worth it. Now though, I need to eat thsi sandwich that has been sitting here for the last 20 minutes while I typed. Bye!