This weekend was my ROTC spring Field Training Exercise (FTX). This year the FTX was held at Ft. Sill, OK. We left Thursday afternoon and got back late this morning.

The 2008-2009 school year is the critical year in ROTC for me: I’ve been evaluated at different leadership positions throughout the school year, and I’ll be evaluated and assessed as a leader this summer. So, this FTX was to give us an idea of how the summer evaluation process is going to go.

My ROTC battalion was put into a new brigade of 7 schools last semester, so this FTX had some new schools attending. Only juniors attended, and we had about 150 cadets present. The training consisted of squad STX (Situational Training Exercises), day & night land navigation, and a PT test. I’d never been evaluated on a squad STX lane before, and I did well… but I learned a lot about the process. The summer evaluation is going to be a slow, dull, deliberate game that I’m going to have to learn to play, so the STX experience helped a lot. Land navigation was as smooth as usual, and the PT test went well, even with 20MPH winds and a temperature of 35F.

Now it’s back to regular eating and sleeping schedules, and school.