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Via Michelle Malkin and HotAir

it's official

I'm finished with instructor training. I had my last checkride on Friday, passed with no downgrades. It is such a relief to know that I am no longer a student. No more gradesheets, not more being critqued, at least not at the same level. Now it will be from one collegue to the other, in passing rather than a barrage of comments all focused on me.

At the same time it will be strange not being the student any longer. I have been a student in some form for my whole life up to this point. Now, for the first time, I am free to follow my own pursuits in my own time. I do not have to study, other than keeping up with all the T-37 info that I know with a few exceptions. Its going to be weird for lack of a better term, and will take some getting used to. I do know I am going to be one of those IPs that does not talk much. I hated the ones that talked constantly, and my whole goal was to get them to shut their mouths. The best flights are the ones in total silence, hence my desire to fly a single seat jet.

So I'm on my way back to Columbus on Monday by way of Austin to visit the grandparents and then a stop in Shreveport to visit a buddy in my class who is there for B-52s. So now, my loyal readers, you can look forward to ammusing anecdotes about student attempts to try to kill me, hopefully not on a daily basis. Stay tuned...

thank goodness for weekends....

This is kind of a melancholy post. This is my last weeknd in San Antonio, then back to Columbus. I'm happy to be at the end of school, training, etc. but its going to be weird to actually have a real job for the first time, as much as flying is a real job. I'm really bummed about leaving all of my friends that I have made here though. I'll be back again in March time-frame to transition to the T-6, but that is just too long. I have grown to love the church I have been attending and the women's small group I have been a part of. So the next four days will not only include lots of studying and checkrides, but many goodbyes as well. I'm glad God knows what He's doing....

So I have been thinking a lot about who I want to be as a woman following after God's heart and what that means for my life. I guess that happens when you have big life changes, right? My friend Lisa has blogged about it, but I have been trying to reconcile what the Bible tells us women, how we should act, roles, all that, and my own desires, what I think about my own life. Here's some of what Lisa included in a book she is reading:

Here's more from Kate O'Beirne's "Women who make the world worse"

"I quickly learned that the demand for equal opportunity was a typically dishonest feminist ruse. Advocates for women in combat were really seeking special rights for women in uniform. They argued that women should be allowed in combat if they felt like it, although men are involuntarily assigned to combat duties. And feminists weren't demanding an equal right for women to compete to meet the services' physical standards. They were demanding a new separate physical standard for women because the great majority can't meet a male standard.

Definitive studies show that the top 5 percent of women perform at the male medium. The average twenty- to thirty-year-old woman has the aerobic capacity of a fifty-year-old man. There's a reason why fifty-year-old men in uniform are not expected to do what twenty-year-old men do. To mask these real differences between the sexes, with their real consequences in the real world of combat - under pressure to integrate the ranks - the services have modified their training.

Since it was integrated, in a typial example of how the military copes with the fact that women are weaker and slower than men, West Point has developed a formula of "equilavent effort" that has male cadets obliged to complete an obstacle course in 3:20 minutes, while female cadets are allowed 5:30. Men receive the same grade for doing seventy-two push-ups in two minutes as women do for performing forty-eight. Scores on fitness tests throughout the military are now similarly "gender-normed."

The physical qualifications for specific jobs have also had to be changed to accomodate the lesser physical strength of women. A 1985 Navy study found that large majorities of women were unable to perform any of the eight critical shipboard tasks that virtually all men could handle. To keep things shipshape on the gender front, the job of stretcher carrier in the Navy, once a two-man job (that 100 percent but only 12 percent of women could perform) was redefined as a four-person task.

Proponents of women in combat are tiresome in their dishonest insistence that women should only serve on the front lines "if they can meet all the physical requirements." Experience with integrating the service academies and the great majority of specialities has shown that women can't and don't meet the male standard. The force is slower and weaker as a result."

I pretty much agree with all of that, but where does it leave me? As a child of Title 9, gender equality, and everything that came out of that whole movement, I don't think I have ever really thought about things that could not do as a woman, or that maybe God did not intend for women to do. And for the most part I have only been praised for the life choices I have made. But there is a part of me that wants a husband to stay home for and take care of our kids, and there is a part of me that could never do that. At this point in my life the career has pretty much take front seat since there have not been any relationship possibilities in a very long time, so for now that part of me has won out, even though I have this whole internal debate going on. And in a circular spiral, because I'm more focused on career, I'm less likely to have an opportunity for the family thing, and it just keeps going from there....

Honestly though, I can't imagine being anything other than a fighter pilot. Seriously, just being an instructor pilot is very hard for me sometimes, and I get depressed when I think about my buddies who are out there doing the flying that I think I should be out there doing. I have never done any of this to prove anything, just because I feel like it is what I'm called to do. This is the path I have chosen, and now I want to do my best as a part of the team protecting our country and ideals that make us the greatest country in the world. So that what I'm thinking about these days. The balance between the two, and how I can follow God's plan for my life in light of the desires of my heart, or in spite of them.

saying goodbye to texas

Wow, that sounds like a bad country song... Yes, its true, I will be out of here in about a week and a half. Despite all of my efforts to remain here as long as possible, they are double turning me (flying me twice a day) into oblivion and I will finish instructor training in under three months. It will be nice not being a student anymore, but I wish I didn't have to leave the big city. I like Starbucks and tubing, visiting my grandparents, good concerts that are of short supply in the South, the friends that are here (partucularly the girlfriends, my church here in San Antonio), and so much more. As I look back at how upset I was to get FAIP, I know atleast that God wanted me here and now, and has taught me a lot. So I'm sure there is more of that waiting for me back in Columbus. Stay tuned kids....

who's got two thumbs.....

.... and was promoted today?? This girl! No longer a sad little butterbar. Atleast I will outrank most of my students when I get back to C-town. One a bad note I had the fuge, the dreaded centrifuge, so that wasn't fun. (If you dont' know what a centrifuge is, rent Speis Like Us) Pulling Gs simply for the sake of pulling Gs isn't the greatest. You have to atleast get some good aerobatics or formation out of it.... Plus moving in cirles very quickly without being about to see outside the little bubble you're in isn't too great on the ol' vestibular system.

Today is the old man's birthday. He's the big 5-1. No idea what to get him other than a nice bottle'o'wine. He's hard to buy for.

AND, (Sammy, you will be jealous again!) drum roll please.....

Tomorrow, I will be heading up to Austin for another great concert. This time Lifehouse, James Blunt, and The Fray (pictured right) will play for our listening pleasure. I have to say I'm totally stoked once again. I'm very glad I have taken full advantage of being near a great music town. Even better, one of the guys in my class went to high school with one of the guys in The Fray, so I might get to meet them!!! Double stoke! I should have been born a surfer, haha....