People And Places

People and places are the same to me. They are individual, and they possess both a physical being and a spiritual essence. I enjoy visiting places, and maybe staying for awhile. I also enjoy meeting people, and maybe sitting down to talk for a time. People and places have fascinating stories. They exist exist in parallel, undiscovered until your paths cross. I like to hear their stories, and learn from them.

But I have a particular ability that mars the glassy surface of these stories. I can see under that surface to the dark, cold area below. I have a tendency to analyze things, from physical, psychological, and philosophical standpoints. When you look too hard, you find things you don't want to see. I see personality flaws. I see things that retract from the attractiveness of a setting. I guess over-analysis is less of an ability and more of a flaw itself. When prescribed an antibiotic, taking an overdose can kill. Too much of a good thing is never a good thing.

The problem with this constant over-analysis is that everything has flaws to be uncovered. The Grand Canyon has beauty in the highest caliber, but it is desolate and alone. Pleasanton is a home, a place with memories and a place to rest, but the people are conceited and cold. Even the brilliant and adamantine diamond is flawed with the weakness of its own natural strength. Nothing is perfect; everything has its weak points.

Because of this, I am restless. I cannot stay with the same people for too long because I am disappointed by the inevitable discovery that they are imperfect. I cannot be in one place for long before I discover its shortcomings. This is not specific to any person or place, but rather a consistent observance from the unconscious.

I sometimes think that it would be best if I left my things and took to the road for a few years. It wouldn't be wasted time. Or, perhaps, I could join the military and move from base to base around the world. I'd like to go to different universities, live in different cities, countries, work with different people. I want to stay long enough to see the good, but leave before I detect the flaws. The world through the eyes of the traveler is much more beautiful and peaceful than from the perspective of we who stand still. Children visit the zoo for a day and find joy in seeing the animals, but the animals remain confined in their condition.

I want to go somewhere else. I am not sure if it should be outside the country, the state, or simply to the other side of the street, but I have to move. I do not know what I am moving towards or away from; I have no goal but to exist. I do not know how long I should wander, or to where, or to whom, but I know that I cannot stand still.

Current Mood: Indifferent

Listening To: "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens

Moderation

Everything in moderation. Eric says it all the time, and I agree. Over-indulgence is a common vice. Everyone is over-indulgent of something at some point, but when it becomes a habit, or even a ritual, it breaks the rule of moderation. And the rule of moderation is really just a virtuous principle of common sense.

I say this for clarification. Sometimes we frown upon guilty pleasures in life. Guilty of what? Who knows, maybe of simply being counter to widely held social ideals. Not everyone sees this but some, myself in particular, look at things such as intoxication, recreational drug use, or even things like skipping classes or eating too much dessert as “bad.” I could go into great philosophically dense cross-examinations of “bad” and “good,” but that is missing the point—some just do not agree with these indulgences. But what I think is not important to you, and shouldn’t be. We should feel free to live life the way we want to, and to indulge as we please.

However, moderation is a virtue. Virtues are as the dictionary puts it, “qualities of being morally good or righteous.” They are as objective as philosophical reasoning can get. The lack of this virtue would indubitably lead to a boring life, but the excess is more dangerous. Drinking too much alcohol continually, or skipping classes every day will obviously lead to problems.

Not only is the excess of this virtue problematic, but it also destroys the virtue itself. “Indulging” is usually thought of as rewarding and pleasurable. But too much of anything can desensitize you to that reward, and the pleasure in it fades. I do this all the time—I find a really good song or album and buy it, listen to it repeatedly for a week, and then…I don’t seem to like it as much anymore. People who love a particular sport will many times ruin it by playing it competitively, draining the fun out of it with hours of training and repetition each day. Over-indulgence causes desensitization.

Now, are those who are consistently overindulgent stupid? No. They are ignorant. Stupidity is something that has more permanence than ignorance. Ignorance is an analogical state of darkness, a condition that can be overturned by simply turning on the light. Stupidity is an unofficial mental capacity that stupid people never seem to be able to overcome. This is entirely subjective of course, but I think it takes the edge off of some insults. For example, the statement “young and stupid,” which I have referred to before, should instead be altered to “young and ignorant.” The stupid are ignorant, but that is not commutative.

I have witnessed quite a bit of over-indulgence this year, which is why I bring this up. Vices of virtues cause respectability to decrease if not just slightly. Technically if someone were not virtuous they would not be respectable at all, so there has to be an incremental decrease for vices somewhere on the moral scale. I don’t hate people for it—but don’t push your limits. Everything in moderation.

Current Mood: Calm

Listening To: "Forever Young" by Alphaville

Summer Again

And so concludes the first year of college. That was by far the shortest school year I have experienced yet...on the calendar, of course, but it seemed to move faster than normal. Things usually are kind of foggy from the first part of the year around finals, but I recall very clearly the course of this run. In fact, I remember exactly what I wrote at the beginning of my college experience. But here we are again, back on the solstice side of the solar system. Welcome to summer.

I'm not looking forward to this summer as I have in years past. The break will be nice, sure, but the magic, magnetic attraction to summer isn't quite as strong. Summer has always been a clearly defined period, when you have nothing to do, a nothing that has substance, a good nothing. It was a nothing that was something, something to look forward to, a reason for excitement in the bore of the last few weeks of school. It was a reason to watch the calendar, to sit and stare at the clock on the wall in class as it moved at a suspiciously slow pace. There was nothing ahead but pools, block parties, and lazy afternoons.

It seems to me that this summer will be different. It's different for some of you, but many of us are out of class a month earlier than in the K-12 phase. I'm all for an extra few weeks of break, but there's something wrong about it. If you graduate early it's a good feeling because of your accomplishment, but you miss the excitement of goin' out there on the field and throwing your hat up in the air with your colleagues. It's the same thing here--there is no more yearbook signing, no class pizza parties, no running from the final bell. It seems less innocent. It's still warm, the shadows are long, and the sunroofs are still open...but it's not as relaxing. It's not that defined period anymore, but more of a transition that bleeds one year into the next. There's still work to do, in jobs and in classes.

Maybe you feel differently, I don't know. A lot of people are looking forward to these experiences, I'm sure. Some are interested in getting a job and getting their own income, some will be happy to burn a few credits in summer classes, and some are excited to ship off to military training (although I can't fathom why.) But I'm guess I'm getting at is that things have changed. You don't realize what you have until it is gone, to sum it up in a cliché. I'll just miss the way things used to be. It is pointless to be a trout in the stream of things, because regardless of how hard you thrash, the flow is overpoweringly unidirectional. I'm not trying to fight it, I'm just reminiscent.

Conversely, I am ready for all of the pools, block parties, lazy afternoons, and ice cream I can cram in between other "mature, responsible college student" activities. Everything will still be there, I suppose. Let's do it.




"Summer nights and my radio,
that's all we need, baby...
Don'tcha know?"

-Van Halen

Current Mood: Calm

Listening To: "Growing Up" by Bruce Springsteen

Cold War of Philosophy (One of Many)

What is life? Is it a series of free experiences that gauges the future from the past? Or is it a heavily structured process based on social and scientific laws? The question is persistent: is life a clean canvas, an unwritten story open for thought and soul to flow onto by the imaginative pigments and penmanship of the empiricist? Or is it the construction of a tower, the creation of a design—a process based instead on equations, logical methods, and research-proven techniques of the rationalist? It appears to be a two-pronged fork: as an example, students choosing their major veer towards the right-brained intuitiveness and subjectivity of art, or the left-brained analytic processes and objectivity of math and science. Empiricism versus rationalism is a battle between two giants of philosophy. In the polarization of ideas, however, it is overlooked that there is a possibility of a third route. That route is an unbeaten path between the paved roads of romanticism and reason, one unexplorable by the oversized tanks by right and wrong, but only by the lone motorcycle of truth. That truth is that experience and reason may coexist with equal importance in life.

“To be is to do,” are the words of Immanuel Kant. Experience is important in life because it is life—it would be nonexistent without experience. The simplest days spent on the couch, at school and at the dinner table with family are filled with as much experience as are the greatest days of our lives spent on tropical beaches and mountaintops with spectacular views. Empiricists use these experiences to build themselves and their ideas. To fully immerse oneself in life is to fill that capacity for experience, and to experience is to learn. It is using this method that Pirsig was able to conceive so many philosophical questions—the simple yet immersive experience of his cross-country trip with his son contained the spark needed to ignite the gunpowder of imagination. Anyone may become a philosopher with their experiences as material. Past successes and failures, along with the power of the human imagination, can create a future that only exists in dreams in the present. “It is beyond a doubt,” Kant said, “that all our knowledge begins with experience.”

But there is a catch. Kant continued, “…although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.” Therefore, experience is important, but not the sole principle upon which our lives are built. While the romanticists open their arms to the influence of experience and the flow of the holistic approach, the rationalists beg to differ. It is generally agreed upon that life is a series of experiences, but those who follow this romantic philosophy too freely are dangerous. Romanticism is too irrational, too unpredictable and devious. Die-hard romanticists are dreamers, detached from reality and any seriousness in life. Those who have no structure or constraints can easily fall to vices and be overcome with self-interest, become the criminals, the greedy, and the pathetic.

Quite to the contrary, the rationalists shun the frolicsome, mystical indecisiveness of the empiricists and instead revert to established universal laws. Many of the principles upon which modern science, mathematics, medicine, and engineering are based have been proven effective. Reason is the concrete component that contributes to the creation of concrete things, and is therefore more beneficial to humanity than something that is abstract. According to rationalists, it is better to use the established methods to pinpoint a solid future, rather than firing blindly and hoping to hit something, whatever that something may be. Motorcycle maintenance would certainly not be possible without the logic of reverse engineering and the very tangible knowledge presented in instruction manuals. Humans need structure not only to advance but also to survive—with no social structure the world would be absolute chaos. It seems that humanity would exist as a less turbulent and more perfected race with reason as its exclusive principle.

As with experience, however, there are arguments against reason as that single principle. To empiricists, reason is too concrete—too gray and colorless, too predictable. Rational thinking to them does not leave room for creativity or emotion, only what is controlled and predefined. Rationalism is a machine. Also, even reason, as concrete and correct as it seems, may itself be a false floor. Pirsig suggested that even the most widely used and apparently solid laws of reason are “ghosts.” Because scientific laws have been thoroughly researched and consequently taught, they are believed to be the absolute truth, when in fact the possibility that they may be wrong is still very real. People were once inseparable from the scientific “laws” that the Earth is the center of the universe, or that it is flat, but in time those laws were proven to be incorrect. In fact, it took somewhat empirical thought processes to break the attachment to those ideas, and to establish new ones in accordance with modern reasoning. In that sense, reason is as much of a product of the human imagination as free experience. The true “reason,” assuming it exists, may be something just out of reach—the asymptote of an equation that we build upon while we learn, a goal that we unconsciously strive for. The building blocks of that equation are our experiences, and the entire rational philosophy is reduced itself to empiricism.

With both philosophies being validated and simultaneously nullified, one pondering this debate is left in a state of ambivalence. When in this philosophical limbo, one would feel pressured to agree with one side or the other, when that may not in fact be necessary at all. As Pirsig stated, “Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other… and as far as I know, no one now living has any real reconciliation of these truths or modes.” The reconciliation is the third path, the necessary key to a philosophical compromise. It is possible that the empiricists and rationalists will remain on opposite sides of the 38th parallel of thought. They will remain in their nuclear bunkers, as did the Capitalists and Communists, respectively—as enemies, engrossed in their own ideals. In the world of philosophy, though, black and white should not exist but as various shades of grey. The truth of the matter is that experience and reason both exist in life. Though it may be overlooked, artists utilize some sort of process in their work, as engineers integrate creativity into theirs. Left-brain and right-brain are irrelevant in the big picture—they are still part of the greater function of one brain. It is necessary for them to coexist, and with equal importance. Without reason, experience is unguided and precarious, but without experience, reason is nothing more than a dead, rigid structure. The debate is simply a turbulent surface to a vast ocean below that is calm and homogeneous.

Perhaps experience changes us. Perhaps it is the awl that constantly chips away at the marble, refining the details of our being from the day we are born until the very last minutes of our lives. Like fragments of rock, the small bits of ineptitude that are removed each day by our experiences will never be a part of us again. We cannot glue shavings of marble back on, should they be mistakenly removed. Likewise, once we have experienced something, it is permanently part of our past. When we are born, we are a simple block. Now, no two blocks are the same—each has unique swirls, chips, and rough spots—predispositions, if you will, to what we may become. They will always remain with us, but it is experience that truly defines us. By the time we die, our experiences have sculpted from that block a distinct figure, a statue of our lives. Perhaps that statue is the very face of reason, that reason is not the basis on which our lives are lived like its proponents suggest, but rather the goal that is approached through experience. As Kant said: “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.” But maybe that’s all wrong—it could be that reason is the method through which that statue is sculpted, and experience is the artistic license. Perhaps everything is predefined, with the final figure in the blueprints, and a few mistakes as experiences in the construction. Regardless, the key conjunction between the two should not be “or,” but rather “and.” In any case, both exist. Really the epic battle between empiricism and rationalism is nothing more than a Cold War—two very different ideas, each with valid points, staring into each other’s steely eyes in a circular dispute. Both are right, both are wrong, and both just are. That is the importance of experience and reason in life. They are life.

Current Mood: Relaxed
Listening To: "How to Disappear Completely" by Radiohead

Young & Stupid?

There is an overused phrase that tends to surface somewhat later in life, usually a couple of years after college. “Young and stupid,” people say, when describing the dumb things they did in their earlier days. Life is a learning process, of course, a slightly exponential curve of knowledge gained from birth until we are either dead or mostly incapacitated. Understandably, in our older years we tend to be more morally awake and aware of what is stupid and what isn’t, by the general consensus.

Being as petulant and critical as I admittedly am, I have a problem with that statement. Several problems, actually. Firstly, in the context it is usually used in, it treats stupidity as something that’s funny. In some cases, yes, stupidity can lead to doing things that are pretty funny, but I’m talking about doing things that are just downright brainless. Those of you who know me well know that I have a very, very low tolerance for stupidity. I guess I just don’t understand how wasting people’s time and resources could be funny in any way, especially when it involves doing something destructive or dangerous.

Secondly, I do not understand the concept of a stupidity threshold. That phrase suggests that at some point, people go from being imperceptive in exercising their free will to suddenly realizing that they’ve been acting like morons. It’s like the sonic boom of awareness—once people are beyond that barrier, they look back and start to laugh, like they just got a joke.

I’m sure that looking back I’ll have things I regret. I already regret some of the things I’ve done. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I was stupid. As of yet, I have a disciplinary record that is cleaner than Chris Brown’s image before he punched out Rhianna. There isn’t a thing on my traffic record, my police record, or my academic record—not even a single detention since my first day of preschool. This isn’t because I’m a perfect person, a goody-two-shoes white boy that’s totally full of himself. It’s because I look at each action as a choice, a possibility for different results. It seems that people only focus on the big decisions in life: college, marriage, career choices, and etcetera. But I think it’s more than that—life is affected just as much by the countless small and irreversible decisions we make on a daily basis as it is by those big choices. In order to keep yourself on track—to keep from letting yourself be “young and stupid”—it’s a good idea to calculate just a little more the consequences of your actions. I may sound like a chiding parent, but your image is in your own hands.

There will come a day when I’ll be sitting in a lawn chair having a cold one with some friends at a summer block party, or around a campfire out camping with some buddies, and they’ll start to talk about when they were young and stupid. They’ll talking about getting drunk and getting high, and everything they did when they were drunk and high, or at least the things they remember. And I will sit back in my chair and smile, because I will have nothing to say.

In order to prevent this from sounding totally egocentric, I will add a goal to this. I follow this goal, and I will pass it on to you: challenge yourself to raise your standards. Whenever you act, just use common sense. It shouldn’t be too much to ask. Am I saying to be more like me? No, I don’t like the sound of that. Be yourself. But make your youth something you can look back and be proud of, rather than something of a joke, parts of which you’d rather forget.

Current Mood: Calm

Listening To: "The Unforgiven II" by Metallica

Don't Take Your Guns To Town

Michael Latz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Shooting Incidents in Q2_2008-2009
2008:
    July 27 -- One person was killed and eight others were wounded as a man opened fire inside a church with a shotgun in the city of Knoxville, Tennessee.
    Aug. 1 -- A gunman took the lives of three teenagers and injured another near Menominee River in northern Wisconsin.
    Aug. 13 -- A man forced his way into the Arkansas Democratic headquarters and fatally shot state party chairman Bill Gwatney.
    Sept. 2 -- Six people were shot dead and two were wounded in a series of shooting incidents in Washington State.
    Oct. 16 -- One high-school student was killed and three were seriously injured when a gunman shot at them near their school in Detroit, Michigan.
    Oct. 26 -- Two people were killed and one was injured in a shooting incident at the University of Central Arkansas.
    Nov. 23 -- A teenager shot dead a young man in a shopping mall in suburban Seattle. One person was also seriously injured.
    Dec. 14 -- A man dressed in a Santa Claus costume barged into a Christmas Eve party in Covina, a Los Angeles suburb, and opened fire, killing at least eight people before taking his own life.
2009:
    Jan. 24 -- Two people were killed and seven others wounded in a gun-shooting spree by unidentified assailants in a house in Wichita, Kansas.
    On the same day, two teenagers died and seven others were injured when a gunman opened fire at a group of students outside a nightspot in Portland, Oregon.
    Feb. 24 -- At least seven people were injured in a gun-shooting incident at the New Orleans' Mardi Gras festival.
Source Lu Yanan, Xinhua News, Beijing

That already is quite a list of deadly shootings, and that was before this week began. And what a week it's been:

On Sunday, some asshole showed up at a church in Maryville, Illinois with a .45 and a couple dozen rounds, shot the pastor in the face, and then proceeded to stab the people trying to disarm him.

Yesterday (the tenth,) another jerkoff blew away his mother, and then his dog for Christ sake, lit them on FIRE, and then continued to his Uncle's house where he left enough casings and bodies to be considered comparable to a drive-by in Compton. His next targets included his grandmother, GRANDMOTHER, and three random victims: a pedestrian, a woman in a gas station, and someone driving on the highway. One of his own .38 rounds relieved the police of their duty to blow his head off (I'm assuming it was a .38, because generally speaking, suicide by shotgun is difficult since the trigger is so far away.)

Now I wake up this morning to a cup of coffee and a school shooting near Stuttgart. This time, some 17 year old cockchoke thought it would be a fuckin' blast to play dress up like R6 and blow away some teenage girls at his former school. He walked into the classroom and hit a number of children in the head with surgical precision, dropping them before they even dropped their pencils. Real swift, I hope you had fun when the Polizei filled you with more 9mm rounds than there are holes in the evidence of Saddam's WMDs.

This unfortunate series of events has led me to one question: WHAT THE FUCK?

This planet, United States in particular, is filled, crammed TO THE BRIM with hundreds of thousands of immoral, insecure momma's boys that are deluded with maniacal ideas because of their unhealthy obsessions with COD4. These antisocial creatures breed on hate and their own self-pity, until they "snap" (I think it's more of a "coming out of the closet,") and start spraying bullets like a pack of trigger-happy Hajis in al-Anbar (pardon the racial slur, I am not anti-Islam, just very pissed off.)

That out of the way, I reveal my intention for writing this. The hardcore leftists are bleeding out of the woodwork now like worms after a rainstorm, ranting and raving on their blogs that people should not be allowed to own guns. Their likely story would be that gun control is the root of all these shootings, and that videogames are evil. What? In my opinion that's as likely a story as suggesting that the Bush administration is in no way responsible for the total massacre of the international economy. I need say no more than "Second Amendment," but of course I will.

By default I am independent philosophically and politically, but as a headnote it should be known that gun control is one thing I'm very, very Conservative about. I hate how these people go on and on about banning all weapons permanently, and how it's all the gun manufacturers' fault and whatever. Here's why: they refuse to take responsibility for anything. Some of those people who sit on their damned iMacs drinking Starbucks and Snapple while blowing politics out their ass on their blogs are themselves the problem. And what is that, you ask? PARENTS. I hold parents responsible. As you may know, I am generally disgusted with modern youth and parents, these snobby, yuppie by-products that have mouths bigger than their brains. That is perhaps generalizing a bit too much, but it's true--all of these shooters were under the age of 40, the overwhelming majority were under 30, and some under even 20 years old. They are still under influence of things they learned--or did not learn--from their parents.

This leads me to the videogame point--parents blame videogames for all of these horrible instances. If I may retort: one, you're wrong, and I will explain why, and two, if videogames are the root of all evil in the world, then why the hell do you continue to feed cash into the filthy Rockstar machine so that your little Johnny can let his creativity run free (by which I am referring to rape, torture, and murder) and hack off heads in the comfort of your living room? Hypocrite. Anyway, if you do need an example of a case where videogames do not corrupt the mind, you can look straight at me, or the other 99.9999bar% kids that don't decide on school shootings as their favorite extracurricular activity. You must admit that you are only using videogames as a shield to cover up your poor parenting abilities that are the reason for Johnny's antisocial behavior. In nature vs. nurture, you ARE the nurture, and that plays an immense role in the development of the person.

Back to the "legality of guns" issue. Of course I don't think bazookas should be legal, or even fully automatic weapons, since the only intent of autos is to kill a large number of people or completely annihilate a paper target. But rifles, shotguns, and handguns? Firearms are as important to the American creed as the stars and stripes or saturated fat-laden cheesecake. Here's why outlawing them would be ridiculous. Marijuana is illegal. Do you (especially you college students,) know anyone that smokes Mary Jane? Okay, now apply that to guns. Whoever wants guns, for whatever purpose, will get them, illegal or not. In fact, the ones who get them illegally would be those more likely to carry out horrendous murders such as those committed on a (now) regular basis. Outlawing anything practical deprives it from the law-abiding citizens and limits it to those who break the law anyway. This is one of many items on a long list of reasons why firearms are still legal in this country.

In order to correct any extreme or baseless points, I will acknowledge the flaws in my argument. Not all of these shooters are to be put entirely at fault. Some of them are schizophrenic, or have other mental disorders which are valid reasons to say that they did not possess normal judgement. Not all of them grew up in an environment with poor parenting. However, when it comes to the point of mass-murder, I take this issue very seriously and permanently stick it to their records.

Also, there are many, many flaws in our gun laws that are full of red tape and ridiculous, LUDICROUS rules and exceptions that allow the wrong people to get the wrong thing. The government and gun lobbyists deserve some "credit" for these deaths, and I hold them partially accountable.

That being said, I'm going to go get a shotgun, and also a sidearm thanks to a giant gaping loophole in the California gun codes, and go refine my marksmanship at the RANGE (as opposed to at a school or shopping mall.) That way, when one of these chicken fucks approaches me on the street dressed in their best Sunday BDUs, I can disassemble their head onto the sidewalk before they kill someone whose life has some worth, like the 58 people lost to these pricks in the last 8 months.

And rest in peace.

Current Mood: Agitated

Listening To: "Sonne" by Rammstein

Decisions, Decisions

There are several points in life at which you reach a major crossroads. There are, of course, many side paths and detours you can take that detail the journey, but whenever you are forced to go left or right, you need to think things through. There are no U-turns on this road.

Now, normally these crossroads are few and far between, but only months after the major decision-critical transition from high school to college, I find myself at another damned intersection. Right now I'm stopped at a red light, with some time to figure out which way I'll turn, but when it hits green again, I need to know exactly what I plan to do. To the left is a civilian life, and probably a good one, as an Aerospace Engineer. To the right is the military.

Here are my conditions:
1. I want to serve my country. I am a proponent of civil service, and believe that it is necessary for the betterment of society. I have committed some of my life to this, and would not hesitate to provide more. This pushes me right.

2. I want to fly. A life goal is to become a fighter pilot, or at least some sort of pilot. The military is the easiest way to reach this goal. This pushes me further right.

3. I have no intention of dying. I think war is an overly-glorified, tired-out human concept that does not belong in the modern world. I hate being affected by other peoples' stupidity, and would rather it not be the reason for my death. This pushes me left.

4. I do not want the military to dictate my life. I don't mind living the military life for awhile, but will not allow the government, or any group, ideology, or political institution to own me. This pushes me far left.

5. I want to make sure that I have a solid resume and good experiences for civilian life. I do not want a career in the military, just a term. This is neutral, I could either add military to my resume or just enter the workforce.

6. I have to be able to plan out a sequence. If I enter the military, it pretty much sets my personal life and other career goals back eight years. If I get married, I don't want to have kids while I am in active service. This sounds ridiculous coming from me now, since I'm only eighteen, but I want things to fall into place. There are certain things that will block me from being happy later on if I never accomplished them.


Here are options I am considering:
1. Take OCC: Officer's Candidacy Course is a rigorous, if not torturous entry course to the United States Marine Corps. If I choose this option, I will finish my Bachelor's degree, then go to Quantico, Virginia for the 10-week training camp, and enter the Marine Corps as an Officer. I like this option because I would love to become a Marine, but dislike it because my focus would not be in aviation.

2. Take OTS: Officer's Training School is essentially the OCC of the Air Force. It isn't quite as rigorous, since it is the Air Force instead of the Marines (not quite the same reputation,) but it is longer, at 13.5 weeks. I would also enter this after graduating with my 4-year degree. I like this option because it is much more likely to get me a pilot slot than the USMC, but dislike it because AFROTC and USAFA units are chosen for the slots before OTS. It's kind of the bottom of the barrel.

3. Take AFROTC: Air Force ROTC is a series of courses I can take here at San Jose State. I would have to do mandatory physical training, which I am essentially doing anyway, and take a number of classes. I like this because it would pretty much guarantee me a slot in the Air Force, and has better chances of getting me in the air. I highly dislike it because I do not want the military to interfere with my college life. I want to experience college and the military separately.

4. Skip the military: I could enter the workforce right away. There are lots of options available to me in the industry. Aerospace is a cyclical business, and is currently at a low point, so I think there should be plenty of career opportunities around graduation time. My goal of becoming a pilot could be achieved with a private license further down the line. But it sure ain't a fighter pilot.

In any case, I think I have a pretty good shot at my goal of becoming a pilot. It is a highly ambitious, almost headstrong, and extremely competitive goal, but I think I can do it. My GPA is solid, I would pass the military IQ testing without many problems, and have a number of key things on my resume that gear me towards flight (Eagle Scout, BSAE degree, possibly a double major, and some upcoming aerospace internships.)

However, I am apprehensive about the whole idea since pilot's contracts are 8 years, and I want to be absolutely, fail-proof sure that this is what I want to do for eight years of my life. It is a long time. You probably can't remember much from eight years ago--that was 5th or 6th grade. When planning things out like this, you really begin to realize how short life is.

Current Mood: Contemplative

Listening To: "Walking On My Feet" by Moonbabies