Hi everyone! The month of October has been crazy busy, filled with Columbus Day Weekend, Midterms, Parents’ Weekend, and of course, Halloween. It’s crazy to think that I am already half way through the semester, especially because it seems like forever ago that I reported in on July 1st. After the first few weeks of school, you start to get into a rhythm and daily schedule that you stick to. However, seeing my parents on Parents’ Weekend removed me from the day-to-day grind of the Academy. Parents’ Weekend not only was a great opportunity to show my parents the Academy and bring them to my classes, but also gave me a chance to reflect on my time here and what I want to do in the future. I came into the Academy unsure of what I wanted to do when I graduated, but open to trying new things and living new experiences. Some cadets know what they want to do when they graduate and focus specifically on what they need to do to meet that goal. While others, like me, have some long-term goals, but really have no idea what they want to do when they graduate. I’m hoping the next four years will give me the chance to try out new things and see what I’m interested in.
Over Parents’ Weekend, I not only got to spend time with my parents, but I also was able to talk over different opportunities at the Academy with my parents- especially what I want to major in and how that affects my future. Currently, I’m an ORCA major (Operations Research and Computer Analysis), which is a fancy way of saying math, which I love, but I’m also interested in Cyber Systems. For me, I know I eventually want to go to graduate school, that’s the long-term goal. Cyber is a fairly new major and I wanted to keep my options open before fully committing to my major. With my parents, we talked about each major in terms of the jobs and how it affects grad school. At the Academy, it’s easy to focus on the day-to-day events, because your schedule is always busy, but it is also nice to have that break and think about future goals for yourself. I hadn’t really thought much about my major, until I started discussing it with my parents, and realized that I wanted to keep both options, ORCA and Cyber, open. That was the most important thing, other than spending time with my family, that I got out of Parents’ Weekend—taking time to think about future goals.
