Month: October 2012

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I don’t know what it’s like for female cadets today, but way back in my day, when dinosaurs roamed the upper quad…

Eh, actually I don’t know if this ever really was a problem at all. I had very little luck with dating, no matter if I wore the uniform or civvies. I was just not the kind of person who attracted a lot of dates. To this day I’m not quite sure how I caught the Hubster’s eye, but he’s still here twenty-some years later and he’s still happy to see me every day, so I must be doing something right.

But seeing this cartoon today makes me wonder. Do people love a gal in uniform? I did my master’s degree thesis on gender stereotypes and leadership roles in the military. Some of what I found in there suggested that the old roles of seductress, iron maiden, pet and mother still applied. Women had to fit on of these four roles to have a place in the military, otherwise they had no place at all. But a lot of what I found told me that women in the military weren’t running into these gender stereotypes all that often, so I have no conclusive evidence one way or the other on the subject. For my own part, when I was in the military, I was treated like a person, not a stereotype. I did my job to the best of my ability and the people around me treated me with respect. When I was in the Cadet Corps, I was treated as a geek, which I was, and I wasn’t all that popular, but that was no big shock to me because I was seen as a geek in high school and I was treated the same way there too. So, whatever.

If anybody currently in the VTCC, or anybody who was in the VTCC at any time, has any thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them. Post comments here on the blog or email me. Thanks! Oh, and Happy Halloween!

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Some days you just want to rage at the machine… or, in this case, the Cadet Corps. Go for a jog and blow off the steam that way instead. It’s not worth the stick cards.

By the way, do you guys still do stick cards? I think I still have some tucked away in my closet somewhere.

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This is pretty much how I felt when I was a freshman at Virginia Tech. Me in my uniform, surrounded by all kinds of strange and weird people. Not that I wasn’t strange and weird myself, but these folks were a different kind of strange and weird, you know?

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It’s funny because it’s TRUE! I don’t know how things work these days, but waaaaaaaaaay back when I was a college graduate and recently commissioned second lieutenant, there was a few months of waiting between the day a cadet got their commission and the day they got to start Officer Basic Course (OBC). In my case, I had to wait almost six months, and since no companies were interested in hiring someone for six months only to watch them disappear for five months of military training, I was stuck taking on various part-time jobs. Among other things, I worked one part-time job as a recruiter for the VTCC and  another part-time as an artist for a t-shirt company that went bankrupt halfway through the summer. Yeah, fun times.

Then I went off to OBC for five months at Fort Eustis, and when I was done with that… I went right back to lousy part-time jobs. I had no idea what I wanted to do after college, and I ended up being selected for the Reserves instead of the regular Army, so I just sort of floated around for a while. I got a job at Hardee’s in Squires Student Center (and to this day I hate fast food). Then I signed up for grad school at Radford University and got a job as a graduate teaching assistant. That was better. I spent most of my time developing computer graphics for the oral communications department at Radford, and to this day, I still do that kind of work from time to time. Then I finished my course work, moved to be with my husband, and got another lousy part-time job as a cashier at an arts and crafts store where I spent way too much time restocking the silk florals aisle. I hate silk flowers almost as much as I hate fast food.

After that, I sold advertising for a local newspaper, which was… okay. I was not a natural salesperson, and driving around all day trying to convince people to buy advertising was “challenging,” shall we say? Then I got a job as a government contractor doing computer graphics for a two-star general. And the work there varied from interesting to mind-numbing to outright frustrating. It was the highest paying job I ever held. I worked with some Very Important People in the military, I put in 80 hours a week and I got paid for 40. I quit working for other people after four years at that job.

Then I was on my own, doing whatever I could figure out how to do. It’s taken me years to figure out how to run my own business, and to be honest, I’m still learning. But that’s okay, because I have a full-time job outside of that. It’s called “Mom” and I get paid in hugs and kisses and the occasional spatter of cat puke.

See what you cadets have to look forward to in life?!