The path to lemonade, part VI

I finally created a "making lemonade" tag, so now you can click and have the previous posts all together. I don't know why it took me so long to do that :-)

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Let's see, we left off with a diagnosis of keratoconus. I remember feeling very confused but at the same time content. I wasn't losing my eyesight at that moment so why worry? I called some friends in other career fields and asked them to give me to good, bad and ugly of their jobs. I needed to submit my preference for a job or the air force would just put me where they wanted. I was able to select a job and a location and I chose public affairs and Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City at my number one choice. I don't remember my other choices. I was contacted by the public affairs manager (the individual in charge of placing all public affairs officers around the globe) and he asked me if I would rather get my number one choice of location or job. There was a public affairs opening somewhere other than Tinker but there were other job openings at Tinker I could fill, too. He counseled me that my job was for a career and an assignment was only for a few years. I told him I wanted the job. He did say that he would keep his eyes out for a Tinker PA job, but that my chances were slim. I was waiting on the air force at Tyndall anyway, so it didn't really matter to me either way.

The air force had over-recruited young officers during the time I was commissioned and the air force had way too many lieutenants and not enough positions for them to fill. As a result, lieutenants all across the air force were doing jobs that they were way overqualified for and not getting the mentorship they needed. Public affairs lieutenants were in abundance (I did not know this at the time) and getting a slot was fairly easy as a result. That may not make sense, but it does when you consider that there were just too many lieutenants all over. Every career fields had too many so it wasn't going to do anything to add one more.

I waited a couple months working in the protocol office at Tyndall and got a call that there was an opening for a deputy chief of the 552nd Air Control Wing public affairs office at Tyndall and I had been placed in the slot. The public affairs manager mentioned to me that I was lucky. Not only to get my number one choice in both my job and location, but to also be filling an actual slot. I didn't know how rare this was until I actually started working in the public affairs field.

I said goodbye to Tyndall and Panama City. Craig had just separated from the army and was moving to Atlanta to get his MBA from Emory. I didn't think I'd see him again and it wasn't that big of a deal. I had only known him for three months. We were friends, that was it.

About a month after I moved to Oklahoma City, I started my master's in human relations from the University of Oklahoma. The air force had recommendations on master's degrees for career fields and human relations was the PA recommendation. I had just moved, didn't know anyone and thought it was the perfect time to start on my master's. I quickly applied, filled out the paperwork and hit the ground running. The best part of my master's degree was that I was not paying for it. The air force paid tuition and fees and I was only responsible for books. I would owe the air force more time in return for the government paying for my education, but that didn't bother me at all. In fact, I started my degree before I had been in the air force a year and the time I owed for master's degree was running concurrent with the time I owed anyway, so I wasn't adding any time to my commitment! (My commitment for the educational assistance was two years after the end of each class. I owed four active duty years from my commission anyway, so two years from the end of my class was still within my commission commitment...does that make sense?) That's a little unknown tidbit they don't tell you when you get commissioned. If most lieutenants started working towards their master's degree immediately after getting commissioned, it's very likely that they won't owe any extra service time.

I was in a new job, in the same city as my brother (he was also attending OU), and hitting the books again.

It was really, really good.