A Year in Review

First off, I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted. It's amazing how fast time flies isn't it?

Since I last wrote the end of our fiscal year has come and gone and the new year started. I'm excited to start a new year but I'd also like to take a look at the last fiscal year.

I started off last fiscal year on a very high note. I made mission (of course) and even over produced - doing my part in ensuring my recruiting team was the #1 team in our state. Since we were the #1 team n our state we were rewarded with a training trip to Hawaii. After that we started the year out slow - some of it was my laziness and some of it was out of my control. I had some people get DQed at MEPS and learned that I hate MEPS and DTS. I had some downs, but there were some things that inspired me to keep going. I had real promising interviews but for a while things just didn't seem to pan out. I went on my training trip to Hawaii behind mission - something I didn't want to do. November was rough (besides going to Hawaii) and I needed to write 4 in December. I developed a plan and hoped it would work. I kept chugging along in January and by the mid month I was seeing some improvement - even with my brother and the 1/34th BCT being extended in Iraq. By the end of the month I had made some huge improvement and was back at mission and completed February's mission by the 9th. It was hard work but worth it even with the bronchitis it gave me. I had some time to myself in February which was well needed. I was really watching the media and took great interest in a story of recruiters under fire. I also had a little message to the media myself. Minnesota got hit with a major snow storm that we really needed - but I was at MEPS when it happened. My kid was underweight at MEPS and old man winter kicked my ass with his storm! The next few months were slow. I made my mission plus some and trained in my replacement - who didn't work out so I had to train another replacement. On May 15th I was free from Recruiting and on leave for the summer. While I was on leave all summer I had to hold the hand of my latest replacement. If I wasn't such a nice guy I would have told him that I was on leave and to go fly a kite.... but I AM a nice guy so I let him call me 5 or 6 times a day and tell him how to do his job. I thought I had taught him everything about recruiting while I was still recruiting but I realize now that he just didn't listen. I eventually cut the umbilical cord and it turned out he wasn't cut for this job. While on leave I still couldn't get recruiting out of my system. In addition to helping my replacement I was still providing leads to my team. In August I started my new job and enjoyed the new job till the end of the year. Oddly enough I took my 3rd replacement to all my old schools to ensure his success.

It was a hard fought year for my team. But through a lot of hard work from EVERYBODY we came out on top once again! My team, for the second year in a row was the #1 team in my state! As far as we know this is the first time in this state's history that a team has won 2 years in a row. So... we'll be doing more training in Hawaii again this year!

I'm really looking forward to this new year. I'll be starting college next semester (I couldn't go this semester because I missed registration) and doing my new job as an Automation NCO. I've learned A LOT about this job in the last 2 months. There is MUCH more to this job than I thought possible. To make matters worse, the guy I'm replacing has been doing this job for 9 years so I have some big shoes to fill. To make matters worse there are some bigger events on the horizon for SGT Guardsman but I can't reveal them quite yet because of OPSEC.

Sorry for the lack of posting lately - obviously I've been busy with the new job and all. I'll try and write more to all 8 of my readers.

-SGT Guardsman