Very good point Stealth. My D was one of those with a trillion things she was required to do during our 2 hours on A Day
. I was thrilled to just be in the same area as she - I walked around with her as she accomplished those things. It was an extremely full 2 hours. I like to say the truly uninterrupted 8 minutes we had at the end were the best that I've had at USAFA, though I am sure that's somewhat of an exaggeration by now! The reality is that of the two hours, we had 8 minutes when she was not required to be doing something else (and that was only because two other 4°s from her squadron took over so she could have time with me). My best friend came with me & the two of us followed her around (at cadet speed, much faster than human speed let alone mom speed
) until the very end when a few others took over & sent us to our 8 minutes of bliss at the chapel.
I was truly loving the time together, even the traipse through every back staircase of USAFA! I look back now and it really was a GREAT time albeit very hectic. Being flexible is the name of the game & while it may have been fun to have a picnic in the stands of the hockey stadium like Stealth did, instead I was wondering through the bowels of USAFA (she got lost a time or two too) and watching my kid interact with "important people" in a way that I had never seen before. Very proud of the first glimpses I saw of the competent woman my child was rapidly becoming.
Those are the memories I have of A-Day and I wouldn't trade them for any number of picnics. So take whatever time you are given and let your cadet do whatever it is that they must do. Some will have nothing to do other than spend time with you. If you're one of the lucky ones great. But if your cadet has to traipse around various departments of USAFA interacting with apparent mucky mucks (for all I know they were the janitors but they looked important to me
), follow and observe. Like me, you may get your first glimpse of the new found confidence, maturity and polish of a newly minted 4° - and it only gets better from there! That newly minted 4° is a rising Firstie now (
WOW STEALTH, can you believe it - Stealth Jr. & 2011's kidlet are about to get their RING and then a week from today they magically turn into Firsties! Time flies!) By the way, if I thought that 4° had polish, the rising Firstie is something else all together! It's a wild ride but it's better than anything I could imagine.