In this post, I just want to touch on my social experience at the Squadron and Wing levels.
Quite frankly, that was “very little.”
I believe that over the course of the 5.5 weeks spent at Maxwell AFB, I only intentionally took the time to interact with officers outside of my flight maybe twice. Once was during a karaoke night in the first week, and the other was when I was invited to a hallway party the night before graduation.
While dancing to “The Wobble” and a couple of other line dances was pretty fun, and trivia was okay, the overall experience was not super conducive to chatting much, what with the constant interruptions vying for attention.
The hallway party was actually a lot more fun than I had expected, but I think I approached it with a lot less concern than other interactions – I had just been preparing for bed when the group message went out about the gathering. Beginning with reduced inhibitions from initial sleepiness, being more comfortable with the person I’d been invited by, and the immediate offer of a beverage probably helped a ton…
The one other experience I had that even touched on this sort of thing was when I essentially helped out my flight by acting as something of a taxi service. I used someone else’s very large car to take most of the flight to the officer’s club, then picked most of them back up a few hours later. I hung around briefly before taking everyone that was coming back, but I know that the environment there was not really my cup of tea.
I suspect I did myself some disservice with my social approach. I had – and even took – some of my options to try to interact a bit more, but between the inconsistent reply times and general, seemingly underlying disinterest, attempts to coordinate some time to play soccer or frisbee never panned out…
I’m unsure if this was mostly an issue of COVID (I don’t think so), or a lack of social enthusiasm (maybe?), or just a reluctance to exert more energy on activities with uncertain outcomes. Regardless, in retrospect, I ought to have put a bit more effort into socializing while at SOS.
I have good feelings about that thought because the few interactions I did have outside of my flight were somewhat interesting. They were not always pleasant, mind you, and I do not say that to mean that those few were necessarily unpleasant – a few were just awkward.
For example, the maybe two other engineering officers I met were probably the sorts of people I could have relatable but likely boring discussions with.
On the flip side, I had a few very pleasant interactions with random officers involving more philosophical topics, generally vaguely related to the Air Force if not the national or global population overall. Sometimes the perspective was colored by our jobs, but it wasn’t all dry.
I think one of the things I pull from the experience is the need to go find where certain conversations are happening and insert myself in those places. Despite preferring to interact with people in meatspace – what I like to call the physical world – sometimes it’s just nice to access a forum on-demand. That’s not really SOS-specific, but I’ll attribute the idea to my SOS experience.
All considered, I think I only made one friend from outside of my flight while I was at SOS. I say “only” as if there might be an expectation to make more, but I don’t want to pressure anyone to believe that.
An entirely different piece to the social puzzle was the established structure at SOS, itself. While it’s no responsibility of the school to promote socialization, I found the Squadron identity piece to be curious. Unlike an operational unit or office environment where we might spend 2-4 years around the same people, spending little more than a month in a schoolhouse does not promote the same sort of connection.
There was a question about what our squadron identity or spirit would be like, which I questioned as not clearly having a point to the student squadron commander. I don’t recall exactly what I said, but it was along the lines of “what does it matter, exactly?” I was not opposed to the idea, but it’s not like students are put into squadrons by a Sorting Hat or through any clear distinguishing method with exception to students attending with dependents or pets.
For what it’s worth, that question never reappeared during my time at SOS…
There was no way to judge the spirit of Class 22A as a whole; there was no one from another class that could describe any differences unless you counted instructors, and frankly, they probably only know what their own flight was like. Maybe, just maybe, they had a good idea of their own squadron.
All I can do is wonder: what would it be like if there was more of a flavor to each squadron? Not just “How could they make each squadron have its own flavor?” but also “Would it be worth it?”
I honestly cannot think of a reason. Officer Training School did not have any such squadron vibe as far as I know. Basic Military Training was the same as far as I’m aware.
These educational units certainly can and do have significant impacts on our service members, but it’s not obvious that any sub-organizational spirit is evident or necessary…
I suppose it’s no more worth thinking about than the fun it might be.
72 Airman's Writings 