And it speeds up...

Happy (late) Thanksgiving.

We've reached the home stretch of the year. And yet, the home stretch is crazy enough.

• About a month left to get our individual scenes ready for performing, and we need to be off-book (not need the scripts) by Wednesday
• Auditioning at fife-and-drum for the Senior Corps
• Holiday prep
• Final papers, exams, projects, etc.
• The Christian Club panel (one week to go)
• Packing my older brother, getting him ready to go to Basic

A few things I noticed about the things my older brother's first weekend with the Guard. He told us that the army uses the buddy system. So nice to know that the things taught in Girl Scouts when I was about nine still apply. Then there were the things that we were told about how they attempt to create a group. They have many techniques, such as making them responsible for each other. (One person left his manual inside by accident, and my brother's whole platoon was disciplined for not telling him to bring it.)
The main thing, I noticed, was the focus. The focus was on building the group as a group, with little or no focus on individuals as individuals. Even though I know that there is pretty much no similarity here and that the comparison is ridiculous, I couldn't help thinking of the group-forming techniques of Compass, where we were encouraged to share, not to leave anyone behind, etc. We cared about each other for each other, not merely as members of the same group. However, this is implausible and pointless to do with the army. The members are highly transferrable, etc. and they need to be shown that they have to have responsibility for each other regardless of who it is, not just out of decency and the like, but out of necessity. They're building a specialized team, not a family.
The other thing that caught my attention, simply for its irrelevence and yet its unexpectedness, is that the army food is really good, and that candy sometimes winds up in the box lunches.