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Thanks again guys. Unfortunately the CR did not go the way I had hoped. This is definitely not how I had envisioned this journey ending when I started it 6 or 7 years ago, and it hurts about as much as you would expect, but I’m gonna try and still be the best officer I can be wherever I end up.

Sorry to hear that, and great mindset going forward. I was medically DQed before I ever got into the cockpit. I figured I would do four years as a CE officer and separate. Looking back twenty years later, the AF gave me some awesome opportunities and experiences to lead in some pretty challenging circumstances. Solid leadership is desperately needed throughout the service. One piece of advice: get to know some pilots at your next assignment, appreciate what they do, but avoid getting caught up in what could have been. I will also share that washing out a demanding program like UPT doesn’t mean you can’t fly. I owned an airplane for 15 years and put over 1,000 hours on it. Recreational flying may not be as “cool”, but there are aspects of it that are pretty damn good.

a few thoughts. The Colorado (not lots of electoral votes) play is likely designed to get the SCOTUS response. The next State (CA) (lots of electoral votes) will know how to more effectively get him off of their ballot having seen SCOTUS’ cards. We are in the middle of a “cold” civil war. There is no way for either side to win. The left ALWAYS does what they accuse the right of doing. It’s their standard play. Collude with foreign actors? The Trump collusion story was completely fabricated but it’s becoming very clear the Biden’s did exactly that. Threaten democracy? Republicans aren’t doing anything close to threatening democracy. The border is wide open. The left is attempting to remove Trump from state’s ballots, changing state election laws, trying to keep him in court on baseless accusations, keeping him off social media to suppress his voice, etc. Insurrections? You can say the word all you want but that doesn’t mean a bunch of pissed off citizens (for the reasons above) were doing anything other than rioting. They certainly weren’t trying to overthrow the US government. Meanwhile, federal buildings and police stations were attacked for an entire summer by leftist. Racism? Democrat policies are DESTROYING the black community. Always have. Hell, the Republican Party was literally founded to fight the expansion of slavery. Tyrannical government? Look at the difference in red and blue responses to Covid. I could keep going but I won’t. This is all pure fucking madness. It’s like living in a bad dream. And it gets worse everyday.

The Texas law was a good addition to the laws on the books but until you arrest, charge with the employers and other enablers of illegal immigration and employment, asylum abusers and fraudulent claims, birth tourism, etc with RICO none of this matters Count in also H1B visas abused / used by corporations to import compliant cheaper labor often beyond their visa limits As soon as rich mostly white businessmen and their lawyers get arrested, not released on bond and their assets seized this will not get fixed no matter how many you arrest at the border or round up in work place enforcements Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hey man, where you’re at sucks right now but it doesn’t define you. You can’t always choose your circumstances; you can always choose your attitude. Be a great officer and leader—chin up, move past it.

Call me when the progressive left applies the same originalist tenacity to our second amendment as they're pretending to want for the 14th. These people are hypocrites and liars who claim to protect democracy without actually believing in it. I don't like the person of Donald Trump but clearly he's who these corrupt assholes fear, so chances are high he'll get my vote.

Your state did. When your state's Supreme Court unilaterally determined that your states' electoral votes were going to de facto be given to Joe Biden - thereby undermining the very purpose of our national election system and usurping other states' (and the national) election processes. Just try this though experiment: imagine Arizona and Wisconsin "disqualified" Joe Biden from their ballots "according to their state election laws"...blah blah blah. You know as well as I do there would be absolute pandemonium from the MSNBC crowd...which should tell you something is sideways.

So first thing I’ll say is great on you for being honest with yourself that alot of your problems seem to stem from poor preparation and/or study habits. More on that later… For the near rocks of getting through this ride, it should be the relatively simple pre-solo stuff that requires very little improvisation and athleticism to fly well. Everything you do should be under the “control and performance” concept where you set a known pitch and power setting and get a known result. If you’re not getting exactly what you’d expect from that setting, then make small corrections from that instead of just guessing the correction. This definitely applies in the pattern and will help control any wild deviations. Whenever you pull closed, pull the same amount nose up, the same bank angle, the same pull to displace you appropriately every time. When you get to that known spot, you make adjustments based on wind for when/where to perch etc. Also, by doing that very rote maneuvering, it will gain you a few seconds of SA to actually assess and get you caught back up to the airplane. A trick I learned back in the day from the F-15 community was “left hand, right hand, sight picture, feel”. It applies to everything and I personally like it because it breaks things down very cleanly and will set you up for success. Try drawing out the pattern or wherever you feel jammed up and apply that mnemonic. Even your GPS thing, look back at that scenario and think what you could’ve done with left hand (power setting), right hand (probably bank back towards the center of the MOA), sight picture (level turn away from a border now eyes go to GPS to push buttons in a sequence), fee (1G unacclerated turn). Once you’re done setting up, what’s next on your lineup card? Same deal to set up for TP stalls or whatever. Lots of words there but the last thing I’ll tell you is that worrying about all your sacrifice and hard work won’t do shit to help you on this ride. “Fighting in the air is not a sport. It is scientific murder” said Eddie Rickenbacker. The airplane couldn’t care less about your personal life. Compartmentalization is massive in this business and learn to leave all that behind you and focus on your left hand, right hand, sight picture, feel. Good luck!

And many of them actively vote Republican, so yeah, it’s not going to get fixed. A college buddy of mine owns a landscaping business in Virginia. He’s a vocal, very right of the aisle on almost everything, guy. But he never has anything to say on immigration, as nearly all his staff is “undocumented” Hispanics. It becomes easy to throw away your values when money is on the line.

You obviously didn’t look very hard…aren’t you a comm/cyber guy?

Agreed. Since Mexico won’t handle their business, they’ve forced our hand. It’d be a great use of our COIN and SOF assets in my opinion.

$10,000 fine per worker per day for any business that hires any employee without verification of the employee through a federally-operated verification system. The problem goes away overnight. Neither side (politicians, not voters) wants the problem solved.

Russians lost three SU-34 yesterday. UKR must have cooked up something special.

A milquetoast right candidate cannot beat Biden because they have no constituency. Look at polling in the Republican side right now, the milquetoast candidates have no chance. i'm not voting for Mitt Romney or any of that ilk, they cannot fix the problems that exist in this country. I know you don't think it's a smart thing for me to vote for people I want to vote for, but if you pretend to give a fuck about democracy you kinda have to accept the agree to disagree approach to life. But that is not the way with Democrats, it is obey or be punished.

I know admdelta personally and he's a good dude. He's going to be a star in whatever he goes to next just like he was in his prior career.

In an alternate reality, republicans could do the smart thing here and let the leftist state dominoes fall one by one rendering a trump candidacy meaningless because he's not on the ballot in half the country. Then, insert milquetoast right candidate, beat biden handily and be done with the trump disease forever. But they'll never do that. They'll fight it in the courts, drag trump back into the limelight, and his polling will take a nose dive as 51% of the country re-realizes how much of an insufferable tool he is.

“Nothing to see here, just people that we think will eventually produce mass amounts of children that will vote for us, based simply on the fact their skin is brown. No, I’m not racist.” - The left’s inner thoughts

Because of hate, lawfare, and irrationality.

Enough of the chitchat bullshit, this is what this thread is intended for...

What do you expect from an administration who won’t even say the term “illegal alien/immigrant”?

What's the saying? You're always 3 flights away from washing out? Hook a check ride, 88 ride, 89 ride, and you're done? Some opinions, all worth what you pay for them. The anxiety and stress is real, and it's something you have to overcome. Pilot training is an interesting animal, and people arrive there from different paths. One one extreme, you have people who arrive at UPT somewhat ambivalent about being a pilot. They're fresh out of ROTC from Random State School, and flying sounded like "something cool to do." Others have made pilot training a lifelong goal, and fought tooth and nail at every step of the way just to get there. Waivers for whatever, many failed applications via various avenues (active duty, guard, etc). People fall somewhere in between these extremes, but it sounds like you're much closer to the latter bucket. All that work and pain to get to UPT is a double-edged sword though. Clearly you want it and are ambitious, but it also means that you're putting all of that weight on you every time you go fly. It's a lot of pressure, pressure that the student fresh out of school may not have to deal with. I know the solution is to "brush aside all of the anxiety," etc, but that's obviously much easier said than done. I don't know the solution here, but the first step is to recognize the source of the anxiety. You also kind of have to come to terms with the fact you gave it your best shot, and let the chips fall where they may. Some things are meant to be, others aren't. Maybe you pass this hurdle, graduate UPT, and get hit by a bus. Or some random medical thing pops up. Some might say "God's plan" and all that, but I think it's more accurate to say "it's just life." Some times things work out the way you want, sometimes they don't. If a commander recommends reinstatement, I believe they can also provide some limited additional rides as well. As in, you're back in, and you get 2-3 additional rides to get to where you need to be. Not sure how the holidays work, I believe there is some history of all students getting an additional ride after coming back from break, or something to that effect? Either way, give the CR your best shot. Don't know how your wing does it, but in the past I've seen the CC ask that you write a memo or something that outlines your case. Lay your cards out there, and see where it goes. Hopefully your IPs give you some guidance in that regard. Hope for the best, and see where it goes. If you don't get the outcome you want, go out and do something else with your life with the knowledge you took the shot and it didn't work out. Let that part of your life be something to grow off of, not something to hang onto in bitterness. Related, this thread got me thinking about all the folks I've known who didn't complete pilot training. I'm not very well traveled or well connected by any means, but this is just after bouncing around the Air Force and civilian service for a couple decades. I reflect on this list, and think about the people who held onto their bitterness for a long time, and others who just kinda moved on. You get to choose how you let it effect you (like many things in life). A Lt who was doing well through IFF, had to punch out of a T-38 and got bad back injuries. Can't remember if he was going to be permanently DQ'd from flying, or medically retired from the service. It was bad. Fought tooth and nail to be allowed back in, and was allowed to proceed as a non-ejection seat pilot. One ROTC instructor (Maj) who was washed out of pilot training and had a sob story about it. Was on a T-37 solo flight, and did intentional stalls on his own. Didn't think it was a problem to do stalls solo, his IPs disagreed. Was reclassed into a non-rated field. Went through some long process to "get his record changed," or something to that effect, with no success. Probably all for the good, because the guy was kind of an idiot. Another ROTC instructor (Maj) who washed out and was told he had three choices on his next career field: Nav, Nav, and Nav. Seemed to go on to do good things, but was a bit cringe-y in how he seemed to still have not come to terms with it. One co-worker who washed out, but still had a T-37 hanging from his office ceiling. He seemed to look back on his time fondly. Another co-worker who SIE'd early on after putting "pilot" on his ROTC dream sheet as a lark, more or less. One O-6 Air Base Wing CC who was respected, well liked, and seemed to be good at his job. At his retirement ceremony when he talked about his career, he briefly mentioned that he "Started his career with six months in pilot training. Unfortunately, pilot training is a 12 month course." He smiled and moved on with his speech. Along with all the guys I knew who fought for the chance to go, got close, but never got there for one reason or another: One guy who came in to the Air Force non-rated, and applied for board after board, and didn't get anywhere. He was crushed at not being able to fly, and even more crushed at being stuck in a support role. One old timer who was all lined up to go to pilot training with a waiver for being slightly over the age limit. Vietnam drawdown happens, waiver rescinded, and he was out of luck. Anyway, good luck OP. Thanks for providing the opportunity for an old man to neglect his day job and reflect a bit.

Singing like a songbird for that sweetheart deal of no prison time.

Get drunk. Accept reality and don't suck. Next assignment probably will have much better quality of life.