During the last week I have had quiet a few changes happen in my life. I moved to a new barracks on Wednesday after under 24 hours of notice, I went to the dentist and found out that I am going to have some major work done to my mouth, and I finally started going to school after being here in holding for the last month and half. With these changes comes excitement, nervousness, and opportunities for me to grow.
Moving to a new barracks
Tuesday morning around 10 in the morning everyone in the same deck and wing as myself, around 30 other guys, were told to go into the main lounge for an important meeting. All of us arrived into the lounge within 10 minutes and then the student leadership told us the news, we were all moving the next day and there was nothing we could do about it. We were told that the higher ups wanted to turn our deck into a female wing, the deck that all of us took pride in for keeping the cleanest in all of the three combined barracks. We all went back to our rooms sad and confused as to why they decided to make all of this happen so quickly. We all knew moves were coming soon because our Chief had told us that the commanding officer wants to put all students of the same rate, the Navy lingo for job, in the same barracks together, we just never thought it would be so quick, and that we would be the first to move. The next day all of my deck mates and I were packed and ready to go, but we would not be told where exactly we would be going until 0800 after colors. Well colors finally arrived, and most of us were not happy with the news we were given. My roommates and I were all being split up, along with the other people we had become close with. Three other shipmates and myself who became close with each other took turns helping each other lug our heavy bags and electronics to our respective ship. I was placed in the same ship with my roommate who I spent lots of time with, but we were put into different rooms. I was first told to go to a room that I thought sucked, I had way less space than I did in my old room which I thought was really lame, as well as being in the echo rack, the worst rack. Well it turns out the yeoman gave me the wrong room to go to, oh great maybe I am getting something nicer. No, I go to my new room and it is dirty, smells, and the AC does not work. None of my other roommates are there yet though. After around 2 hours of packing my stuff away, and realizing I have no pillow, my roommates arrive back from school. They all seem like pretty nice guys, but they are definitely different than the roommates I had before. They like to party and get roudy at night time, I was thinking to myself “oh this is going to suck!” Well it has been a few days here now, and while I like my old place better, it isn’t so bad here. I am getting used to my new roommates and their loudness is not as bad as the stories that I have heard about other people’s new roommates. Also maybe they think I am ruining their spot, so I cannot be angry with them as I am the new guy. All things said, I am finding ways to learn how to get to bed early when they are still up, and not disturb them when they are doing their thing. Pretty soon they will all be moving out as well as part of this giant move that I was the first wave of, and then I will be the guy who has been living in the room for a while and I can set a new standard. I miss my old roommates and room, and by the time these guys move out I am sure I will miss them too.
Future of my mouth
When I was in boot camp I found out that one of the teeth that I had surgery done on after an accident that happened in 2018 is not infected. I was hit by a car while riding my bicycle back in 2018, the car was going in excess of 50 miles an hour trying to rush making it through a yellow light. When I was hit I was lucky that my only injuries were to my chin and teeth, my bicycle was destroyed but that was something that could be replaced. I was picked up by my girlfriend at the time and she took me to the emergency room where they cleared me after doing scans of my head to make sure there was no internal bleeding or concussions. The emergency room doctor then recommended a dentist to me who was supposed to do good work on fixing teeth after these kinds of accidents. I went and saw the dentist 2 days later and he told me that he was going to have to remove three of my front teeth, install posts where the roots had been and then put the teeth back into my skull attaching them to the new titanium posts. After all the work was finished, and I waited with a metallic brace holding my posts into place for 2 months, I was $10,000 dollars poorer and left with teeth that did not look great. After about two months one of the teeth became loose and I was lazy and never went back to the dentist to get it looked at because I was not willing to spend thousands of more dollars at the moment.
Cut to 7 years later I am in boot camp and the only work I have had done on my teeth since then is regular cleaning. The dentist at boot camp told me my loose tooth was infected and would most likely need to be removed. I saw another dentist about a week later and he booked an appointment for me to have some work done in order to stop the infection while waiting for me to get out of boot camp and move to my next command. A month later still in boot camp I go back to the dentist and they inject the infected site with tons of hydrochloric acid in order to try to kill the bacteria. Well the treatment did not work and my tooth is still infected, so I went to the dentist here at my new command and they did an inspection of my mouth and found out the following. The bone around the infected site has receded a great amount. I have two options, install a prosthetic tooth into the bone after doing a bone graft, or add a new tooth using a bridge. Since I am going to be at this command for over a year I am eligible to get the bone graft done as well as having a new post installed in the new bone. They are currently waiting for some red tape to be cleared before making the final decision on what will be done, but what the dentist and I are hoping for is the following.
- Remove the infected tooth and replace it with a flipper.
- Do a bone graft, and wait 8 months for it to heal.
- Install a new post and new prosthetic tooth.
- Replace my other teeth that were knocked out and partly synthetic due to staining.
I hope this plan works out, and I think the dentist does too. It seems like she wants to take the project on because she is a newer dentist and she can use the work she is doing on my to further her new career. It would be awesome if she can help me while helping herself. She is currently gathering a teem together in order to make this all happen smoothly. The last visit we had she took the “before” pictures of her mouth as well as molds of my teeth. We set up another appointment for this Friday where I think we will be either removing the infected tooth and I will be getting a flipper, or we will be doing something to get that process started. Either way this is exciting news.
Moving out of holds
This week I started going to school after a month and half of being in what is called “holding.” Holding is basically just sitting around most of the day and then gathering with all of the other people in holding status a few times a day to take a glorified roll call and then sweep the barracks. It is really boring, most people end up playing video games or sleeping, I spent most of my time reading, studying python, and playing chess. It was a relief to get called into the office to find out that I need to sign a paper in order to signify that I knew I was starting school in three days.
I have been in class all week, I am in basically a prep course that lasts a week before the real thing starts. The point of this course is to get us familiar with circuits and get a feeling for how fast paced the actual course is going to be. I finished nearly all of the work so far and have taken really detailed notes. I have been spending a little bit too much time messing around with to of my friends when I should be working on the course work though.
My two friends and I have been hiding each other’s stuff around the class room as a way to have a good time, and while it is funny it has slowed down all of our progress. While I am on track one of the guys is pretty far behind, to the point where the instructor told him that he will not pass if he works as slow as he has. I think he will spend extra time after class learning though because he does not want to get rated to another job that he has no interest in at all. I do not think that the three of us will be in the same classroom together during the actual course though due to the big split in the first letter of our last names. This will be a good thing for all of us I believe, especially for me because I can use the new class setting as a fresh start to give everything 100%.
Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?
- Marcus Aurelius
During the next 3 months I will be reinventing the way I work on things. I will be even more serious than I was during my coding boot camp. I knocked out difficult courses in the past by giving myself goals. They worked by telling myself “If I spend x amount of time working on something than it is impossible for me to not have it done by this date.” I will do the same with the course, but I will be more active with my classmates this time around, and I will work hard to get into some kind of leadership position within my class. Tomorrow is my last day of the prep course and I am not sure if I will be able to make it because I will be having an appointment with my dentist in the morning.
Conclusions
Everything is new again, everything is ready for me to approach it as a Christian armed with stoic ideas. I will take my hits and move on, I will try my hardest, and I will always keep Jesus, virtue, and justice in my thoughts and actions while navigating the new roommates, my dental plans, and the school work coming.