Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

Oh No!  My Altimeter is Broken: Tales from a Crazy Skydiving Student Jump C-2, for the second time.  Jump 7.  It had been nearly two months since I had last jumped due to weather.  This time I was with Andy.  I was excited to fly with Andy.  He was a newly minted AFF instructor, and he had done my ground school and talked me down on radio, so I trusted him. This jump was uneventful except for the fact that I had a few more nerves than usual, given the long break between jumps.  Thankfully, I got to the dz early, stalked the wind board, reviewed the SIM, and got a great refresher from Andy before gearing up and getting on the plane. This time, I was waving off and pulling lower than ever before, at 5,000 feet.  I was nervous to deploy at such a low altitude (I know!  I know!  It's really NOT low).  I spent my time on the ride up to altitude reviewing the dive flow with Andy and noting specific altitudes--my decision altitude, my hard deck. And then I jumped, Andy taking gri

It was my Cat B jump.  I felt less nervous and more relaxed in freefall.  I had this skydiving thing down--jump out of the plane, do some practice handle touches, fall stable and belly to earth, practice turning.  Lock on, wave off, pull.  And although I looked the wrong way when I turned and my turns were muted because I had two instructors hanging off of me, freefall went well, and I passed. And then the canopy opened.  I looked up, happy to see a square and stable canopy and no malfunctions, although there were some line twists I had to kick out of first. And then my radio squawked.  I was instructed to do a controllability check, which I did after unstowing the toggles and flaring.  I pulled left to turn left and pulled right to turn right, making sure that I was looking when I turned to avoid canopy collisions. My radio squawked again.  "Bobbi, go to your holding area." I looked down and around me but I literally could see nothing that I recognized.  Ev

I.   Email Cut-Up Poetry Assignment                                 Faulkner Directions:   Open up a Microsoft Word document.   Minimize that document. Open up an email account.   If you don’t have one, now’s your opportunity to create one.   They’re FREE!   But you all have an email account through the school system, so I expect you all to be able to complete this assignment. Look through your emails.   Cut the subject lines you like, find interesting or humorous, etc, and paste into your Word document.   The BULK mail folder is an excellent source of funny subject lines! Continue step three until you feel that you have enough words and phrases to craft a poem. Rearrange these subject lines to create a poem of your liking.   You MAY add punctuation, change word tenses, etc.   BE SURE TO TITLE YOUR POEM.   IT MUST BE A POEM OF AT LEAST 10 LINES! Type your name on your poem and print ONCE.