Growing Spouses Army Strong
Today was my very last GSAS class. What is GSAS you might ask. Well, GSAS is the acronym (the military loves their acronyms!) for Growing Spouses Army Strong. Huh? Exactly.
When we got here Soldier Boy's unit had a welcome... thing. During it we were told welcome to the area, take advantage of everything this place has to offer, and by the way, you really should think about taking this class. We were told that this class will help us because it is geared specifically for the spouses of soldiers that will be taking command soon (aka the soldiers taking the captain career course). When the sign up sheet went around I thought "What the heck? Might as well. If nothing else, it'll get me out of the house and give me a way to meet people." So I Signed up. And I'm so glad that I did.
Day 1
When we got there we were given 3 inch binders FULL of stuff. I'm not even kidding. I looked at that binder and thought "what have I gotten myself into?" Thankfully we had ice breakers to get through before the actual learning began. We were each given a sheet of cardstock and told to make a flag that represents ourselves. I've got to tell you... nothing made us laugh more than seeing everyone's attempt at drawing with crayons and markers. Pretty much every other sentence was "this is supposed to be a..." It was amusing and it was fun. The first day we had classes (lectures, speakers, etc) on army structure, ranks (I still have to work on my enlisted ranks, I don't know those so well), being social (all the socials we could ever be invited to and how to entertain), Customs & Protocol (the mock receiving line preformed by the senior officers' wives showing us how not to act was hysterical!), and then the process of coming into the company command. So all in all I thought the first day was a bit of a "duh!" day full of common sense things or things that I knew I had to go over to remember better. But I had fun. And I was out meeting people. So win win for me. :)
Day 2
We immediately started in on situational leadership (using the Blanchard-Hersay method). We were told about the four types of leaders and then asked which one we most identify with. Once we did that we were given scenarios of various states of Family Readiness Groups (FRGs) and asked what type of leader that FRG would need. It was a good exercise because it gave us a good idea of exactly what type of leader we would need to be at various stages, even if it's not the type of leader we naturally are. The rest of the day was spent learning everything possible about an FRG (how to organize it, how to communicate in it, all the resources you need to know about to tell the FRG about, etc). It was an overwhelming amount of information. It's a good thing we have those 3 inch binders with all of the information in it. At the end of the day we had a mock FRG meeting. Everyone drew slips for characters for the meeting. If there is a personality that has been seen in an FRG meeting, there was someone there representing it. We had everything from the spouse that spent all their money on trivial things who wanted the commanders spouse to give her money to the spouse that brought her obnoxious children to the meeting even though child care was provided (the kids were there too) to the spouse that just wanted her spouse to come home no matter what. There was the gossip and the spouse that wears her soldiers rank and girl that just loved the army and everything it is. It was CRAZY. Funny, but crazy. And truth be told, I was a little scared afterward because I have no idea how I'll deal with all those personalities at every FRG meeting. The instructors were very careful to tell us that this is as crazy as it will ever get, but chances are not all of these people will be at every meeting. You'll normally have one or two, but even they won't be as extreme as we were acting them up to be. Yay for that.
Day 3
Not going to lie, Day 3 was a bit of a downer. We talked about preparing for deployments, how to cope with trauma, and CARE teams. Blah. I know that we need this information. We're an army at war and have been for 10 years. Deployments happen and whether this is a spouse's first or fifth deployment life circumstances change. You might have gone through a deployment, but you might have been a girlfriend or you might not have had children or you might have teenagers who are acting up because Dad's not home and you don't know how to deal with it. Each deployment is different and each person prepares for it in their own way. And traumas happen. We need to be ready for them.
We did some stress management activities. We went over our signs that we're stressed (rashes, snarkiness, excessive crying, etc) so that we can tell our Battle Buddy so they know if we're going off the deep end. We then did some stress management techniques (focusing on our breathing, visualizing our happy place, etc). To finish up we went over leaving the company... do so gracefully, positively, and leave it better than you found it.
Day 4
Today was short and sweet. We had a leadership panel in which we can asked any question that we had for the leadership. We had a Master Sergeant, a First Sergeant, a Captain, a Lt Colonel, and all their wives. So we had people from both the battery command and from the battalion command. It was good. Not only did they have a lot of advice to give us, but I found it reassuring to watch them interact with each other. The entire class we were told that our husbands will work really closely with the First Sergeant and we should get to know his wife. It was encouraging to see that they are friends, they joked around, they laughed at inside jokes, and they were completely relaxed with each other because they are teams.
When the panel was over we headed over to the commanding general's house for a luncheon. I feel like it's not every day that a bunch of brand new captains and their wives get to have lunch with the two star. I could be wrong. There was a little ceremony to congratulate the GSAS graduates and a group picture was taken. After we had lunch everyone was just sitting around chatty and Mrs. H kept asking if anyone had cut the cake. My thought was that it's her house, she should cut the cake. But she looked at me and said "go cut the cake." So I walked over to the table, asked the photographer if he had taken a picture of it (that was something we learned, have a picture of the cake taken so you can cut into it almost immediately so more people will eat it), and then cut the cake as the photographer took pictures of me doing so. It was all very ceremonial. Oh wait... no it wasn't.
So that's my GSAS class. I definitely feel more Army Strong for having taken it. :)
When we got here Soldier Boy's unit had a welcome... thing. During it we were told welcome to the area, take advantage of everything this place has to offer, and by the way, you really should think about taking this class. We were told that this class will help us because it is geared specifically for the spouses of soldiers that will be taking command soon (aka the soldiers taking the captain career course). When the sign up sheet went around I thought "What the heck? Might as well. If nothing else, it'll get me out of the house and give me a way to meet people." So I Signed up. And I'm so glad that I did.
Day 1
When we got there we were given 3 inch binders FULL of stuff. I'm not even kidding. I looked at that binder and thought "what have I gotten myself into?" Thankfully we had ice breakers to get through before the actual learning began. We were each given a sheet of cardstock and told to make a flag that represents ourselves. I've got to tell you... nothing made us laugh more than seeing everyone's attempt at drawing with crayons and markers. Pretty much every other sentence was "this is supposed to be a..." It was amusing and it was fun. The first day we had classes (lectures, speakers, etc) on army structure, ranks (I still have to work on my enlisted ranks, I don't know those so well), being social (all the socials we could ever be invited to and how to entertain), Customs & Protocol (the mock receiving line preformed by the senior officers' wives showing us how not to act was hysterical!), and then the process of coming into the company command. So all in all I thought the first day was a bit of a "duh!" day full of common sense things or things that I knew I had to go over to remember better. But I had fun. And I was out meeting people. So win win for me. :)
Day 2
We immediately started in on situational leadership (using the Blanchard-Hersay method). We were told about the four types of leaders and then asked which one we most identify with. Once we did that we were given scenarios of various states of Family Readiness Groups (FRGs) and asked what type of leader that FRG would need. It was a good exercise because it gave us a good idea of exactly what type of leader we would need to be at various stages, even if it's not the type of leader we naturally are. The rest of the day was spent learning everything possible about an FRG (how to organize it, how to communicate in it, all the resources you need to know about to tell the FRG about, etc). It was an overwhelming amount of information. It's a good thing we have those 3 inch binders with all of the information in it. At the end of the day we had a mock FRG meeting. Everyone drew slips for characters for the meeting. If there is a personality that has been seen in an FRG meeting, there was someone there representing it. We had everything from the spouse that spent all their money on trivial things who wanted the commanders spouse to give her money to the spouse that brought her obnoxious children to the meeting even though child care was provided (the kids were there too) to the spouse that just wanted her spouse to come home no matter what. There was the gossip and the spouse that wears her soldiers rank and girl that just loved the army and everything it is. It was CRAZY. Funny, but crazy. And truth be told, I was a little scared afterward because I have no idea how I'll deal with all those personalities at every FRG meeting. The instructors were very careful to tell us that this is as crazy as it will ever get, but chances are not all of these people will be at every meeting. You'll normally have one or two, but even they won't be as extreme as we were acting them up to be. Yay for that.
Day 3
Not going to lie, Day 3 was a bit of a downer. We talked about preparing for deployments, how to cope with trauma, and CARE teams. Blah. I know that we need this information. We're an army at war and have been for 10 years. Deployments happen and whether this is a spouse's first or fifth deployment life circumstances change. You might have gone through a deployment, but you might have been a girlfriend or you might not have had children or you might have teenagers who are acting up because Dad's not home and you don't know how to deal with it. Each deployment is different and each person prepares for it in their own way. And traumas happen. We need to be ready for them.
We did some stress management activities. We went over our signs that we're stressed (rashes, snarkiness, excessive crying, etc) so that we can tell our Battle Buddy so they know if we're going off the deep end. We then did some stress management techniques (focusing on our breathing, visualizing our happy place, etc). To finish up we went over leaving the company... do so gracefully, positively, and leave it better than you found it.
Day 4
Today was short and sweet. We had a leadership panel in which we can asked any question that we had for the leadership. We had a Master Sergeant, a First Sergeant, a Captain, a Lt Colonel, and all their wives. So we had people from both the battery command and from the battalion command. It was good. Not only did they have a lot of advice to give us, but I found it reassuring to watch them interact with each other. The entire class we were told that our husbands will work really closely with the First Sergeant and we should get to know his wife. It was encouraging to see that they are friends, they joked around, they laughed at inside jokes, and they were completely relaxed with each other because they are teams.
When the panel was over we headed over to the commanding general's house for a luncheon. I feel like it's not every day that a bunch of brand new captains and their wives get to have lunch with the two star. I could be wrong. There was a little ceremony to congratulate the GSAS graduates and a group picture was taken. After we had lunch everyone was just sitting around chatty and Mrs. H kept asking if anyone had cut the cake. My thought was that it's her house, she should cut the cake. But she looked at me and said "go cut the cake." So I walked over to the table, asked the photographer if he had taken a picture of it (that was something we learned, have a picture of the cake taken so you can cut into it almost immediately so more people will eat it), and then cut the cake as the photographer took pictures of me doing so. It was all very ceremonial. Oh wait... no it wasn't.
So that's my GSAS class. I definitely feel more Army Strong for having taken it. :)