Melissa Hoff:  

of a convienence store. I have never seen a ship in my time in. I was really disappointed when I was put there for over a year. It was an easy job don't get me wrong. I just didn't want to be back where I had started ever so long ago. I really just wanted to work in my rate. I also felt I wasn't living up to my potential being there. They claimed it was because of conflicted interests within my shop that I ended up there. But it's ok. It made me stronger. I am currently employed with APAC, Inc., which is a company that works customer service for UPS. I am working on creating a home based business. I have been trying to set up the business plan for this. I will be working with e-commerce and I am putting a challenge website up that will challenge people to change the world starting in the communities that they live in. I plan to do big things with the revenues from the business. Just have to get started. Military I was pretty much was a "not nice" person in boot camp (surprise, surprise: most of you who remember me, I wasn't all that nice back then either), Trying to stay within community standards there. Under the pressure of trying to overcome yourself in the mist of diversity with 80 other women was pure madness. But I survived it. I can look back at that time and I realize how far I came in those simple 9 weeks. I did better with my studies there than I did in high school. I could remember things that I couldn't in High School. Test taking seemed much much easier. I overcame a lot in Boot Camp and I felt better about myself when I had completed it. I was more in shape than I had ever been. I could really tell the difference in myself. I could see the difference in my body and the way I walked. I was more aware of my surroundings. Mostly because of those crazy RDC's, they were our training commanders. I was always in trouble, like that is any different than any other time in my life. Not really sure if it was real trouble or the kind where they are just trying to teach you a better way. I had one of my RDC, who I believed to have despised me during boot camp, give me my ball cap after Battle stations, her name was Petty Officer Allan. To recieve your ball cap is like recieving a metal of achievement, and battle stations is the final thing you have to do in order to move on from boot camp. It is a series of possible mishaps that can happen when you are out on a ship that allows you to take all the training that you recieved and show how much knowledge you gained. Also allowing us to show leadership skills and other personality characteristics. Petty Officer Allen liked the guys better than the girls. I figure the only reason we butted heads was because we both hated women. I hated women until I left boot camp and then got to my school. When I left boot camp, we were on the bus and silly me thinking I was finally free sat back and relaxed. I sat down with a couple of people from boot camp at the airport. We started talking and a couple of people asked me why I didn't act the same way in boot camp as I did out of there. I told them, most of the people we went to boot camp with I will never talk to again. I am not very good at keeping in touch, so to speak. I am better at email, because it is there staring me in the face, but for the most part my keep in touch communication skills are lacking something fierce. We left the Airport to Pensacola and I gained my first female friend there. (No offense to those of you who I was friends with in high school, but now that I realize what a real friendship is like... well, you weren't all that great of friends.) It was Lori Short at the time. She is now remarried. Everyone called her Momma. I haven't heard from her in some time. I have three really close friends here. Huey, Will, and Joey. Love Huey like a brother, father, best friend, and many other word that can be mixed in there. I have definitely grown up a lot from my experience with in the military and I will never forget the people I have met. Who have change me and who I have changed. I will never forget Quarters or the way that it was like high school again. I guess in some way I did get to go to High School again. Just without all the books and boring teacher in between the good ones. I could learn as much as I wanted of whatever I wanted, but the best lesson I learned was that people are people and even though we may want to think we are different. We are not. We all have our little quirky differences. It doesn't matter who you are, Popular or not, you are just as weird as the next person. Anyways, That's it for now.