It has been a while… as usual, I’ve not felt the need to do a great deal of in depth rambling for ages. I usually end up chatting a lot with Kate, besides, no great upheavals have happened either…
And nothing major in some ways has happened, just that a really old friend crossed my path again. And that just has made me totally nostalgic, looking back and thinking back to the old days of UCIP SIMming, where we met. In my very early SIMming days.
I left “the Idiot” in November 1997, finally, I had no self confidence, I had forgotten how to laugh and smile. It took me about 6 months to learn how to laugh and have fun again…. And I had always wanted to write, but never known how to get started in anyway. Add the lack of self confidence. In January 1998 I bought my own computer, I started reading Star Trek forums and things like that… this was really early internet days.
Anyway, along comes this post in one of the forums about a SIM looking for players. And I am not sure what made me react but I replied, got assigned as Chief Science Officer and two days later I wrote my first log… My goodness… I was so green, so scared. But wrote something that got posted for other people to read…. About 6 weeks later, Hawke took over as CO of the SIM, about early August 1998.
I still barely knew what I was doing, but was enjoying myself despite that. With his arrival, the SIM changed a little, more than anything, it had more direction, mostly IC. I joined IRC around that time, and started chatting on and off. About the SIM, not much, but he would give some suggestions, look at the Academy courses, and from an IC perspective some orders that helped me to figure out what maybe I should be doing as a Chief Science.
What was happening was, that he was giving me small challenges. And I have a hard time turning down a challenge, especially from someone that I respect. And those challengers started getting bigger and bigger. Some were easy, some were harder. Some took me months to figure out. But it was exhilirating whenever I managed to do it. And get the acknowledgement for doing it. They were head rushes… very very positive ones… It made it impossible for me to turn down challenges he threw my way.
The two biggest ones were when he asked me to write a paper about the spatial anomaly in our very first plot. In a Captain’s log style he mentioned he was going to ask the Chief Science to do it. But IC there never was the order to do so…. But even then, by that time I knew him well enough he would ask me OOC. So…. little panic attack even before the question came… and come it did. “I’ll think about it.” Which I knew and he knew meant I would do it… eventually. Cue BIG panic attack…. it took me till December…. but write it I did. And he loved it… and managed to get me an Einstein Award for it. The award I value the most out of all the awards I won… because of what it represented for me. And what a HUGE head rush that one was…. again, they were all positive.
The other big one of those days came in October I think it was, For our next plot he decided to split the three main ringleaders among the crew up, that was the XO, the CEO and myself. The XO was given an IC assignment off the ship with 2 others, the CEO was to oversee a refit of our ship and lead that plot and the reassigned to the USS Valiant…. and he made me IC XO…. Cue panic attack… I had barely just figured out what the Chief Sci was supposed to do…. I had no clue what was expected of an IC XO. We had started talking a lot more on an OOC basis in IRC mainly about the SIM, and UCIP and the plot and stuff like that. And I do remember that at one point, I did mention to him that I didn’t really have a clue of what was expected of me.
“Be yourself and follow my lead.” Great… very useful.. not. Too vague… hence more panic attacks. But… XO I did… IC and OOC (I just didn’t realise it at the time), and I made mistakes, and we talked a lot about the SIM, the plot, UCIP stuff… and despite the panic at times… I had a whale of time. We were in a war plot, and I had very skillfully managed to avoid having to write a battle log for several weeks (because I had NO clue how to write that.. I’m a scientist, not a soldier after all)… and then he had to go on an military exercise for a long weekend, and left me in charge of our plot part of the SIM… with the instructions to finish the battle. Cue panic attack… But I got over it… and wrote one hell of a batte log. With the acknowledgement after he came back: “You guys made it look real good”.
I had not self confidence, no faith in my own abilities… but the logic I used to calm myself down each time was… He wouldn’t ask me to do something, that he didn’t think I couldn’t do. I ended up having faith, in his faith in me…. And felt the fear, and did it anyway… each time. Even that damn Science paper…. And at the end of the year SIM report, which was also end of the plot, we were all handed some awards, There were some IC awards with very nice citations for everyone, and then there was this:
The following individuals are awarded the Bronze Medal for Service:
Lt Suzanna Blokpoel
CO’s comments: No matter how outstanding a department, crew or
organization may be, there is always one individual who stands out among
them all. For the crew of the Cortez that person is Suzanna.In the short
time she has been in UCIP she has accomplished more than many officers
who have been here for a much loger time. She is Chief of Science on the
Cortez, head of the developing Science department, and elected to that
post by her fellow science officers. She is a SIMGuide Instructor for
the Email Division of UCIP Academy and I hope soon to be the new
Commandant of that Division. Her commitment to the Cortez, the Academy
and UCIP as a whole is simply outstanding. She has been my personal
gauge and sounding board for the Cortez… I am a better person and CO
because of her.
Citation: For selfless sacrifice in the performance of all duties while
assigned to the Cortez. You have continued to set the example for the
crew to follow. Your leadership, attention to detail,inititive, and
selfless service have made the Cortez and UCIP a far better place.
At the time, I had to read that four or five times before I really registered it, let alone believed it… the acknowledgement of my efforts and growth. Even if I didn’t see it until I read that.,,, what a totally positive head rush….
There was more stuff that happened in early 1999, and another really big one was when he was going to ask our XO to resign and bring in an outside XO. I considered the XO a friend, so I made him explain to me in great detail why he was considering it. It had to do with leadership, or lack there off on the XO’s part, something he had tested shortly before. And he had explained how he was going to have to Kosovo (he was active duty US military, life timer) with the first group of peace keepers (ie. no facilities for the troops, they had build them when they got there) and he wanted to make sure he left the SIM in capable hands (the XO takes over in the CO’s absence). After more than an hour of pretty intense discussion, he asked me what I wanted to see happen. Well… I couldn’t answer at that point, and said that. He just opened my mind to the bigger picture for the first time.
I slept on it, and thankfully, the next morning was relatively quiet at work, and I used it to work on an email, in which I wrote what I wanted to see happen… And despite the XO being a friend, I stated that I wanted to see a capable CO that would take charge and lead. And that when he tested us (XO, CEO and myself), it had been the CEO and I that had been prodding the XO to lead, and in the end I had more or less led a large part of the plot as Chief Science. And I chose to support look at the bigger picture and support him as CO in whatever decision he took regarding the XO. Yeah.. what a head rush… but I always experienced them in a positive way.
So yeah… personal growth, friendship, SIMming fun… In the end Hawke didn’t leave for Kosovo till June time frame, and I just kept on going with the SIMming, and all the OOC stuff I was doing. I had regained a large portion of my self confidence and started to have faith in my own abilities again… And by the time he came back, we were close to equals. Not really the mentor / mentee anymore. More on that in part 2 😀