CLC3 Day 96: Redoing presentation

I spent the whole day redoing my ICOS presentation -- I started by looking at what kinds of products my classmates had come up with, then adapted my products to their formats. Basically, we had to make three things: a logistics estimate in Word, a synchronization matrix in Excel, and a presentation in PowerPoint.

The logistics estimate covers each class of supply -- how much is needed by each unit and how you'll supply it. Food, water, fuel, and ammunition are the simplest things to figure out, but there's also health care, transportation, construction materials, and maintenance. The maintenance portion, for example, requires you to figure out how many recovery vehicles you have, where they're at, how many vehicles you predict will break down, and how you will evacuate them for repair. It's a major headache, and my estimate clocked in at 20 pages.

The synch matrix is basically one big Excel spreadsheet, broken down into two-hour intervals, describing what logistics actions each unit will take over the 36 hour operational period. This was difficult for me because I have no idea how BCTs actually work (how do you refuel when you're in the middle of a battle?) but I gave it my best guess.

Finally, I redid my presentation, including a lot more detail than I had previously. By the time I was finished it was 2 in the morning. I can't believe how my work this actually was -- if I had realized what was required I'd have put a lot more work into it last week.

So not only am I exhausted, I'm also really irritated. No one breathed a word about what ICOS was until the end of the LEX, and the instructors were specifically told not to provide the grading rubric to the students (fearing that people would only do the minimum). Yet for those of us who have never seen or done anything like this before, it was like being told to run without ever having learned to walk.