The entire year led to this one bout.

As we are waiting for the small gym to be cleared, I see people apprehensively looking up what exactly their ribbons are and the national chain of command for the Air Force because we could potentially be asked one of those questions.

The small gym is cleared and we all go rushing inside like a stampede putting our backpacks and bags down and lining up with our flights to get in order.

Once we all were in our rows, we do taller tap to get the biggest people to the right on the side with some exceptions. The inspector comes in and the gym is so quiet you can hear a man climbing the stands to get pictures.

I can feel the tension as everyone in a blue uniform stiffens up to try to look their best and hoping the inspector doesn’t ask that one particular question they didn’t study enough and they don’t know.

As he makes his way through the elements of cadets, he finally gets to me. He looks me up and down looking for any mistake I could have made somewhere from my shining shoes to my hair and if it meets regulation.

He finally stops looking and says “good morning.” I go from looking straight forward to looking him in the eye and reply “good morning, sir” to him.

He goes on to the next cadet and so on until he finishes asking his questions. Then all of the cadets fall out except for the second-year cadets, who have been assigned to march.

The assigned cadets being with their march. You can see them slightly losing their dress (alignment to the element leader).

I can see them marching confidently and finally when the march comes to a conclusion, they hope that they impressed the inspector as he walks around taking notes of what they just did.

As we think everything is over, the inspector teaches us a lesson about how an average person can do extraordinary actions in his everyday life and we can do just the same as long as we learn something new and smile every day.

I feel excitement as the inspection comes to the denouement. All the cadets leave and head to their second block hoping and wishing that everything went great without knowing if we passed or failed.