Attracting more to the Green Side

In the past month, little has happened that is exciting to talk about. But, that little bit was a big deal for me and, apparently, for about 30 Ithaca College Physical Therapy Students and Faculty.
In early March, I was contacted by Dr. Pagliarulo, a prominent faculty member at Ithaca, my Alma Mater, with a request for input on the differences between practice in the Military compared to the Civilian world. I was more than willing to share my thoughts and experiences. At that juncture, I was put in contact with the class president and we corresponded via email to exchange some information. In the mean time, Dr. Pags and I were trying to coordinate a video teleconference between me here in Iraq, and the Current Issues in P.T. class at Ithaca. What ensued was sure to be considered the most frustrating and confusing few weeks of this deployment. A simple request was made through my Battalion (BN) S6 (communications) and the Okay was given. SWEET! Done and done. NOPE. About 2 days before the selected date, the Multi-National Corps - Iraq (MNC-I) communications people put the kabash on the event due to, I still can't figure out why. I was told b/c VTCs aren't allowed to be Unclassified.... but they have Unclassified VTCs all the time according to my S6. Oh well, we need an exception to policy that needs to be approved at the Corps level (the level of the staff of General Petraeus) and it might take 2 or more weeks. Well, as you can all assume, IC was awesome and rescheduled 2 times to work out the confusing technical kinks that we ran into. As a last resort, we compromised with using a military/DoD (I think it's mostly for our purposes) interview/media medium called DVIDS. Ithaca would be able to see and hear me, and I would be sitting in room and be interviewed through an ear bud, like I was broadcasting the news. The finished product was 50 min of students and staff asking questions and me staring off into space trying to concentrate on the questions asked over a fuzzy connection.
I truly enjoyed interacting with the students and faculty. In the process, I have been told that a few students are interested in donning a green suit in the future. I welcome them to the dark side and hope that everything works out. The military, despite being deployed, has given me some of the most amazing opportunities to practice Physical Therapy.
To view the interview, try this link to DVIDSHUB.net:

http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=general/general_search.php&table=video&query=ithaca+college&type=

Dr. Pags wrote an article in the Ithaca College digital newspaper called the Intercom. You can check that out at:

http://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/2008040817094572

Below is a pic or 2 from Ithaca. I don't have any from here. There is supposed to be a PAO article from my side written soon. I'll post that when it comes up.

Take care. Almost done with the 6th month.