It’s just after 7 AM and I’m just getting home from teaching my first fitness classes of the day. I walk in to Milo, our dog, on his back sleeping in front of the fan. I make my way to the bedroom and find my husband just finishing lacing his boots and buttoning his uniform. We chat for a few minutes before we exchange our have-a-good-day’s, and with a kiss he’s out the door. This is my “Day in the Life” as a WAF of an acquisitions project manager.
If it weren’t for the uniform and constant flyovers at home, it could be easy to forget I’m married to an Air Force acquisitions officer. My days are easily comparable to that of a non-military wife with just a handful of exceptions. On most days while my husband is at work, I’m either at the gym teaching, walking the dog, working out, or doing mundane household chores.
His workday is almost always 8AM to 4PM. Being an acquisitions project manager means he’s at a desk, making calls and checking emails trying to gather information pertaining to his specific project. Project managers can handle more than one project, work with both government and civilian contractors and are most commonly stressed about timelines, resources and available funding. We see each other almost everyday at lunchtime (we live off-base, just 10 minutes from his office building). Of course there are some days when he will have briefings and have to go into work early, skip lunch or stay late, but those are few and far between. He also has PT with his unit twice a week before work (which is considerably more often than most units).
About 6 months into the job, your husband will have a 3 week course at Wright Patterson AFB for his initial acquisition training. Every couple of months he’ll have to go on TDY to work on his project or do additional training. So far the longest TDY he has gone on was only a week long. There’s also a TDY which has gotten scheduled and canceled twice now because the project it pertains to isn’t moving along as fast as they were hoping it would.
(There are also opportunities for acquisitions officers to be selected to special programs. These programs include an application process, additional training, and possible PCS/deployments. That’s about all I can say on the topic because my spouse isn’t there right now, but it’s a good thing to keep in mind as your spouse moves up.)
While he is an acquisitions officer, he also plays on the AF Men’s Rugby team. This means he’s constantly asking me for workout plans and wants to work on his passing technique everyday, and I’m totally cool with that! But being a WAF to an acquisitions officer is slightly different when you also become a WAF of an AF rugger.
Since all of these men are AF and stationed all over the country, when a rugby tournament approaches that means a TDY comes along with it. A TDY for rugby looks like a 2-2 1⁄2 week trip. The first 1 1⁄2 – 2 weeks of that trip is dedicated to the men practicing and rejoining as a team. That means 3 practices a day, meals shared together, team building activities and sometimes shared hotel rooms. If you have a very flexible work/home life, this could be amazing for you! WAFs are welcome on these TDYs and they go to some pretty cool places. If not, don’t worry. There are only a few tournaments a year so in the grand scheme of things these TDYs aren’t much of a big deal.
Overall, my WAF ‘day in the life’ is a pretty simple one. There aren’t many disruptions in our day-to-day life because of work. We still have plenty of time to binge watch Game of Thrones and The Office together, and most of our weekends are open for adventuring wherever we please!
MEET KIRSI
