Kalistani Major History

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Crown Princess Nears Final Stretch of National Service
Future Sovereign emerges as Leader on major Construction projects
Springfield, Duchy of Odufaray
June 18, 5496

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Crown Princess Nicolette, Conscript First Class, oversees a Bridge Project in Odufaray

Her Highness The Crown Princess Nicolette, having completed 75% of her service in the NSP and being promoted to Conscript First Class, has developed a real talent for engineering. The future Empress of Kalistan has worked in the civil engineering Occupational Specialty for two and a half years and feels that learning civil engineering might be what she wants to do when she enrolls in college in a year.

"I just think that civil engineering, including survey, is not only super important, but super interesting," said the Crown Princess. "I find it really exciting to experiment with triangles, whether it be using them on a lateral surface to find map coordinates or turning them vertically to apply loads to them. It's pretty much applied geometry, trigonometry, and physics, and being in the NSP has really opened a whole new world for me. And call me a nerd, but load coefficients was truly fascinating." The Crown Princess says she also enjoys cartography, and gained the love of this from using the data she obtains through surveying to create new ways of understanding how geography and humans interact in the world.

"Currently, I am overseeing a new bridge over the Kluptoon River in the southern Part of the Duchy of Odufaray." said Crown Princess Nicolette. "This bridge my gang is building today will someday serve as a main thoroughfare from Kluptoon to Dana. How many semi trucks and passenger cars will travel over this bridge in its life? It is our job to build it to last for ever, and so consequently the NSP has the most skilled bridge crew in Kalistan on this project. I am proud of the young men and women I work with on this crew, and know that this bridge will serve its role as a vital artery in Odufaray's transit and commerce for decades, if not centuries to come."

The Crown Princess has always loved engineering. "It was what I wanted to do when I entered the Service," said Princess Nicolette. "Like everyone, they asked me what my top three choices for jobs were, and I almost said Engineering Engineering and Engineering, but I picked Cooking and aircraft mechanics, things that I kind of was not... too... good at you know, so they would have to give me Civil Engineering. And of course, you know the Monitors probably see that all the time. To their credit, they tend to try to let people go with their first choice unless there is like a real overflow in a particular occupation, and they will give you every chance to fail, or get a negative evaluation, and then they will find something that you may not like as much but are clearly better at. Lucky for me, all my evals have been very positive, and I get to keep my job." The Crown Princess' megawatt smile telegraphed her positive attitude about her occupation.

The Crown Princess expressed some reservations about leaving the Service in a year. "It's gonna be really hard to go from, you know, all this freedom and everyone being casual around me and everything, to you know, going back to school and taking classes. I'll have more than three years of really practical experience under my belt, and I mean, I just know that when I get done with my Service and go, you know, start prepping for my life as the future Empress or whatever, I think I'll really miss the NSP. Hopefully there is nothing stopping me, when I do become Empress, from coming out and seeing how all these things are made, and continuing to learn how all these huge infrastructure projects are made. It's definitely something that Kalistan needs: Our infrastructure in this country could really use some upgrades!"

Asked if her brother, His Highness Prince Victor will be following her footsteps and joining the NSP right out of Highschool, the Crown Princess said "No, he thinks he would like to look into medicine. And he wants to go right into College. He'll do his NSP time right after he is done with doing Pre-Med, and I imagine they will set him up with a medical company who provides free primary care in rural areas to train him. Then again, they might determine that he has no aptitude for that and might put him with some other occupation. Who knows... It all depends. But he's just starting college now, so he's got some time."

Her Imperial Majesty the Empress visited Crown Princess Nicolette on the job site last week, as she reviewed the plans for the new bridge. "Oh yes," said Nicolette. "Mother is quite proud of our work on this project. It is coming along both ahead of schedule and under budget, because the Minister of Transportation gave us access to some additional resources which were previously dedicated to the Regular Force. So we got a bunch of stuff, including steel beams for basically nothing, allowing us to revise the project cost down quite a bit." Her Highness the Crown Princess said that The Empress was quite pleased with this, and expressed her pride in seeing her daughter work. "My mom even said it was almost too bad that Kalistan couldn't spare me to be an engineer." Princess Nicolette said with a smile.

The Bridge will be completed by November 15th of this year and Crown Princess Nicolette will be discharged on June 1, next year. She is expected to go to Kaliburg Polytechnic to continue studying engineering and mathematics.