Well you got me wildman, my brain is just tired.


I've always been curious as to what military school(s?) Are actually like

 

Wellbeing as I have never been to a civilian collage I can't compare it to military schools.

Of course in a military school there is discipline like anywhere else in the military. We got a break every hour for 10 minutes. Just about long enough to burn one if you smoke. We studied things about our jobs. A lot depends on what you choose to do in the military. Schools range in length from 3 months to 14 months. As I said it depends on what you choose as your job. Then you have what they call a phase II school. Then after that you go to what they call leadership schools. There are 3 levels of them and they each get harder as you go. On top of that there are tons of extra schools you can apply to go to. Like airborne school, air assault school, NBC school, retention school, and a ton of other ones. I was lucky and got to go to a few that I really wanted to go to.

 

I actually signed up for Air Base Ground Defense..... I wanted to play with some of the neat guns, and such... but, as I was being stationed stateside, they didn't think it was necessary. (wow, a "reasonable" decision from the military, there's a surprise.)

 

I've never been in the military but I did go to a class on civil defense preparedness at FT. McCoy in northwest Wisconsin in the early '70's.

These were the same classes their military personnel participated in. Class started promptly at 7:00 am we got a fifteen minute break at 10:00 a twenty minute lunch break at 12:30 pm another fifteen minute break at 3:30 pm and class was dismissed at 5:30 pm.

The grunts in the class said they liked the relaxed schedule of the classes as compared to classes they had that had no civilians in them. After the class was over for the day I'd go back to my motel room and do what I could to read the assigned chapters in the book.

You really needed to do the reading because you never knew if one of the instructors would call on you to give an answer. Not having an answer might get you assigned to write it all out. Fortunately I was pretty interested in the subject so managed to do the reading. Some of the other civilians {much to the instructors dismay} did not.

I had learned that when I would read stuff like that if I made an outline of what the book had to say it really helped me remember stuff. I started doing that my senior year in high school and that's probably how I managed to get my grades up enough to actually graduate.

We were supposed to take notes in the class as the instructor went over the assigned reading so I did the best I could, every Friday you were to turn in your notebook for their review.

After the first time of that I was asked to stay after class. Several of the instructors were concerned that my class room notes were very incomplete and poorly done so I showed them the outline notebook I had. That impressed them to the point that it was strongly suggested that everyone else started doing that too.

We had weekends off from the class and I would outline several chapters ahead.

While I was not exactly the top student in the 9 week course I was the top of the civilians. Once the class was over I was asked to pass on what I had learned to some of the other volunteer fire departments in our area. That was a little daunting for me because I am defiantly not the instructor/teacher type.

 

I've never done any of that stuff but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express so....

 

We needed someone trained like that where I worked. The sky cops we got instead were hyperactive mental midgets who elevated ineptitude to an art form. They were the kind that got people into the habit of starting sentences with "I 5h17 you not" when talking about them. But boy were their jump boots shiny.

I always assumed that being so far off of the main base meant that we got the idiots they wanted to punish or just get rid of.

 

I was an instructor for 3 years in an NCO Academy. It is like being a drill sergeant but instead you're dealing with sergeants. I went to work every morning at 5AM and didn't get off until after 6 PM. I was a CLASS A Ahole but that was my job and I enjoyed it too.

I was kicked out of high school for getting into trouble too much. Then when I joined the Army all that changed. I was a honor grad or distinguished honor grad in every school I ever went to in the military. So that means I was in the top 10% of my class or the top student.

My classmates hated me because most of the time the information came easy to me. So at night I didn't have to study much just skim read the info and I was good.
Even when you're in school you still have to do PT everyday plus other soldier stuff like marching to and from class. So depending on how far away a class room was we might have to leave the barracks 20-30 minutes early to give us enough time to get there.
And you couldn't be late to school either. Military life is different but I wouldn't change my 28 years in the service for anything.

 

I liked it the way we did it when I was in tech school. Our class was off base so we got a bus to and from the annex. No marching, a quick appearance at the morning formation to be counted as present, then off to the bus stop while the rest stayed in formation, and then no afternoon formation at all.

We were supposed to be at the afternoon formation but right after we started school the bus was late two days running and our late arrival annoyed the NCO's, who told us that when the bus was late we should just skip the formation rather than interrupt it. The bus driver wouldn't cooperate by being late every day and even made it a point to get us back early, so we'd dash into the barracks, change into our civvies, and vacate the premises long before the others who had to march back and forth to their on-base classes arrived. There were only five of us so it was easy enough to go unnoticed. So far, it doesn't seem that missing all of those pointless formations has had any negative impact on my life.

My roomie and I thought we were being sneaky, keeping our bar in one of the empty lockers (actually a closet) in our room. It was a three man room with just the two of us in it so one of the unassigned lockers became our bar, and the other held the stereo equipment. Then one Saturday afternoon the squadron commander stopped by for a drink -- hard liquor was forbidden in the barracks so we pretty unconvincingly feigned ignorance and innocence for a minute or so until we got tired of looking like fools. Over his second drink the commander told us that the whole permanent staff knew about the bar and most had seen it, and as long as we were adults about it no one gave a frotz. He also confirmed that we'd been right to appoint the room nicely and keep it spotless so it looked like something a little more grown up than the typical tech school toddlers lived there -- we were getting the unusual leeway because of it.

Which left us wondering after he left if the staff were onto our little scheme for avoiding the afternoon formations, too. Naturally, we didn't ask and they didn't tell.

PT for us ended with basic training, but we did have to go once a year to get weighed and prove we could survive running a mile and a half at a slow jogging pace.

The Air Force was stubbornly unwilling to adapt to my way of life so I left their reenlistment paperwork on the table and took my honorable and seven weeks of terminal leave gladly. I didn't like being treated as a child even when I was one, and my childhood ended long before those clowns got hold of me. But I still have my military bearing. It's a small ball bearing that was given to me as a joke.

 

I actually liked the Air Force, for the most part...... My job was easy, 90% of the time, but, could be TRULY exciting every once and a while. (I was security police, main job was "security of priority resources", I.E.: Nukes..... and their delivery systems. B-52's) And then there was the other 10%..... Exercises..... Whomever thought it was a good idea to stage a three week exercise, in January, in Marquette Michigan, where 80% of the work was OUTSIDE, in the three feet of snow, and the TEMP was -60... nevermind the chill factor..... It was so cold out, the grease in my M-16 froze, leaving me with a 7.5 pound (mostly plastic) club....... I told the Flight Lieutenant, when she came by.... that "Due to conditions, if anyone is stupid enough to come and try and steal something off the flightline, I am going to HELP them do it....... She didn't much care for that..... But then, the Air Force really didn't care over-much about me in general, and expressed their displeasure by giving me the boot. I was not disappointed.

 

I've never had any military background. But you guys should count yourselves lucky you didn't have to go to public High school in the modern era. I just got a few years ago

What a joke....