Well,
yesterday was a major milestone for me, so to speak. I received my E6 (Staff Sergeant) in December
of 2012. In order to ‘keep’ my rank, I
had to complete an on-line course and go to a school. I was able to successfully complete the
school in 2013, but it has taken me a long time to complete the on-line course.
For
those who have not done an Army on-line course, consider yourself lucky. I do not feel that many of the on-line
courses are put together very well. Even
though I love to learn new things, the way some of the classes were put
together, or studying things that ‘Big Army’ thinks is important, was a real
struggle.
The
only good thing was that the course that I just finished was an actual ‘learn
at your own pace’ class. That made it
much, much better than the course I tried to take in 2013. Now, that course was extremely difficult!
Off
hand, I think that the course was called ‘Common Core,’ but I can’t remember
for sure. When I was promoted in 2012, I
did so before it became a requirement for me to complete the school and online
class prior to being promoted. So, I was
grandfathered in. The school, which I
attend in California, was very educational.
However, the online portion was more than a little difficult for
me. There were two reasons why it was so
difficult for me. One was because it was
done like an actual college course with very specific due dates for certain
things. The second reason was because there
were at least 5 different NCO (Non-Commissioned Officers) grading the course. This became a problem with certain projects
because different instructors would grade things at different times. This made for an issue with consistency for
me.
I
had a very rough start to the online course because the audio would not
work. Even though I called the school
that was facilitating the course, they did not have a ‘fix’ for me. I just had to use the Close Caption (CC)
feature. Even though I was told that it was
at the bottom of the screen, I could not find it. After about a week of this frustration, while
working on it at home, I finally realized that part of the screen was behind my
taskbar. So, I tried resizing and moving
the screen. To no success. I eventually figured out how to move the task
bar to the side, which solved that problem.
But, I would soon have more significant issues to deal with.
At
this time, I had returned to work at the state prison after about 18 months of
being away, trying to pursue a ministry career.
At first my work was pretty regular and I could make time for working on
my online class. However, within a week
of actually getting started on the course, we started getting hit with a lot of
mandatoried overtime. And, since I
worked 2nd Shift (1400-2200 or 2 PM to 10 PM) and was mandatoried
onto 3rd (2200-0600 or 10 PM to 6 AM) I almost never got relieved
early. And, we were getting mandatoried
2 to 3 times a week. Needless to say, I
became chronically sleep deprived very soon, and stayed that way for almost a
whole month!
On
top of this course and work, my wife and I had an almost 3 year old boy and an
infant girl (about a year old). My wife
went out of her way to give me as much time as she could to focus on this
online course. But, she was burning the
candle at both ends, and sometimes had to take time for herself or just
sleep. Myself? I feel that I was burning the candle at both
ends, and in the middle! It was an
extremely difficult time for all of us!
Up
until about the 3rd week of the course, the different instructors
did not create a major issue. However,
when we had to create a SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) using a very
specific Army memo format, this became a very big issue. By this time, I had about two weeks to finish
this SOP and participate in a discussion board (which they also graded). Because different Instructors would grade my
SOP, different things would have to be changed.
I soon had to have a fellow NCO who had already completed the course tutor
me with getting the SOP ‘totally correct’ so that I could complete the first
section of the course. Unfortunately,
this didn’t help me in the end.
About
10 days before the first mandatory deadline, my wife and I realized that
something had to go. Either my job
(because of all the mandatory overtime), our family, or this course. It was taking too big of a toll on all of
us. So, I wrote a memo citing my extreme
situation, providing my Shift Supervisor from work’s contact information to
confirm my situation, and requested to be removed from the course prior to the
deadline so that it wouldn’t be counted against me. (It was a ‘fail three times and you are
permanently done’ situation.) My Chain
of Command received and forwarded the memo to the schoolhouse within about two
days. Then the school just sat on
it. I was then removed from the course,
‘failure.’ Needless to say, my wife and
I were extremely irate about this! I had
not failed a military school, nor had I failed a course since my second year in
seminary. And that class was a Biblical
Greek language course.
For
several years, I wasn’t interested in taking an online course because of this
very painful experience. Eventually, in
2015 while deployed to Qatar, I requested to be enrolled in the Structured
Self-Directed (SSD) 2 course. I started
the process in the late summer or early fall, where I would have a lot more
time to focus on this course. However,
it wasn’t until within a month of me returning to the States that I was finally
enrolled in the course.
I
returned from deployment to doing four 12 hour shifts, that made it harder for
me to do the course, especially since I strive to put God and family
first. This made finding time to focus
on the course very challenging. On top
of that, the course presentation was less than appealing. After years of taking
many different Army online courses, I find the way they often present course to
be irritating. (Think: Extreme death by
PowerPoint!) I find it easier to learn
by muting it and read what they say while listening to classical music. Unfortunately for me with this course, it
would ‘unmute’ almost every time it advanced to the next screen/slide. I finally just muted my computer every time I
did my online course and listened to classical music on my iPod.
Well,
after almost three years, I finally completed it. Did I learn a lot? Yes.
Were there things that I think were unnecessary? Definitely!
If I were to set up a course, there are several ‘lessons’ that I could
combine to help make things shorter.
There are other things that, though nice to know, I don’t think it was
absolutely necessary to be included. I
honestly think it was way too long. Now,
if I was Active Duty or in a full-time status, it might have been easier to
deal with. But, as a part-time Guardsman
with a full-time job (with occasional to frequent mandatory overtime) and a
family to take care of, it was overly long.
But, I am finished and it is, finally, behind me. I can now focus on other things like
preparing for next years learning vacation, preparing for the upcoming Bible
Study on the Purpose Driven Church, finish going through many boxes of things
that we have, etc. And, I am now able to
just sit down and read without worrying about that course. That, in itself, is a major blessing!
RC
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