ACSC course a tuffy

So here I am again taking many days off but I am back. I have been rather busy and not in a good way all the time. Being busy in a good way at least lets you feel like you are accomplishing something, and I have on a few things but not nearly to the extent I would have liked.

I did finish a class I have been taking at work for the last 18 months. It is called the Air Command and Staff College a course that is part of the PME or Professional Military Education. It is a self paced self study course or it can be taken in residence if you are lucky enough to be selected for that. I joined up with a group that was interested in taking the course and did it seminar style. Our study group started out with 14 individuals but by the end we were down to 6, and even then we were fragmented by at the end. I was the first one to complete the course with one other completing 2 days later. The rest are still working towards the last test. I really pushed hard the last few months to finish because I got to the point where I couldn’t take much more.

It was a very hard course in a lot of ways. Mostly because it was a new language made of governmentese with lots of new acronyms. Some of the acronyms were defined when first encountered while many were not. This made for a longer learning process as you spent time searching for what was really being said. Towards the end you didn’t care as much and tended to just take the acronym as its own word and pressed on hoping that through repetition it might stick. I find that with a lot of acronyms used in the government, many users only know the acronym and have long since forgotten what it actually stands for if they ever really knew in the first place. The acronym takes on a life of its own.

The course consists of 7 text books covering different sections. Each book has a comprehensive test of 50 questions that must be passed with a 70% or better. If you miss a test you have one retake available per book and the retest is not the same test you took the time before. If you miss that one you must reapply generally after a 30 day wait. Most in our group have had to do a retest while some have had to reapply. The good thing about being in a group is the motivation factor and encouragement that each would provide to help each other press on. If it wasn’t for that, I am sure I would have quit on several occasions through discouragement and other reasons. I did not want to let the group down so I always tried to meet my commitments, contribute where I could and keep up with everyone.

Along with the test there is a written assignment with the first book and three computer exercises, one with each of the last three books. I had talked myself into thinking that they would be pretty bad and I was really worried about them until I actually did them. I think that sometimes when I make things out to be so much worse than they are it is a little easier to handle the reality of it when it comes time to actually do them. On the other hand it can make things worse than they need to be.

That is the way this course was though. In hind sight it doesn’t look nearly as bad as it was when I was in the middle of taking it. I hope that means I will survive without too much post traumatic stress syndrome. It took a lot of effort to go through a topic that was of very little interest and at times felt like it was messing up my mind. I have had a hard time focusing on things since taking this course. Now that it is over I am hoping that I can do a few things that have been put on hold and get life back to normal. The fact that it is looking smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror is a good sign.

I joked that I needed to go back to reading Dr. Seuss to start getting my head straight again. I was joking but I am wondering if there isn’t some truth in that. I used to read a lot and think a lot as well as watch tv, movies, music, road trips, bike rides, family outings, car shows, hikes, and just general hanging out. I have had a strong desire to get back into flying, finish up my license, build a plane and doing some cross countries but it has all been put on hold. I just haven’t done much of any of those life kinds of things while I was taking this course, with the exception of walking. I would take the occasional break at work and go for a walk on an untraveled road near my building and I would take the text book with me to read while I was walking. That sounds difficult but it seemed to help me stay awake and a little more alert while getting in a little exercise. Keeping blood and oxygen flowing was a definite plus in studying this stuff.

It is not that it was all bad but a lot of it was. There was some interesting stuff and there were some topics that you would have loved to have had a serious discussion on, but you weren’t in a classroom setting at the time and the author wasn’t readily available to have a proper debate with. There was a lot of paradox in the text and no way to reconcile it. The text books are made up of several articles and various regs and pubs. Government publications are not structured for quick and easy absorption. They are a great remedy for insomnia.

The problem is that the order and organization of the material is not well planned or laid out. You would try your best to comprehend what you thought was the essence of the article and think that you were grasping a pretty good overview of the what objectives were but then you would run across something else that made you wonder if you were on the right track. Then when you thought you had everything you needed, enough to take the test, the questions would get into the weeds of an article and not the macro vision you thought the book was trying to portray. As a supposed introductory level course it fails to readily build a core foundation with which to understand military doctrine, and it does not well define the terminology required to interact meaningfully in the world that uses such language and thought process.

It is that change in thought process that has me worried for after being immersed in this course for 18 months my mind does not work quite the way it used to and I am working hard to get it back. It is coming but it feels slow in doing so. Like I said I put a lot of things on the back burner and I am just starting to get back to them with real intent. I did just finish an investing book by Jeremy Siegel this last week but there were about three days after the last test where I did nothing but play a video game on the Playstation 2. I know it sounds lame but it was a good change of pace and the video game helps reintroduce the application of logic that is of more use in the real world.

I intend to refresh my efforts to study for my pilot license and continue to set the goals of flying. That was one of the strongest motivators to finish this course and get it out of the way. I am hopeful that the aspect of studying anything has not left me completely. I have wondered about studying a second language as I feel like that is what I have been doing for the last 18 months. I remember reading somewhere that the brain uses a different section to recall a second language depending on when you learned the second language giving evidence that there is something of truth about it being easier to learn another language while in your youth than when you are older. That might help explain why this course was so difficult but also gives me hope that if I can manage to get through this I should be able to learn another language.

In fact that was one of the reasons for taking this course, besides the obvious reason of job advancement, was to exercise the mind and blow out the cobwebs. I was hoping for a positive invigorating experience but I sit here wondering if it was all worthwhile or not. It is supposed to give me a couple of points on my whole person score, about the same as if I had gotten my Masters, and it does help me understand the military lingo a little bit better but did it really improve me as a person and am I better off for expending all that time and effort…only time will tell. Right now it still doesn’t feel like it.

So if you are taking ACSC, I feel for you but keep it up, press on, press through the boggy stuff, hang in there, you can do it, others have and so can you, never give up, and it will be over when it is over. I can't really say that it will get better because it doesn't until it is over.

If you haven’t yet started but are thinking about doing it I would have to give my advice as this, DON'T DO IT, unless it will directly help your career, instead go ahead for a Master’s degree. It will probably be of more value in the end. If you already have your Master’s and you are bored then go get a Doctorate. The sad thing about this course is that if it were properly structured you could probably lay the whole thing out in a 28 page Cliff notes pamphlet. I could do it if I had enough desire to fully comprehend the subject matter and spend the time and still be able to speak English after it was all said and done and still be able to translate things into laymen terms or an understandable format that real people could use. In fact I did a lot of translating to put things into my terms for understanding and for helping others understand only to have to translate it back into government speak to take the test. I tell you it is like learning another language. It does give you an instant understanding of why our Washington is the way it is.

One final note to all those that are looking for a short cut such as dirty purples, don’t bother. The school frowns on it and rightfully so. I don’t know if there are any out there for this course as there were in the past but they can't give you what this course is supposed to give you, and that is an exposure to the military mind think and that is what is needed to participate in the military environment.

As every book and test was administered and developed by a different person what worked well in one book wasn’t always the best method to use in another book. The study questions were a good starting point for us in the beginning but we weren’t referring to them much in the end. After all is said and done you still had to do the work, read the articles, and review the material. You are the one that has to take the test.

I was on version 5.0 and I understand that version 5.1 is just around the corner. The tests are lousy. Many questions have more than one right answer so you have to look for the answer that is right for this particular question. Some questions are easy and some don’t even look like they belong. I had to read through the first six questions on the first test before I knew I had the right test. There is limited feedback so even though you passed a test you had little idea of which questions you answered right and which ones you got wrong. Another secret is that once you passed you didn’t care. A common comment was anything more than the minimum 70% was a waste of brain power. There are also quite a few questions that had been thrown out on the test I took so others that have gone before have also had issues with the test.

Am I glad I did it? I don’t know. Right now I think there were many other things that would have been a better use of my time and energy but it came along and the right time and caught me in the right mood so I signed up and I did it. I accomplished a rather large goal which became a commitment not only to the others in my group but to myself. I finished it as I said I would. If I take nothing else away from this than the accomplishment of finishing and I carry that momentum forward, then I actually have benefited from this course and that is something.

This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West.