We left our wannabe hero as he prepares to board a bus headed for Memphis. Information gaps acknowledged, but not yet taking responsibility for arrogance.
It seems that my life has been segmented by school or other life learning exercises. The break points in the memory flow have significant tipping points that define the next phase. Memphis was one also.
The bus trip up through Mississippi to Memphis was a learning experience all by itself. That story is best told in a different venue. School in Tennessee was a load of fun, surrounded by airplanes, systems, learning all sorts of things – attempting to resolve the information flow as the firehose was opened. New life, new career, new everything.
But, here is the point in time where learning forever was pushed into my little pea-brain…and it actually stuck the first time through. After checking in and joining the training command as a student, my first day in this new school had a block of orientation to the entire process from day 1 to 3650. They had a 10 year plan mapped out. After my initial training in fundamentals and theory, I would attend a specific course of instruction around electrical systems, power distribution, troubleshooting, and more system theory. Actual aircraft were used for testing skills. Overall process and governance was taught also as the standards were based on Naval Aviation Operations. So a system learned in one unit was transferable to the next unit, aircraft, or operations center.
What a concept.
Like maybe that type of thing should exist at any time there is human interaction with education needs, structures, process and larger organizations?
Bottom line was once I left this “school” environment I could expect to be attending further schools at least once a year. Type specific systems, communications, automatic flight controls, navigation, it just goes on and on. But the true value of this constant education and growth was the leader training that was endemic to the entire process. Each element fit into a larger matrix aimed at preparing the individual to manage technical work groups and eventually entire maintenance departments in extremely high stress environments.
After four or five years of this exposure and daily touching of the systems and technologies the individual is well prepared to start supervising others while they grow up through the system.
So, my value-add lesson was that I needed to accept the idea that I was going to be in a school of one sort or another for my entire military career. You were either going to be in a technical school, deployed, or in a leadership school. In between, you did your “regular job” in your unit.
Just one more nail in the coffin for the excuse of “I didn’t want to be in school anymore.” As it turned out, that is about all you do in the Marines; train, deploy, school. I had taken an action with a major goal of “no more school.” Oops.
And there I thought I knew everything. This error will repeat several times over the years. After a while, you learn to make decisions with imperfect data, but then you manage your risk differently – another lesson I learned the hard way.
Take whatever education is offered – you won’t know you need it until you need it and then it will be too late. Another twist is to be completely open to generic benchmarking – a term I didn’t learn until much later, only to realize I had been doing it all along.
Arrogance was not gone yet, but maybe the information gap lesson was learned.
YMMV
