From the halls of Montezuma Part II

How do you know when a Marine Educators' Workshop has been successful? When the majority of the educators are wondering what it would be like to partake in the ten-week Officer's Candidate's School (OCS), in spite of all the drilling, the physical exercise, the obstacle course clearly designed by the devil himself, and the almost traumatic experience of eating lunch in the same chow hall as the candidates.

Seriously, in spite of, or perhaps I should say, in line with, all my earlier misgivings, I have to admit that the organizers of the USMC Educators' workshop were very effective. No matter how anti-establishment and peace-loving all the academics were on arrival on Monday, by the time Friday rolled around, we were all convinced that Marine Corps officers were breed a notch above all others.

Now I have to admit that the USMC did just the right things in the right order. On Tuesday, they didn't just show us around The Basic School (the 6-month training course all 2nd lieutenants take upon graduation from OCS), no, they let us play with enormous machine guns, walk around an amphibious vehicle, and mess around with lots and lots of sand during the sand table exercise. As we all know, at one point in their lives, most (if not all) successful academics, were the geeky little kid who never got picked for anything but wanted nothing more than to play with the big kids, and well, the marine corps fed into that need perfectly.

On Wednesday, they further underlined the notion that academics' lives are really not that exciting by having us sit through about three hours of powerpoint presentations held by the Marine Corps University. No one else used slides, or notes, or a lectern, except the organization that is known by the name "university". Coincidence? I think not. Just as I don't think it's a coincidence that they followed up this "death by powerpoint" presentation by a twenty-minute ride in one of the HMX helicopters. Yes, I said HMX. The same squadron that transports the President and all of his "straphangers" as the HMX pilots like to call them. Academics may like to pretend we're all that and a bag of chips by using "doctor" and "professor" as freely as possibly, but no title, tenure, corner officer, or Tue-Wed-Thur teaching schedule is a match to a ride on a helicopter. Nothing.

So by the time our visit to OCS rolled around on Thursday, we were ripe for the picking. Had the USMC taken us to OCS on our first day, we probably would have all scrambled for the next flight back home. And not only that, we would have probably been on the phone to our media contacts ready to file a hot and heavy expose on the the insanity that is the marine corps. However, by now we were so in love with the idea of being a marine corps officer, that the trauma possibly inflicted by OCS only seemed an acceptable payment for all the awesomeness that was to follow.

In short, the educators' workshop did the trick. Well, sort of. You see, the one thing the marine corps couldn't prevent was for us to talk to one another. And as anyone who's been around educators knows, academics love to talk. About everything. Preferably in a sarcastic, ironic, tongue-in-cheek manner. And in Thursday night, we did just that. We did it for so long, in fact, that the dining room staff eventually begged us to move to the bar as they really wanted to go home.

So what did we talk about? The psychology of OCS? The persuasive techniques used by the USMC? The impact of TBS on the formation of future officers? Of course not. We talked about how cool it would be if we all, like the candidates at OCS started talking about ourselves and others in third person, "This Professor feels that this student has not tried their best", or "This Professor feels that the chair is possibly stepping out of line with the chair's decision".
Then we moved on to funny comebacks that the candidates could use for their sergeant instructors, such as, "This candidate feels that the sergeant instructor needed more sleep", or "This candidate thinks that the sergeant instructor got up at the wrong side of the rack" (we were especially tickled by the proper use of naval technology there), and "This candidate thinks the sergeant instructor needs a hug."
Finally, we decided that "sergeant instructor" really wasn't powerful enough, and that the instructors at OCS should really go by a more euphemistic name.
The name we came up with?
Marine Educators.

And I'm pretty sure it was no coincidence that's that what the marine officers had been calling us all week. Secretly, I'm convinced, we're all still that little kid who might be a Professor, but who really wants to be the big bully yelling orders at everyone.

Ooh-rah.