brian.goldstein
New member
A friend of mine, going through Q-school right now, shot me an email today, after hearing about some of the questions here.
Basically, today, they had a surprise pft.
2 mile run
max push-ups in 2 minutes
max sit-ups in 2 minutes
20 candidates in his class and 2 Medics. 8 failed the run, including both medics. They are being recycled. The cut-off for the run was 15:56. That is really slow, especially since that's the time you need to score to get into the army to begin with.
If you're unfamiliar with what my buddy has gone through to get to where he is - its
14 weeks of OSUT
3 weeks Airborne
about a month of PLDC
SOPC (about a month)
SFAS (24 days of hell) before you start the Q course. Apparently he's pretty far along, as he mentioned that his class is prepping for Robin Sage, their culminating exercise. These are not a group of green recruits. They've already made it further than at least 75% of the men who've tried, and you can still get bounced for not having something simple and basic in line.
I like to refer to this as the "Law School" phenomenon. Basically, if you're a liberal arts major in college, the default professional school is Law School. Everyone sees it as their meal ticket, something elite to proud of, and the "best" that they can be.
You can guess their career aspirations too -"I want to practice National Security Law" or "I'll be at an investment bank" or "I'm going to be the next Vincent Bugilosi/Ari Gold/Insert Colorful Legal Character Here."
Well, guess what. You know how many of my friends/acquaintances wanted to go to law school? I'd conservatively guess 500. Do you want to guess how many are there now? I would say 150 took the LSAT, 100 applied, 50, at most went, and out of them, I know for a fact that 10 are dropping out after 1L and 10 won't pass the bar. and of the 30 that do graduate and pass the bar, they will be pretty happy with themselves if they can get a job, let alone one of the "sexy" legal jobs that pays an exorbirant amount.
My point with Law School and SFAS (or BUD/S or FORECON pipeline or RIP or PJ pipeline - whatever) is that it is set up to weed out people who are not focused on their goals, and that if you are serious about finishing and succeeding, you had better be able to meet the minimum they require -easily- FIRST before thinking "sexy."
Basically, today, they had a surprise pft.
2 mile run
max push-ups in 2 minutes
max sit-ups in 2 minutes
20 candidates in his class and 2 Medics. 8 failed the run, including both medics. They are being recycled. The cut-off for the run was 15:56. That is really slow, especially since that's the time you need to score to get into the army to begin with.
If you're unfamiliar with what my buddy has gone through to get to where he is - its
14 weeks of OSUT
3 weeks Airborne
about a month of PLDC
SOPC (about a month)
SFAS (24 days of hell) before you start the Q course. Apparently he's pretty far along, as he mentioned that his class is prepping for Robin Sage, their culminating exercise. These are not a group of green recruits. They've already made it further than at least 75% of the men who've tried, and you can still get bounced for not having something simple and basic in line.
I like to refer to this as the "Law School" phenomenon. Basically, if you're a liberal arts major in college, the default professional school is Law School. Everyone sees it as their meal ticket, something elite to proud of, and the "best" that they can be.
You can guess their career aspirations too -"I want to practice National Security Law" or "I'll be at an investment bank" or "I'm going to be the next Vincent Bugilosi/Ari Gold/Insert Colorful Legal Character Here."
Well, guess what. You know how many of my friends/acquaintances wanted to go to law school? I'd conservatively guess 500. Do you want to guess how many are there now? I would say 150 took the LSAT, 100 applied, 50, at most went, and out of them, I know for a fact that 10 are dropping out after 1L and 10 won't pass the bar. and of the 30 that do graduate and pass the bar, they will be pretty happy with themselves if they can get a job, let alone one of the "sexy" legal jobs that pays an exorbirant amount.
My point with Law School and SFAS (or BUD/S or FORECON pipeline or RIP or PJ pipeline - whatever) is that it is set up to weed out people who are not focused on their goals, and that if you are serious about finishing and succeeding, you had better be able to meet the minimum they require -easily- FIRST before thinking "sexy."