August 18, 1997 - Final Testing

970818 - Yesterday was your typical relaxing, low stress, Sunday. Today was final testing and our platoon took the series with only 3 failures. That means we get the guidon back! HOO-RAH! Tonight, we prepared for tomorrow's Company Commander's Inspection. I'm a little nervous about it but not too much. Mostly I'm just looking forward to 11 days from now when I can go home...
I would love to say that my being knowledge recruit had something to do with our success on final testing. To claim that I tapped into my gifts as an educator and inspired the platoon to learn, really learn, all of the material. In fact, not just to learn, but to master it. That my pedagogical expertise, while still raw and untrained, shown forth and, like Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, I inspired my rag-tag band of misfits to academic excellence.

Unfortunately, I think there was a different reason for their success.

As you may recall, every major evaluation like this one is also a competition between the platoons. The winner among the series of 3 platoons gets to march with the series guidon (a small flag that shows that you represent the series). You might also recall that our platoon had won that right twice before: after a pugil sticks competition, and after the Physical Fitness Test. In light of this, DI Sgt. V__________ (the DI in charge of our academic training) had a moment of inspiration. Ours was not a platoon motivated by academia. We weren't focused on becoming life-long learners. No, we were far more visceral, far more physical.

Therefore, Sgt. V__________ made us an offer: If on our final test our platoon could out-score the other two platoons in the series, he would buy us all Whoppers with cheese.

Well, now he was talking our language.

They say that the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach. In this case, that was also the best way to these recruits' brains. What my journal for some reason leaves out (because we would find out the next day) is that we didn't actually out-score the series; we out-scored the entire Company! That means that we had performed better than all of the other 5 platoons in the Company.

Us.

The platoon that had, by far, scored the lowest on the mid-cycle test, had somehow outperformed everyone else. And all it took was the (undoubtedly false) promise of a Whopper with cheese.

It's an indication of how little faith I had in ever seeing that Whopper that I didn't mention it in the journal.

But, sure enough, Sgt. V__________ would eventually deliver. Boy would he.

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