Thanks for the kind words everyone.
Militon- Ill try to explain in as layman's terms as I can. A Staff Sergeant NORMALLY is an immediate supervisor for 7-11 Soldiers, and interacts with them directly. I say "normally" because I have been holding a Platoon Sergeant position (20-34 Soldiers, I have 25 right now) for the past two years. That is normally a Sergeant First Class position, but since we "aint got none", I have been filling that role. At this point, I deal with the Soldiers a bit less frequently, and concentrate on developing and mentoring the junior noncommissioned officers to, essentially, take my job someday.
Up until now, the path to promotion has been pretty simple, quick and straightforward: Study "Army knowledge" for a couple months. Then attend a promotion board, the members of which come from within the unit and pretty much know you and know if you are ready or not. In the promotion board, try not to be nervous and regurgitate the "Army Knowledge" that you have been studying, and if you do well enough, you get promoted. There's a bit more but that's the jest of it. This promotion took a lot longer, more preparation, and a whole lot of waiting (no surprise, right?). There is a promotion board, but I don't go to it, rather my board packet does. The board consists of senior NCOs and officers from throughout the Army. From what I've heard, the board reviews hundreds of packets, and spend only about 2 minutes reviewing each, so of course first impression is key. They look at your DA photo (a high-res picture of me in my uniform) and review my records and performance evaluations. If all of that stuff gives the board that "warm and fuzzy" feeling, then they recommend that person for promotion.
The packet preparation process takes months of getting records and everything straight. Then wait for the promotion board, which was June 2 of last year if I remember right. The results didn't post until the end of September (the longest wait of my life!). I got selected, but one doesn't get promoted until the required schooling is complete. That requires the Department of the Army to schedule me a class date down at Fort Rucker. I was pretty fortunate and only had to wait about 6 months or so to go. Once that was out of the way, it was just a short wait for my orders to post, which is what came out on last Friday. I won't actually "pin on" the new rank until I get back from leave in April.
Wont be a huge change. Ill be doing the same job but finally getting paid enough for it (again, more balsa money
). I'll also have more weight to throw around with which to get stuff done. I've had to...persuade people to get stuff done a lot, but those days are over! There are also intangible privileges that come along with it. The one that I am most looking forward to is no longer driving 25 minutes to Squadron Headquarters to sign in and out of leave. I can just phone it in, then roll over and go back to bed! I've always viewed and been told that the rank of SFC is the "I made it" rank. Its the point that says one's career is a successful one, and anything after that is a bonus. I'm just glad that most of the waiting is over!
Tom- You would drool over the nice, flat ramp that sits out at Robert Gray AAF (Named after CPT Robert Gray from the Doolittle Raid). Its smooth as glass and could fit 4 circles easily. Of course, getting both base ops and the local FAA reps to bless off on flying CL so close to a high-activity, joint use runway would take a lot of convincing.
Dad- I went out and got the first of my uniforms updated (getting promoted is expensive!). I brought it home and Crystal put my camo-patterned uniform top on to "take it for a test drive" as she put it. She zipped it up and looked down and said "wow...that's a lot of responsibility down there....nope!" and quickly took it off
For everyone else, my wife Crystal did 4 years active duty as an AH-64 Apache mechanic. She didn't quite make it to the NCO roles before she got out so she lives vicariously through me
Its nice to have someone to go home and gripe to and they understand. There is also the presence of the whole manned-unmanned aviation contest at home. I thought it would be funny one day to tell her that an Apache was 50,000 pieces flying in close formation, and it was her job to make sure that they flew in as close a formation as possible. I almost had to sleep on the couch that night!
Topic: Good news (Read 2493 times)
