Stressful evening

Things have been going pretty slow recently, without much worthy of note (well, last Tuesday was interesting). Today most of the NCOs had to come up with half-hour classes for us, to keep us from having to do extremely stupid, tedious manual labor for the first sergeant. A lot of them turned out to be pretty interesting, since many of them gave classes on things pertaining to their jobs back home, like law enforcement in Cpl. McTernan's case and federal employment in Cpl. Hinson's. It was educational. Blah.

So then, after the classes were all done, about ten Marines were required to do a PFT. I didn't like my last score, so I asked if I could do it, though it wasn't required for me. I didn't do outstanding by any means, but my scores improved enough to get me a first-class PFT, making me eligible for meritorious promotion. I did thirteen pull-ups, a hundred situps and ran the 3-mile in 23:27, which is better than I've done in awhile (which is sad). I could do better.

Ironically, when I walked back to the house from the PFT which finally qualified me for meritorious promotion, I was told that I would be doing a meritorious promotion board in two hours. It wasn't a real board, but rather a sort of preliminary board because the NCOs couldn't decide from the four of us who did it tonight who to send up for the board (normally, I'd have weeks to prepare). So, I found and borrowed some clean cammies, showered and shaved up really nice, and the four of us found a room and studied Marine Corps knowledge briefly, then at 2200 we went in one at a time. There were two sergeants and two corporals, plus my vehicle commander (errr, sorta former vehicle commander), Sgt. Nicola.

Well, they didn't tell us yet which two of us will go to the real board, but they did say we all surprised them with how well we did. Now, me personally, I think that's a load of crap, because I felt like I did awfully. For some reason, I was more nervous tonight than I have been getting shot at. I was a nervous wreck, and I think I was literally shaking while standing at attention (partially due to my legs being badly fatigued from the PFT I had just run). I didn't speak loudly or confidently enough. I could have done much better, and would have expected myself to do much better. These are the Marines I spend every day with, who I talk to with great comfort dozens of times a day. Yet when they're sitting at this table in front of me, judging my every mood to decide my fate, I quaked. So anyways, that was rough. I asked Doc Schmutz for some morphine afterwards. He said no.

Now, I should mention that I'm terrifically priveleged to have been selected for even this pre-board. That they couldn't decide among me and these three motivators is amazing. They've all been in considerably longer than I have and are all terribly competent. Furthermore, I can think of at least five other Marines I would have picked for it before myself. Pretty much the whole of the lance corporals would be pissed if I picked up meritorious corporal, since so many of them have put in so much more time and do terrific jobs themselves. So, anyways, it's a huge compliment.

This is already pretty long and I doubt there's much more I want to tell you about right now, so I'll finish here. Keep holding down the fort for me, and you're welcome for the lower gas prices.