Pro-Boards

So this week was the beginning of the end of plebe year for the freshman, aka Plebes. This week began their Professional Knowledge Boards, a review of their knowledge over the course of the year in regards to Navy, Marine Corps, Leadership, and other aspects of military life. They've been tested every week throughout the entire year, having a different lesson each week.

These boards can be stressful, as its a four person panel, 3 from your own company and 1 from out of company, each asking 3 questions. If you fail the board, then you go to the Battalion level board, with 4 members of the Battalion staff.

The change this year was that the plebes were only giving a 24 hour notice to their boards and did not know who was them, so they couldn't try to find out ahead of time what questions they were going to be asked.

This morning, the board that I was to be apart of was to be conducted at 0600, which meant getting up at 0530 to shave, put on my freshly pressed summer white uniform, and try to wake up a little bit before I had to go to this board. I get to the room it was supposed to be in about 10 minutes early. The other members of the board all show up, 0600 comes and goes, no plebe. We had to go wake him up... this did not bode well for the plebe.

My questions that I asked were fair I thought, taken from his study books, so he's seen the material before. My first question was to tell me the Fleets and their area of operations - I decided not to tack on where their headquarters are to make it easier. My second question was what aircraft was the F-35C Lightening replacing, the answer I was looking for was the F/A-18A/C Hornet. My last question was more open ended, I asked, you're in a tactical situation, the enemy position is known to be heavily fortified, you are the strike officer in charge of putting together the strike package, what do you do? I was looking for him to talk about was TACAIR strikes with F/A-18, and the various bombs they would use, and Cruise Missiles - being TLAM Tomahawk missiles.

Unfortunately, the board did not bode well for the plebe and he did not pass, but it was a lack of knowledge of several of the questions asked by the two first class and one of my questions - in addition to being docked points for professionalism, since he was late.

At the beginning of all this, I mentioned this was the beginning of the end of plebe year. It really is, because pro-knowledge is one of those constant drains you go through every week, and once the pro-board is done, you don't have to worry about it anymore. All they have left are exams, sea trials, and Herndon.