All hands DOWN'

I like to think that I am a smart person, I might not be a genius or anything. But I made it through high school with pretty much no problem, scored well on my asvab and really don't have any trouble when it comes to anything that is considered educational. All I really have to do is apply myself and given a short amount of time I will almost always grasp onto things. But the longer I spend time in the Marine Corps, the more I begin to realize how stupid they must really think we really are. It may simply be because the military does not put a lot of emphasis on education, they care more about whether you can run a first class PFT then if you can read, write or perform basic mathematical equations.

This theory was proven to me today when we were once again required to sit through hours of 'briefs' about subjects that we have received classes on before. And they never mix it up, they don't try and further our knowledge on the subject, they simply repeat the same things over and over again because they must think we lack the ability to retain things and simple things as it is.

It is not like they are trying to teach us calculus, everything they teach us is common sense to anyone with at least a elementary level education and since you are required to at least have a high school diploma before you can enlist that means it should be common sense to everyone. I mean everyone should know that rape is wrong, being an alcoholic is not a good career move, texting while driving can be somewhat distracting, suicide is not the answer and hazing is not accepted while in the military. But even though it should be common sense the higher ups in the Marine Corps believe don't believe we know these things even though we got multiple classes on the subjects during boot camp, MCT and our MOS schools.

I swear, we know. We may not agree or even listen to the advice given but I swear we KNOW.

Okay so maybe the reason we keep getting these stupid briefs is because we don't always listen to the advice they continually give us, but that does not mean that we don't know about it we just simply don't listen and do it anyway. Maybe we got the texting while driving class because not to long ago a driver smacked into a pedestrian and killed him on impact. And it is possible that we got the suicide prevention class because thirty some marines took their lives in the last year. But this is just a possibility.

I am still going to stick with the fact that they just think we are stupid and can't retain knowledge. In truth I believe if they really wanted us to really retain this knowledge and start working it into our daily lives, they would make the briefs more entertaining because picking out the most monotone human beings to talk to us for a straight hour is not the best answer. But maybe that is just me. Personally my brain shuts down when the speaker does not catch my interest within the first few minutes.

Today out of all the briefs we received the only ones I really remember were the ones were either the speaker themselves caught my attention or the speaker possessed at least a little bit of an outgoing personality. I remember that sexual assault is a 'no, no' and that when someone says 'no' they mean no because the lady who gave the class was energetic and made us laugh....which in truth maybe is not the best thing to do when you are receiving a sexual assault class. But it worked to keep our attention. Plus marines are morbid like that so whatever works.

I am sitting here and trying to defend me and my fellow marines intellectual level by saying that we really do understand and know the things that they continually teach us but if someone was to attend one of these briefs they would be hard pressed to think that we were anything other then a bunch of blood thirsty, sex driven, idiots who just happen to look good in uniform because all they would hear us do was grunt and growl in response to things, say killing someone is the best solution to all problems and get loud and rowdy when anything involved sex.

So maybe I should stop trying to defend their intellectual level and simply say that we do have the basic ablilty to comprehend things because if we didn't, we wouldn't be able to shoot things. Because you have to at least be able to somewhat comprehend things to be able to figure out how to work a rifle in a little bit of a proficient manner.

What I am really trying to express in this entry through everything I have just said is really rather simple.

I just don't want to sit through anymore briefs. They makes me want to kill myself.

But I can't, because suicide is wrong. I learned that today.

Go figure.