Taking the DLAB

Over Wednesday night I had "staff duty," meaning I sit at a desk overnight and make sure things don't blow up. (It's the officer version of the fireguard duty I did in basic training.) Since it's for 24 hours straight, you get the next day off.

So on Thursday, after taking a nap at home, I headed back to post to take the Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB). It's a two part, almost two hour test, and measures how well you would be at learning another language.

During the beginning of the audio part, I didn't think things were too hard. I had read about it beforehand, so I sort of knew what to expect. By the end, though, when they throw whole sentences at you, my brain was fried.

The video part, though, was easier again, as it was visual and more of a reading exercise. They tell you at the end what your score is, and three days later you can pick up the results.

I scored a 127, which was about how I had hoped to do. According to the website, Olmsted Scholars have averaged 130. Had I chosen to be a linguist instead of an officer, I would have needed to score at least 110 in order to qualify for the hardest languages (Arabic, Chinese, Korean, etc.), I'm happy.

They say you can't study for the DLAB, which is sort of true, but I'd recommend you take a Linguistics 101 class or something beforehand, at the very least to expand your mind about how different languages can work.

For example, not all languages work like English, "I drive cars." Subjects can come at the end, verbs in the front, and so on -- it really is amazing how the human mind can work. In some languages, like Latin, it doesn't really matter which order they're in, as long as you have the right suffix.

Understanding that sort of thing, I think, is the most important thing you can do to prepare.