CLC3 Day 43: TC-AIMS II start

This weekend I came to the cold realization that 1.) I can't swim 100m in 1:55, and 2.) I can't jump 14 feet (4.5m).

It was a depressing realizatin, though that doesn't mean I'm going to quit on the German Armed Forces Proficiency Badge (Das Abzeichen für Leistungen im Truppendienst). It just means I'm going to have to devote a much more significant amount of time and energy than I had originally anticipated.

It's that "ohhhh man..." feeling that's got me down -- thinking of how far I am from either goal. Still, I'll keep training through the next month and see how things go -- once I meet the requirements in either event I'll contact the liaison officer and arrange for testing.

In class the Transportation officers separated from the Quartermaster and Ordnance folks and started training on TC-AIMS II, the software the Army uses to plan deployments. It's not bad to know (and nice for me to get a refresher), but I wonder how useful it will be for me to know.

There's also the question why we, as Transporters, get special treatment. From what our instructors have said, it was a decision by our commandant -- the person who gets to decide what we need to be trained on. The commandants of our respective branches still have significant input on what we need to know as Logisticians, and apparently he felt we, in particular, needed to know how to use this software.

Yet this is a point of contention between us and our peers -- when we arrive at our next unit, our bosses aren't going to care what basic branch we came from. They're going to want us to perform as Logisticians, and they'll want a human resource that conforms to their expectatons.

So I expect some further evolution toward a more unified Logistics officer program.