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April 14, 2003
Fear, Mud and No-Net Gymnastics
By
Clay Carol, WG'03
If
you have attentively read my column for the last year you will be shocked
by what you are about to read.
I finally broke down and decided to join a
Leadership Venture. You'd think that I've been on one or two if these
ventures by now, considering I disparage them in most of my columns. But I
didn't attend just any run of the mill venture. I attended the big dog, el
numero uno, the mother of all leadership ventures - Quantico.
Quantico stands by itself. No need to add
the words "Leadership Venture." I'm not even sure if it was a
"Trek" or a "Venture." But I am sure that that it was
among the best experiences I've had at Wharton. It may even hold a candle
(or phosphorous flare) to the much celebrated Amish Leadership Trek.
Prior to jumping on the motor-coach and
heading down to Virginia, I had few expectations. I took the same approach
I use toward the Wharton academic program, and gave little if any thought
to Quantico prior to boarding the bus. During the bus ride many of my
peers informed me that I was bound to get into deep shit while at Quantico
due to my love of free and frequent speech. It was then that I realized
what was about to take place, and scenes of Lou Gossett Jr. screaming at
the recruits from an Officer and a Gentleman began playing in my mind. I
immediately switched to game face.
The Quantico experience can be broken down
into three phases: the Welcome, the Combat Course and the Leadership
Reaction Course. For simplicity's sake we will refer to these three phases
as fear, mud, and gymnastics with no net, respectively.
FEAR. Sounds short, but it lasted roughly
from 9 p.m. until 7 a.m. Upon our arrival we were greeted with some
remarks by the commanding officers (they use PowerPoint in the Corps.) and
then were turned over to the tender, caring hands of our drill sergeants.
If you think Prof. Tyson is a "badass" and Prof. Ramaswamy is
"hard-core," I would be curious to hear how you'd describe these
gentlemen. Basically, they ran us around for three hours and made us
perform seemingly easy tasks (clipping a canteen to a belt, adjusting a
chin-strap) while making us look and feel like completely worthless
idiots. Interestingly, nobody tried to elucidate the similarities between
this experience and the job search process. Some notable standouts during
this phase were Vikrant ("63 Wharton Students accounted for in the
barracks, sir?") and Mukul, who has a problem with insects inside his
trousers.
MUD. The Combat Course is a circuit of
obstacles covering one mile which must be quickly and quietly navigated,
lest the enemy hears your approach. The course begins with rope and wall
obstacles and then moves into amphibious, as well as ambiguous,
situations. The first half of the course resembles any standard ropes
course you'd find at a corporate retreat center, less the safety harness,
the safety netting and all the lip service paid to safety. Now I know why
I signed two waivers prior to attending, one of which was four pages and
included the word 'dismemberment'. Then the fun begins, crawling through
the much celebrated cold, murky and muddy river-bed known as the Quigley.
After the Quigley all sense of dignity and trepidation are exorcised, and
you become free to enjoy writhing through the stench of the various
barbed-wire covered mud filled obstacles. After Quantico I cleaned my ears
with Q-Tips for the first time in years.
Gymnastics with no net. The mission of
Quantico is to assess the ability of eager young men to lead Marines. The
LRC is where assessment of leadership ability is made. The LRC is a
supped-up version of the standard teamwork/leadership/problem-solving
challenge of navigating an obstacle with a team, with given aids -
typically rope, planks of wood, etc. From afar the LRC looks like a
Marine's version of a children's playground, but rather than slides,
swings, and monkey bars, there are platforms, moats, chain link things and
"blown out bridges." Here, if you fall off the slide, there is
no sand pit to cushion the fall. The Marines prefer to use concrete or
bone-chilling four foot deep water for this purpose. Rather than covering
the edges of potential danger zones with padding, the Marines prefer the
cold hard reality of concrete. Semper Fi! Even if you were brilliant
enough to devise the right strategy to solve the obstacle, you would need
the cast of Cirque du Soleil to execute the death and concrete-defying
moves necessary to complete the obstacle.
So you are probably saying, yeah, but what
did you learn while you were there? Well, I'll tell you. The Marines are
tough. The rest I'll let you read in the front page spread, or in
Leadership Class. I have no time for puffery.
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