Welcome to the best year of your life

Or so we were told, many times over the first couple of weeks of school.

We are the Chosen Thousand, having intrepidly descended upon the Army's Command and General Staff College in northeastern Kansas, from the four corners of Planet Earth.  Though mostly Army, we come from all the services and many foreign nations.  Segregated into 16-member "Small Groups," have embarked on our 10-month course to learn how to be better Field Grade officers.

So, here's a wrap-up of the first few weeks:

Week 1:  Mall cop convention (we all had to wear our Class A uniforms) -- lots of do's and don'ts, for instance:
     DO:  Read on a graduate level but write essays on an 8th grade level, try hard, find balance, and have the best year of your life.
     DON'T:  get in trouble, bring coffee into the main auditorium, bring pets to the Commanding General's reception, plagiarize anything, or fail your Physical Fitness Test.

Weeks 2 through 6:
     We study military history, particulary European military history after 1300 a.d., because all the famously dead generals did it.
     NEVER cite wikipedia as a source.
     Strategy is good.  Don't look for any in Iraq or Afghanistan.
     Toxic leaders are bad.
     Our military has a LOT of ships, planes, and tanks.  Don't mess with us or we use it all, jointly.
     For all future scenarios, we will use some real countries and some fake ones.  Try not to get confused.

Week 7: 
     "Dead Carl" von Clauzewitz was a Prussian general who really liked Napoleon and wrote a lot of very ethereal stuff about the fog and confusion of war.  Pay no attention to any similarities with Sun Tzu.
     However, Colin Powell apparently did understand Clausewitz -- even though no one would listen to Powell in 2002.
    

So far, at least one instructor per day will Godwin the lesson.  See future posts for weekly Godwin tallies as our history studies close in on WWII.