Essay 1: An Outsider's View of My Face

Revision II – Essay 1

I thumb through my record, searching for an evaluation - FY06 E5 regular “eval”. Or was it FY07 E6 frocked? The sheets are readily apparent, so I grab both. As these thoughts and acronyms roll through my head, it dawns on me. I am speaking another language, and surprisingly, my way of life is conditioned such that I do not notice any abnormality. An interesting notion is to remove this conditioning and to analyze the details of one’s service record. A service member’s record viewed from an outside perspective reveals misconception, misunderstanding, and ignorance which can lead to an unjustified stereotyping of the military way of life.

An entire section of awards can be found on the left side of a service record. They are mere copies, but the print is readable. One Navy Achievement Medal, a gold star in lieu of second award, a Good Conduct Medal, the point is clear. Perhaps one could misconceive this collection as bragging. It is obvious that if one performs adequately at work, he or she does not get a medal. The military way stemms from a tradition of proud people who emulate the most important management skill – publicly praise, privately punish. The original medals were pinned on me in front of my peers.

In contrast, not everything found in a service record is strikingly different. Many people receive periodic evaluations and most retain them to record and track their progress. Performance evaluations are a management tool used to identify trends in performance over a long period of time, and the format of these evaluations meets strict guidelines. One would note that despite a few comments each evaluation looks approximately the same. There must be a basis or regulation to follow such that any officer could open a record, find the required paper, and know exactly what it means. Corporate America may use thousands of different websites to produce performance evaluations. It is much more unforgiving to lack uniformity as long as, “the point gets across.” Surprisingly, even different departments under the same company may use different forms. An outsider may not understand the purpose of uniformity. The Navy spends many thousands extra hours establishing and refining their infrastructure such that its routine is uniformly efficient.

The LES, or Leave and Earning Statement, is one of the most foreign looking hydrographical texts a person may ever come across. An outsider would have absolutely no idea what the dozens of blocks with numbers mean, yet a military member can explain each piece until the puzzle is clear. Ignorance is justified because I spent a half-day at boot camp learning about this form. Again, efficiency is the key. A remarkably complicated form carries an enormous share of information on a single page of paper. Today this is less important as the document can be found online, but in the hard copy days the LES was a service member’s mail delivered monthly pay stub.

Moreover, these mysteries can lead to bias and stereotyping. Anyone who has muttered the term “niner” in a joking manner is guilty of this. Uniformity in language, whether it is written or spoken, is a cornerstone of military communication. Even as our body language and dress is ultimately uniform; our spoken and written language is hard to decipher. Unfortunately, it is common to fear what is not understood, and subsequently, the general inability to recognize the basis behind military processes divides civilian and defense cultures.

This analysis is a reminder that significant differences exist between the U.S. military and the civilians it serves. Many times I come home to my wife, fresh with the language of the workday, and find myself having to translate its initial meaning. Though stereotypes exist, their negativity is limited. Today, people may not understand the numbers on an LES or why my record contains an ominous collection of papers. They do, however, appreciate our ability to serve. That fact is the only misunderstanding we cannot afford.