On Friday I promotion tested.
So now, instead of studying for hours every night and every free moment I have, I can get back to working on kits, surfing the web, reading for pleasure, email, watching movies...and participating in this forum!

In case anyone was curious–I am going for US Air Force E8, it was my first time testing, the test kicked my butt, so my time would have been better spent working on kits, surfing the web, reading for pleasure, email, watching movies...and participating in this forum!

Congrats Keith!
Nothing quite as good as getting your life back. Yep lifes not all about work, you need time for yourself to!
So welcome back!

Garry

Well, hopefully you passed the exam......
How long before you get thr results?

NOT FUNNY GUYS!!! ...I still have at least a year and a half of Monday night classes, 10-12 hours of homework per week, and at least one research paper per class to do before I get my life back....trying to finish my bachelor degree at 40 years old...a ton of work, but I've managed to get straight A's so far....almost quit a couple times, but I consider it a challenge now to finish....I do often wonder why I'm doing this to myself though, when I could be doing a lot more modeling and have a lot less stress...

here're to hoping all the hard work pays off!!

Everyone,
Thanks for the replies and support. Now if it wasn't for this Holiday season stuff I would have even more goof-off time.

I hope I 'pass' too. At least they can't take a stripe away for doing too poorly. At least I think they can't

I feel for you guys still in school. But for a few years of suffering the dividends are great. With higher learning comes higher pay. With higher pay comes better kits and more after market parts!

Yeah, I need to get back and finish college myself. But it always seemed like I could study and do the required work on a set schedule and leave some 'personal time' for hobbies.

Promotion testing is a wee bit different then the final exams in our ‘schools of higher learning.' With Air Force enlisted promotions Congress sets what % of each rank will be promoted, then the scores get tallied and the top numbers equaling the set % will get the stripes. This creates a ‘cutoff' score where everyone above it gets promoted, and the rest try again next year.

Imagine, instead of each individual competing against a grade scale (90+ = A, 80-89 = B, etc.) each student competes against every other student. Your professor would take a certain percentage of the class (which could end up being the top 15 students, who have a 92 or better score one year, the next year the top 15 scores might start at 78!), passes them and the rest flunk!

What this means is that many of us study every waking moment just before and definitely after receiving our test date. Nothing worse then getting the results and thinking "I just needed to get one more answer correct to meet the cutoff. If only I had studied five more minutes, re-read one more page..."

The results come out next year. With so many troops overseas and in harms way there will be a huge ‘out of cycle' group which will make the promotion announcement date even later.

Anywho, now I can sit back, relax, talk with you fine folks, and wait and see what goodies Santa brings me this year to build....

I remember those days, study for the Navy e-7 exam, 200 of us take the test 4 get promoted. :-)