This weekend I did NCO of the month, and let me tell you, it was quite the experience. It's very different from the old usual routine -- Corps PT test, board, drill, and etc. But it was interesting because they had different events. The first event was team exercises. They split us up in 3 groups of 5 cadets and we had to do 5 minutes of sprints, 5 minutes of buddy carries, 5 minutes of bear crawls, and 5 minutes of team sit-ups. This was judged on not how many repetitions each group did, but rather on motivation and supporting your teammates. I was very sore at the end of this event.
The next event was very odd and interesting, in fact it kinda scared me a bit. It was cadet speilling, where the command sergeant majors gave you a word, and you had to use the cadets to spell the word. Yeah, weird right? Anyway, my word was SALUTE, which I thought was a long word. Also, while your trying to spell this word the other CSM's are "distracting" you. I found this really hard and kinda annoying because I was smiling and I wanted to laugh so hard! At the end of spelling my word, I had to stand on top of the table to control the cadets so I could spell my word.
Now instead of a board, and the usual questions about the corps, we had to do speeches. The first one was an impromptu speech, where you went in the room and the CSM's gave you a random topic. My topic was ponies, and I had to elaborate it on this for a min of 2 minutes....I lasted for like a minute and half...hahahah. Surprisingly I said a lot of "likes" and "um's." Next was a prepared speech, where you picked a topic from the list they gave you and you had to talk about it for 5 minutes. I picked the MRAP, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle. I lasted for 5 minutes and 10 seconds. I had a pretty good speech for preparing it in 20 min.
So that pretty much sums up my NCO of the month experience, VERY very different than last year, and I recommend everyone should try it for next month.
