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hammeredspace posted:They still allow drinking at the gazebo? When I got there, they had just shut it down for drinking, and then literally the day after I left it reopened for drinking in response to the number of sailors who were getting picked up for being drunk in public/DUI. Good ol' club PX. It's pretty much the same group of fat, alcoholic Sailors there every single night. I can hear them from my barracks every night, and it makes me sad that they are (possibly) some of the people will rely on for intel. I'm in Chinese at DLI right now, and I take the DLPT in 3 weeks. Ooh-rah. This is pretty much the biggest joke of a base I can imagine. It's not that it's more of a college than a military base, but that it is the single strangest place on earth. Just a few of the fun things that I've seen, heard, or stood witness to since I've been here: * An airman who dresses up as Indiana Jones every single day, without exception. Australian hat, a vest with way too many pockets, the whole nine yards. * Marines caught with 26 bottles of urine in their wall locker. Yes, 26 bottles of PISS. That Marine is also known to play WoW. Big surprise. * 13 sailors all kicked out for simultaneously popping on a piss test. * So far as I can tell, prior service Marines come here to lose stripes. Since I've been here I've seen a Corporal get busted down to Lance, a Sergeant get busted down to Corporal, two Staff Sergeants kicked out for loving Lance Corporals, another Staff Sergeant get busted down for loving a Lance Corporal's wife, and a Staff Sergeant Select with 2 combat tours in Iraq rack up 3 sexual harassment charges and get dishonorably discharged as a PFC. * Three Marines are getting kicked out for smoking Spice, the new Marijuana analog that everybody is smoking as of late. But how'd they get caught, Lance Corporal QingLaiXiguaba? They tried driving through the front gate WITH A BONG IN THE FRONT SEAT. While investigating these 3, they found pictures posted on facebook of two more Marines drinking underage, who are now both getting discharged as well. One of those Marines begged the CO to let him stay in, and in response they slapped him with a second NJP for some poo poo previous poo poo his superiors let slide and THEN discharged him. I never got the details on what the first offense was. * An openly homosexual Marine who has no desire to serve his country, but military service is required to serve as the leader of his Wiccan clan. * A LARP group led by a Marine sergeant, to include loudly casting fireballs in broad daylight, which were, in fact, balled up red T-shirts. * This one's unconfirmed, but supposedly before I got here there was an Airman who reported to sick call complaining about pains in his hips and rear end. He popped for date-rape drugs on a piss test, and they found some on his roommate. Said roommate went to the brig. * An Airman getting kicked out for selling cocaine. * 3 Marines lost their MCMAP belts because they decided it would be cool to hold a fight club at the smoke pit. One wound up with a broken arm out of the deal. Two of the Marines were green and grey belt, and both respectively lost one. One was a tan belt, and to this day he is the only Marine I've ever seen wearing a web belt outside of boot camp. Yes, devil dogs, a Lance with a web belt. * A sailor who got pissed at her roommate for something, and as retaliation poo poo on her floor. They live in the same room. There's more, but that should give everybody a picture of the theme park that is DLI. I have never been more ready to leave a place than I am this place. As a more general note, it's unfortunate that Marines turn into total shitbags while they're here. My guess is that it's due to this place not feeling like a military installation at all, but that's still no excuse. I take solace in the fact that I haven't. QingLaiXiguaba fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Jun 26, 2010 |
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Jun 26, 2010 04:41
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Milkhaver1984 posted:edit: oh yeah, and the Navy flamers who can be seen at the Cannery Row Pizzeria any given Friday night, belting out Karaoke lyrics to Brittany Spears, "Toxic" without even facing the screen. Last Saturday I was there for my buddies "Oohrah, you passed tagalog" send off. I recognized an airman from base, despite the large amount of eyeshadow and the socks on his arms, as well as watching a sailor serenade his sailor boyfriend, all the while said boyfriend sat in the chair rubbing himself like he was in rapture. I OPI on Monday, DLPT 2 weeks after that, then hopefully I'm the gently caress out of here ASAP.
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Jul 8, 2010 04:42
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:The wash out rate in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian is incredible. Unless you can focus on your studies or be an innate loving language sponge...you will crash and burn. I was lucky cause I already knew one language besides English and I knew how to study. I'm still trying to figure out how we keep the rock rate in Chinese so low. Thus far I've only seen 3 Marines rock out from my platoon, though percentage-wise that might be on par with the other services, as there aren't alot of us. The rest of us all seem to get glowing reports from the schoolhouse though, so maybe they stick all the high DLAB scores in Chinese. Either that or the fact that when we get new Marines will tell the Chinese is hell, your life is about to suck for 63 weeks, loving get it done. As a result, I and every Marine since I got here has gone into the course gung ho as gently caress, and we've all come out better for it. So was done unto to me, and so I shall do unto others. On the flip side, we are definitely the least awesome platoon on base. Weekends are pretty much studying, and nothing else. I don't care what the Koreans say, it has nothing on Chinese. Your letters have loving sounds. You don't know how frustrating it is to figure a word out from context, but have no idea how to say it.
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Jul 10, 2010 02:43
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There's really no excuse, and the only people I've seen get caught smoking it got caught by being completely stupid, not because they were picked up in a random piss test or anything like that. What I don't get is how these guys get to this point. Did anybody sign up for the military without knowing that there was going to be a mountain of restrictions on behavior that the average citizen isn't subject to? Then again, the vast majority of underage drinking, smoking spice, assorted NJP'able offenses I've seen are from Marines who haven't started their class yet, so maybe it's just a bad case of idle hands.
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Jul 16, 2010 19:16
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In a stroke of brilliance, one of the aforementioned spice girls earned himself a second NJP last weekend. As I understand it, somebody in the Army started ripping him for being in the Air Force. Granted, he's a Marine, but for reasons unknown he decided it would be a good idea to roll with it, proceeding to become very defensive about being in the Air Force and escalating it to violence. In the end, he and another Marine left the place in handcuffs, and at some point the soldier bit a guy in the head. Take that all with a grain of salt though. I'm patching the story together from details I've gotten from multiple sources. The saddest part of the whole thing is that this happened at the on-base BOSS installation, without the aid of alcohol.
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Jul 18, 2010 07:34
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Just passed my Chinese DLPT. 2+ 2+ 1+. I still hold I got screwed on the OPI, but I'm done. Next stop, Goodfellow.
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Jul 22, 2010 20:26
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Our OPI is face to face, but it's also bullshit. I've got guys in my class who've been on SA since unit 3 and got 2's, meanwhile I can talk some of my teachers under the table and get a 1+. I tell myself it's a flawed system, and the tester was a woman with a moustache and I couldn't concentrate, but that doesn't change what the CO sees. For that matter, I get a 2+ in reading when people who I'm reasonably certain are honest to god retarded get 3's. Such is the nature of multiple choice tests, where you can get lucky by guessing, but that doesn't make me feel any better. A pass is a pass, right? loving pride.
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Jul 23, 2010 02:52
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Our OPI is face to face, but it's also bullshit. I've got guys in my class who've been on SA since unit 3 and got 2's, meanwhile I can talk some of my teachers under the table and get a 1+. I tell myself it's a flawed system, and the tester was a woman with a moustache and I couldn't concentrate, but that doesn't change what the CO sees. For that matter, I get a 2+ in reading when people who I'm reasonably certain are honest to god retarded get 3's. Such is the nature of multiple choice tests, where you can get lucky by guessing, but that doesn't make me feel any better. A pass is a pass, right? loving pride.
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Jul 23, 2010 03:04
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GreenMeat posted:祝贺, 祝贺! While your forebearers were slaying nazis, my amphibious brethren were dismantling the Japanese. However, San Angelo isn't a big town, and I might be out of here next friday, so if I get drunk enough to consider it a good idea to walk up to a random soldier and ask him if he has stairs in his house at one of the bars around Goodfellow, will do... On that note, how is the nightlife around base in TX?
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Jul 23, 2010 03:16
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So who got word yesterday at noon that he needs to report to Goodfellow next Wednesday? Me. I just got all of PCS'ing done in 24 hours. gently caress yeah.
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Jul 29, 2010 04:46
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GOODFELLOW!!! Trying to reignite this thread. To all who are at DLI... Get to Goodfellow. It's worth it. Anyone in the Corps, it loving rules here. PT is a blast. Everyone else seems to be pretty well off too. Airmen from my class at DLI that I'm with now are all in 100 percent agreement that Texas is better than Cali. Whatever you're thinking now, get to Goodfellow. It's worth it.
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Aug 29, 2010 02:00
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ElHuevoGrande posted:The mind, it boggles. We had an MLI who took that dig. It is exactly as awesome as it sounds. I don't think he was even in the Air Force's command, he was just a guy in ABUs that worked for DLI. Any idea how K Bay compares to Kunia?
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Aug 29, 2010 20:13
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ElHuevoGrande posted:Depending on the language, they may be out of use entirely. Chinese threw out modules in favor of units. Don't ask me what the difference is. On the topic of the Chinese course... I can't say it's a result of switching from modules to units, but the course went from being very mission specific to being a more well-rounded, academic course. To give that description an image, they didn't even used to teach the Chinese characters because radiomen would have virtually no use for such knowledge. The entire program was done in Pinyin.
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Sep 1, 2010 23:06
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gently caress, don't lock your knees. It's the simple poo poo.
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Sep 26, 2010 19:27
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Godmachine posted:I already know I'll most likely get 2/2+/2 for Chinese. It's coming up, ever looming over the horizon. Good enough. Credentials: I DLPT'd Chinese in July. 2+/2+/1+ It is, in fact, a bullshit test, and almost completely irrelevant to the job. What your going to learn very soon is that the DoD as well as the NSA look at mission-related language skills and global language skills very differently. Theoretically, the DLPT is supposed a test of your global language skills, and is in no way designed to be a test of your mission related linguistic ability. That being said, the DLPT still fails miserably at being an accurate measure of your actual linguistic ability. My biggest gripe would be the fact that passages will often times simply be a 2 minute clip from a radio problem where somebody presents their idea on a problem and then backs up their argument, but the questions asked will be minor details mentioned in the passage, but irrelevant to the main idea. While it is logically sound that it is something mentioned in the passage and there is a correct answer, it completely misses the point of testing somebody's linguistic ability. The OPI is equally bullshit. Friends from class who could barely get through a self introduction got 2s, my news topic was about the military exercises that occured about 12 hours before my OPI. I had no idea what to say, and I think they held it against me. Yes, I am a little bitter about it, but in case your curious the OPI literally matters for nothing. While it is a requirement as prescribed by the DoD for passing DLI, it will be irrelevant for the rest of your career and you will more than likely never have to take one again. Also, the tests are incredibly inconsistent. While my abilities improved from 2nd to 3rd semester, I would put money on the final DLPT I took being much easier than the 2nd semester DLPT. I have friends who are in post right now because they went from a 1+ listening on the 2nd semester test to a 1 on the 3rd semester test. The only explanations I can come up with are flaws in the test and burnout, or some combination of the two.
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Sep 26, 2010 22:09
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Slippery posted:How is that getting hosed though, shouldn't you be able to speak spanish if you're a spanish linguist? I mean I don't know, maybe speaking isn't that important (serious post, I don't know about linguists except that if you're stationed in Korea it's cool to know a Korling or two You're right, but for the wrong reasons. In 99% of the linguist jobs the DoD has, you could do 20 years without ever speaking or even reading a word in your target language. Edit: Just had myself one of those moments. QingLaiXiguaba fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Sep 26, 2010 |
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Sep 26, 2010 22:52
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tengohemroidz posted:They call these "Level 3 Passages" That's not what level 3 means in the Chinese department. On the Chinese DLPT, level 3 passage questions will be ideas that have to be inferred from the content. They will run through the passage, and then ask something like "What was the speaker's attitude towards the topic in question". The V has had alot of problems in the Chinese dept as well. The majority of students are still passing, but not like they were during the IV-era. Then again, the IV was a joke. Myself and most of my class passed the IV with a 3/3 in our 2nd semester. QingLaiXiguaba fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Sep 27, 2010 |
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Sep 27, 2010 01:00
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Non-Marines who've made it to Goodfellow... Do your commands hate DLI with a passion? The first brief we got during inprocessing was about how much the entire command at Goodfellow hates DLI, and how retarded everything about it is. A routine emasculation of new joins at PT is "DLI made you weak as poo poo, didn't it?" It's refreshing that the placed is hated not just from the student perspective.
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Sep 27, 2010 04:04
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Rhotic sounds tend to be a huge problem for alot of English speakers. For example... English - Rush Chinese - Rou French - Rouge All of those words start with different sounds. This blows alot of peoples' minds. It's the same way with the examples Busket gave, and it all comes back to the fact that people are under the impression that letters inherently makes some sort of sound. The truth is people have been speaking since long before they had writing, and in the case of European languages they all just used the symbols the Romans came up with and pidgeon-holed them into their own languages. This is why English has 5 letters for vowels, despite the fact that it uses 16 vowels, give or take a few depending on dialect. That is to say, letters stand for specific sounds within specific languages. There is no phonetic information inherent to letters outside of an actual use in language transcription. From the Asian language side, English speakers have a hard time getting the idea that attributive phrases come before the noun, that is to say instead of saying "the guy who went to the store and bought milk yesterday" you have to say "the went to the store and bought milk yesterday guy". The standard screw up winds up coming out as "The guy went to the store... the went to the store guy bought some... The went to the store bought some milk guy". There are a lot of sounds in Mandarin that people have trouble with too. The sounds represented by Ch, Zh, J, and Q inevitably all get turned into the sounds from the English words chew and Jew. Neither of those sounds are in Chinese.
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Oct 1, 2010 16:04
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Navik posted:Yeah, your recruiter is flat-out wrong. I just sat the DLAB Wednesday, and I'm not even close to anything approaching fluent in any language other than English. If he were correct, there'd be no way in hell I'd've gotten the CTI contract I now hold. Good luck if you take it, it's *tough* as hell, but holy poo poo, the feeling of passing that thing and qualifying for the program is amazing. I can only speak for the Marines, but I've confirmed with the Navy and the Air Force that they're all about the same... Prior instruction counts for poo poo. As in, it's not hyperbole to say regardless of how they assign languages, they could just as well throw darts. I had 2 years of Japanese and 2 years of Russian experience when I signed my contract. After MCT I got orders to report to DLI and learn Arabic. During in-processing we got to fill out our wishlists. My first choice was Russian, others in the room put Chinese. I got Chinese. They got Russian. Not a single airman or sailor from my class put Chinese as their first language. The two soldiers in my class did get to pick their languages, but they were both prior service.
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Oct 1, 2010 22:31
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themarine posted:I have a 4/3+ in Russian, 3/2+ in Ukrainian, and am currently in the second half of my Pashto course. As someone who's taken no less than 8 DLPTs in the past, I think the DLPT is a very fair assessment of your ability to understand a language. Having cited that experience, I have to say that I haven't found the test to be inconsistent in any way over the years. The OPI, on the other hand, is straight-up subjective bullshit. I just took one for the first time a few months ago. I speak Russian at least as well as English and somehow I got a 2+. I don't doubt that at all. As I understand it, the tests are made completely independent of each other, and all the other languages' linguists I know view the test as fair, despite the difficulty of the tests. The instructors were all in agreement with the students on the test being inaccurate, though as I understand there are very strict guidelines about them never seeing the test or interacting with the test makers, so I'm not sure if their opinions can be taken for holding much value. That being said, my entire attitude towards the language has changed since leaving the stress of DLI, so it wouldn't surprise me if alot of my conceptions about the test are a direct result of my mindset at the school. I'm actually kind of anxious about my first post-DLI DLPT just to see how different it seems.
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Oct 2, 2010 04:54
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Comradephate posted:Delayed response, but thanks for the replies to my inane question. That was pretty much what I was looking for. You'll be a general one day, dammit. Mark my words.
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Oct 4, 2010 03:10
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I just wrapped up Chinese about 3 months ago... In the beginning, you will learn very slowly. This doesn't mean you won't learn a lot. The best advice I can give you is in the beginning, take it as a mechanical process. You don't need to understand the language, just know that when they ask you Ni Jiao Shenme Mingzi, you reply Wo Jiao Your Name. That doesn't make any sense to you now, and it won't really make sense when you start class either. Learn to simply react to what they say, and figure it out later. Talk about whatever is your current topic as much as possible. Have you ever met the type of rear end in a top hat who will bring up whatever bland topic he was interested in yesterday, and just go on and on about it as if you cared? Be that guy. The teachers want you to use your language as much as possible, so they'll be overjoyed that you wanna to talk about how you ate 3 apples yesterday, and one was red but the others were green, and they were all kind of sour etc... Lastly, talk to yourself in Chinese. Constantly. Everyone will tell you to think in Chinese, my advice is when nobody's around no poo poo talk out loud to yourself in Chinese. Speech is a physical art as well as a mental exercise, and when you speak you train both the muscles in your mouth and the parts of your ear that hear to do Chinese. I was lucky enough to have a roommate that was in the same class as I was, so we would both do it all the time as well as speak to each other in Chinese. In summary, when something as intricate as language is done as a speed course, the key is quantity over quality. Do Chinese as much as possible, whenever possible. Around second semester (If your course is the 63 week one, that should start somewhere around week 20) I started using SKYPE to call Chinese people. I found this to help a ton. If you have any questions, you can email me at zencrisisATgmailDOTcom
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Oct 19, 2010 01:08
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gleep glop posted:Guard did some magic and now I'm a (future) 35P. DLI August 8th. 13M to 35P still makes me You poor soul. You will gain a ton of valuable knowledge, but the amount of bullshit you're about to wade through cannot be overstated. In other words, good luck.
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Feb 3, 2011 02:17
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TheUnhorse posted:Sigh, it's sad I know that you're talking about those god damned commander's cups... and I'm absolutely certain the commandant had something cheeky to say when the Marines stood in formation, not clapping.
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Feb 5, 2011 00:16
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Does the Navy just have no idea what the gently caress they are doing, ever? Every time I see them en masse it's a hodge podge of uniforms, and nobody seems to have control of the situation. Plus, I'm pretty sure they generally outweigh the Air Force, somehow.
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Feb 23, 2011 08:21
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moker posted:Mandatory PT while on sea duty is pretty much unheard of if the commands I was at are any indication Manlove jokes aside, you have any idea how the guys on subs PT?
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Feb 24, 2011 02:31
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I don't know about your situations, but I know for the Corps OPI is irrelevant. I've already been told I will never have to take another one so long as I'm in, which is fine by me. I can speak fine, but I hate the build of the OPI. It just doesn't seem like an accurate method of guaging linguistic competance.
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Feb 26, 2011 08:07
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ManMythLegend posted:Do any of you know where I could find a list of the language skills across the military? Like what percentages speak which languages? The Marine Corps just closed out the East Asian linguist MOS for re-enlistment this year, and we're only about halfway through the fiscal year. That covers Chinese, Korean, and Tagalog. Eastern Europe/Afghanistan languages (Russian, Dari, Pashtu) is still taking guys, but don't go into that field if promotion is important to you. It's been closed out for promotion to Corporal for 6-7 month stretches over the past 2 years. Mind you, we're just now winding down the end of a massive linguist recruiting effort, so that probably has something to do with it. Just in the time I've been in, about 2 1/2 years, the number of Marines in linguist school has doubled.
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Mar 10, 2011 06:12
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