One would think they'd only take usefull degrees for officers, like history, military science (obvious), engineering, math...

I know a lot of people who got big heads after picking up Cpl or SSgt, but I also had to deal with a few of my friends when I picked up Cpl. They figured that they could blow me off when I told them to do something, since I was their buddy and all. Never thought about what would happen when whatever job SSgt told me to get done didn't get done. Lost a couple "friends" that way, unfortunately, but thems the cards.

My philosophy as a leader was always never ask your marines to do shit that you aren't willing to do, and that means if they're all doing it and the job still isn't done, you chip in. Always pissed me off when I saw some Cpl sitting watching his guys mop or unload a quadcon with his hands on his hips yelling for his marines to go faster. Never understood unnecessary yelling either. I didn't go to drill instructor school. Wasn't my job to turn recruits into marines. My job was to make sure marines got a job done, and to to watch out for their welfare. Hell, half my job was politely telling Radio Platoon's SSgts that they couldn't have my guys to do their dirty work, that Wire Platoon wasn't doing anything because we took care of our shit ahead of time instead of putting it off till the last minute and then freaking out when it was 1530 and nothing was done. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But way I see it, you treat your platoon like your own personal feifdom, and then you tell them to put themselves in the way of bodily harm down the road, they're gonna tell you to go eff yourself.

I always found that I got better results when I treated my guys like adults instead of children. Had one problem Marine. Was brilliant at his job, but was lazy, barely pressed his cammies or shone his boots, and was frequently late to formation. The op after I got promioted I put him in charge of the wire plan, coralling all the gear, and sent him to a secondary site with three guys as the boss. Not one problem with him the entire op, comm ran smooth as hell, and he started taking an interest in his appearance(or at least not throwing his cammies in his wall locker at the end of the day and then just throwing them back on the next morning.)

The guys who always pissed me off were the fuckers who got meritoriously promoted after three seconds in the fleet. Usually didn't know dick about their jobs, but they could PT and look pretty, and they thought that was the most important thing, since thats how they got promoted. Plus they didn't spend enough time as a Lance to understand exactly how shitty being a peon can be, so they usually treated them like shit, like they saw all the super moto hard charging cpls and sgts who were constantly screaming at the nonrates. Bleah.

/rant

sorry, big part of why I got out was how my unit started to crumble(especially the upper ranks) the less we deployed. It was sad watching C Co go from the best comm unit on the east coast(and the Marine Corps, if you ask me, at least at providing highly mobile comm for a Bn size element) to a bunch of bored NCOs playing games with frustrated marines who never got a chance to use their training.