I write this with one week of nine completed at the Air Force's Judge Advocate Staff Officer's Course, known affectionately as JASOC ("Jay-Sock"). Saying that life at JASOC is night-and-day compared to OTS is a dramatic understatement. Things could not be much better here. As you can see below, the JAG School (The Air Force Judge Advocate General School, AFJAGS) is considered the nicest building of all of Air University, which says quite a bit in light of 14 or so other military colleges on the campus. I am not one to disagree with that assessment.
Everything I suffered through OTS has been made right. I can now rise at the sinfully late hour of 0630 instead of 0415. The instructors are outstanding educators and cream of the crop civil/criminal litigators, a nice change from the quasi-adversarial role our OTS Flight Commanders took on. The atmosphere has gone from one of a strict training environment to that of a professional conference/third year of law school hybrid. I have gone from sharing a "meh" level dorm room to living in a very comfortable hotel room that is a mere block from the JAG School.
So far our days have been introducing us to Civil Law and Military Justice (criminal law) concepts and issues. Things become much more hands on later on in the course in which we go through moot courts and conduct a start-to-finish court martial. Things will no doubt become far more challenging but I am truly looking forward to it.
.jpg)
Our lecture hall.jpg)
All in all, I'm looking forward to the next eight weeks. While the academics will no doubt be far more rigorous that OTS, it will be fantastic to transition back to lawyering after all this time.
I went thru Jan-March 1980, those buildings weren't even built yet, it looks great now!
ReplyDeleteWe were housed in sort of run down barracks, rooms, but very spartan, two to a room, and the classrooms were not like the ones in the photos you posted.
The Officer Orientation Course, as they called it then, was just a one week basic course, a little marching, classes, no adversary nature to it at all.
I found JASOC to quite demanding, the curriculum, that is, and quite formal. It was not an easy course. But I enjoyed my years at Sheppard AFB Texas and was selected to be the one JAG who got to go to civilian federal court once a week and prosecute civilians who had committed crimes on the base.