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Expert Field Medical Badge Analysis

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Nettles’ Watershed Point When attempting to decide which milestone in my life I would consider my watershed point, I explored many highlights and low periods in my life. These ranged from graduating college, to getting married, to the death of my father, or the birth of our first child. I kept thinking that the military has to play a part of my watershed point, and even when I made this determination it was difficult to decide if it was receiving the Expert Field Medical Badge, becoming a NCO, being deployed overseas for the first time, or being selected to attend the Sergeants’ Major Academy. When I weighed the impact on all of the above milestones, I felt that none of these impacted me greater than being promoted to Sergeant First …show more content…

According to Bridges (2004) “dis-identification is usually the inner side of the disengagement process” (p. 116). It involves the process of losing who or what you were and accepting that you can no longer be what or who you were. For me personally I think I reached this stage quickly but more so because of the external pressures that I was receiving from my First Sergeant at the time. We were facing a lot of new demands as it pertained to our upcoming combat deployment and the entire brigade were all in fact engaged in a period of transition.
Disenchantment “is the signal that the time has come to look below the surface of what has been thought to be so” (Bridges, 2004 p. 120). It is a period where one is separated from who they used to be and what they must strive to become. When I was at this stage of transition I think I was searching for what type of leader I wanted to be or believed that I could become. I looked within the battalion for others to borrow ideas from. As Bridges (2004) points out disenchantment “is a recurrent experience throughout the lifetime of anyone who has the courage and trust to believe in the first place” (p. 119).
Disorientation is the time during transition when we lose our purpose or goals and are unable to find anything to take their place. This is the time when feel as though we have lost our bearings and are hopelessly adrift with no sense of direction. My disorientation stage kicked in about two or three months

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