6 ms·

18 years old I had to be at work at 545am in the military to learn how to become an air traffic controller. I completed my training in 50% of the allotted time,

• pasquinelli 10y ago
  but if they did that and classes were at a better time, they'd do even better.
  • jriot 10y ago
    I would suspect not having trained this cohort for 11 years.
• s3r3nity 10y ago
  Sure, and there are smokers who start when they're 16 and never develop lung cancer. You may be the outlier, rather than the average scenario.
  • jriot 10y ago
    Aside from air traffic control having a fail-out of rate of 80% due to the nature of the job, we all did it and became certified.
    • benchaney 10y ago
      This is survivorship bias.
      • jriot 10y ago
        It is not, because to completely failed out of training there have to documented examples of why that individual can't perform the job. We make every accommodation to see if they can perform. However, the job requires you being able to work at any hour, thus they aren't able to perform the duties of the job.
        • benchaney 10y ago
          "However, the job requires you being able to work at any hour, thus they aren't able to perform the duties of the job." That is why it is survivorship bias. You are assuming that it is possible for everyone because you and your coworkers were able to do it, while ignoring the fact that many people flunked out because they couldn't do it. That is what survivorship bias is.
          • jriot 10y ago
            Survivorship bias is when the people who survive don't understand why other people failed. We understand why they failed and the most common reason is that most people aren't comfortable making quick decisions where people's lives are at stack. Time of day usually isn't a factor here, but people's confidence in themselves to trust their training and decisions. The other reason is people just can't handle the shear amount of knowledge (rules) required to perform the job. Such as not everyone can become a surgeon due to the education, skill-set and intelligence required not every person can due air traffic control.
            • benchaney 10y ago
              As you said earlier, some people drop out because they can't work at all hours. You don't know why, but you are assuming that it is because they don't work as hard as you . Hence survivorship bias. People who drop out for reasons other than not being able to work effectively at all hours are irrelevant.
              • jriot 10y ago
                The only way you can 'drop-out' per-se is if you diagnose yourself with 'fear of controlling'. Meaning the job scares you, outside of that you cannot just quit.
        • tormeh 10y ago
          It sounds like you're arguing for the title here. You say the job requires you to work at any hour, among other things. You say the lessons are at 6 in the morning. You say 80% fail. Sure, it doesn't conclusively prove that people drop out because of those two things, but it seems likely.
• smcg 10y ago
  fifteen miles in the snow uphill both ways!
  • jriot 10y ago
    I would give that to the Army as they were out PT'ing as I waking up to get ready for work.
• Balgair 10y ago
  Right!? I mean, you have 18 year olds in 2 very different environments of the military and college. Like, in the military you have to also do incredibly complicated things under a lot of stress and it takes a lot of mental fortitude and training, and then you don't even know when that training will be tested unlike with a final exam. Passing classes is much simpler than landing a blackhawk into a firefight or the logistics of supplying a battleship, things 20 years olds do in the services. Yet the bar for entering college is generally much higher than for the military but the stress, responsibility, and workload of the average warfighter is much higher than for the average college student. I just don't get the real moaning and groaning and trying to make things trivially easy for the students (we all complain from time to time to get things off our chests, I get that though)
  • solatic 10y ago
    > I just don't get the real moaning and groaning and trying to make things trivially easy for the students If colleges treated students with military expectations, they'd stop getting as many applications. The school would paradoxically become less completive over time. It's why colleges are putting in luxury student dorms and spending millions on activity budgets. The pampering of the American college student is a direct result of universities turning into degree businesses, instead of the halls of mutual development they used to be. Growth and development require sacrifice, paying for a slightly higher number on a transcript does not.
• HarryHirsch 10y ago
  What if this were survivor bias, and those who can't function at such an early time wash out in training? It's a possibility!
  • jriot 10y ago
    Do you want someone controlling your plane who can't handle waking up early? Air traffic control is 24 hours a day 7 days week; you will be working at all hours of the day.
    • mamurphy 10y ago
      >Do you want someone controlling your plane who can't handle waking up early? No, I don't. I want outliers, people who have extraordinary ability to function at all times of the day. I want the 20% exceptions that make it, not the 80% average folks who drop out.
    • hueving 10y ago
      >Do you want someone controlling your plane who can't handle waking up early? I would rather have someone who has no problem staying up late rather than someone who is a 'morning person'. Once awake, night owls seems to be better at staying awake.
    • mablap 10y ago
      The hour at which you wake up has (unless proven otherwise) no incidence on your quality as a person, professionnal or personal.
    • PascLeRasc 10y ago
      That's not what he's saying.
• aanm1988 10y ago
  Wow I am so inspired by how amazing you are. I feel worthless in comparison. Cna I meet you in person so I can worship at the feet of someone who is able to wake up early? Then again I spent the summer when I was 15 waking up that early... so maybe it's really not that impressive.
  • jriot 10y ago
    Then again neither of us did research that coddles college students who can't meet normal demands of everyday life.
    • eropple 10y ago
      Maybe you should think about it less as "coddling" and more as "people are different and stuffing them into the same box is runs the very real risk of failure or unhappiness." But that doesn't validate your own life choices the way your posts do, so I can understand why you might not. The idea that "everyday life" should demand that everyone operate in cognitively subpar conditions for them because you like them is a silly one. The last time I woke up before 9AM when I didn't have a flight to catch the next morning was 2013; I will have been successfully running my own consultancy (and making half again as much money with about half the work that the "everyday life" equation specified) for three years now at the end of this month. Weird how that life works and works well without sneering at people who do like to get up and work early.
      • jriot 10y ago
        Life is tough, college is not.
        • notburnt 10y ago
          Let's be honest, being in the military isn't tough. Put another way: Life is tough, military is not[0] [0] no true scotsman.
          • 10y ago
• Cybiote 10y ago
  Things are never so simple and clear cut -- delayed sleep phase disorder is a fairly common ailment. There was a recent paper which studied a mutation that might explain some cases of DSPD [1]. According to [1], a sizeable fraction of the population possesses a mutation such that their circadian clock runs ~2 hours slower (their day is longer) and so have a sleeping pattern which drifts. This usually manifests itself as late sleep/late starts. https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-say-they-ve-finally-pinpointed-the-cruel-genetic-mutation-that-turns-us-into-night-owls https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-say-they-ve-finally-... [1] http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(17)30346-X http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(17)30346-X
• Eric_WVGG 10y ago
  This comment makes me so goddamned angry. Around the time I turned fourteen I lost my ability to fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning. I hung on to decent grades by "testing well," but never able to keep my head up during morning classes. All along people told me it was a discipline problem, and I followed their goddamned advice and got nowhere. The last fifteen years of research in sleep and brain chemistry have validated my experience. It had nothing to do with self-accountability and responsibility; some people are night owls, others are not. Fuck you for thinking that your personal experiences are indicative of me having “poor character.” Fuck you and your fucking career.
  • Balgair 10y ago
    I mean dude, he's not talking to people with medical issues. I don't think anyone would besmirch you due to a medical condition. I think he's talking about people without sleeping conditions, just Gaussian distributed recruits that want to get in. The services will ask and test you on these clear issues like people that can't drink a gallon of water in under a minute or folks blind in one eye. Also, being a night owl is not a medical condition, what your brief comment describes is obviously a medical condition that would disqualify your from the services. You life is not in anyway easy because of it, as far as I can tell from this comment. It's not a big deal. However, if what the researchers say is true about the widespread 'night owl' prevalence in the population, then it is obviously not something that can't be corrected with a very loud and buff drill sergeant, as many many cohorts of incoming boot camps across the world for centuries have shown.
  • dingaling 10y ago
    I went through basic training in open-floor barracks with a few folk who insisted they were 'night owls' and would play their music to 01:00 or later, falling asleep to the noise. Initially the rest of us endured it and would turn-off the radio when they fell asleep, to then enjoy four hours sleep. After the second week, however, we managed to 'cure' the night owls. I am sure many people suffer a medical condition that impairs sleeping. Most, however, do not.
    • Eric_WVGG 10y ago
• Mz 10y ago
  Maybe college students just need to have better self-accountability and learn responsibility. My ex husband was career military and used to say the same thing about our homeschooled sons -- that they needed to develop a routine and learn to just get up in the morning because someday a job would require this of them. Meanwhile, Mr. Hypocrite To The Max never stopped being a night owl himself and would stay awake on weekends until 2 a.m. or whatever and go to work on Monday morning on 2 or 3 hours of sleep, then nap when he got home after work because he was short of sleep. Twenty plus years of military service never really cured him of being a night owl. It always amazes me how talented people are at ignoring actual reality for some convenient theory of theirs.