Shine Parent Interview Protocol: Fill & Download for Free

Disclaimer- quesion is in negative- "so tough" so answer will have negative sarcasm, deal with it.enjoy the read!!This question cracks me up.. haha..(x100)SSB is the world's easiest selection process.You want to know why? Because SSB is all about you.It is difficult because-People are morons.They haven't lived a full, happy life.. filled with love and acceptance and with good morals/beliefs (not the parents’ fault, the candidate made bad choices). The quality of life is defined for these people by how many Gucci, Adidas, BMW they own. However in reality quality of life is through family, the activities you do together and your friends- the discussions you have with them, the society you live in and what their thinking/ideology is and the mentors you have- what have they taught you and what you think about them. It also includes your personal lifestyle- how much you play (outdoor games and sports), read- what and how much and how much you grasp out of it, develop new hobbies- there’s abundance and availability of every single thing you can ask for and for FREE! You literally have no excuse to run to.They can't face the reality that they may not be up to the mark or be cut out for this kind of a job. They're not like- ese kese nahi hua, mai ###### caste ka hu, mere se barkar koi nahi hai, ###### ka hua hai to mera bhi hoga. It isn’t easy for every one to follow orders blindly without thinking or analysing why such an order has been given. But no, fad hai, karna hai. If you really believe you are cut out to live an extremely difficult yet extremely enjoyable life then please go ahead but otherwise do not even think of it. Fauji looks really cool and handsome and there’s an aura, but the life they lead is worse than a donkey’s. The perks they get, they never find a chance to enjoy. Yes there are parties, booze, chicks, mesmerising locations and postings, full time batman to serve you all of that, arrange your dress, carry your briefcase, but that comes at the cost of letting go of your soul. CO’s word is final, there are punishments, rules to follow, learn stuff by deadlines, from 4am till 1 am duty, follow protocols as many as the number of veins (keeps standing till CO’s wife sits, can’t have food till she has no matter you are about to pass out of hunger, have to follow seniority/juniority by the days as well), it is not a bad thing, my point is, not everyone is made for it. You do it cz others you thought were beneath you did and now want it too (may be, this doesn’t apply to every one reading)They are lazy bums. They don’t study, practice and don’t work on their answers, presentation skills etc. in the name of “be yourself” and then blame the system. You have to follow the herd cz it is cool and people post stuff on IG and other random unknown people like it and it boosts your self esteem, somehow it validates your existence. You have to make dog face/duck face, chiriya ka ghonsla haircut or wear ridiculous clothing cz that’s in fashion and it is cool for a short period of time.Yes, competition is high. Now male candidates are also getting merit out a lot. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give your 110% and make it to the top few positions. The only thing difficult here is to work while others sleep. SSB is a selection board, they are made to select people, if you are good, they have to bloody damn well take you even if it means stretching the boundaries.Not having good quality hobbies. Just lying on the sofa/deewan and watching/making mindless videos/tiktok/vines etc. asking lame azz questions thinking you’ll find answers written down for you by the veterans. The world is literally in your hands right now and what are you doing? The food gets served in front of you on time, your body pushes you to drag itself to the commode and shiz out (with the gadget in hand cz you get bored), you take 10 naps and each one of them is important as a meme said it, you hangout with equally mindless/aimless yaars. Yes, SSB is going to be very excruciatingly difficult for you as you haven’t worked at all on it.It is difficult cz we are not comfortable meeting 300 new people in one day (reporting) or we over calculate- I will talk to that candidate, he looks like he might get screened in and may be he’ll be in my bunker or GT group, yes let me get to know him and patch him up so that he calls me for CT (for the non enlightened- CT=command task, I have an entire answer worth of myth busters for this itself). You are so deep in over calculation that you forget to enjoy the moment at all. I have made life long friendships based on reporting day itself, we have slept together at railway stations sharing just one sheet, or sharing my entire tiffin with another hungry unprepared fresher while I munched on Parle G, or picked up broken knee candidate all by myself disregarding my own SSB and taking her to medical care convincing everyone from peon to doctor to assistants to get her the best medical care while SSB is going on. You forget to live every moment, be in the moment, you forget to know people, learn their stories, where they are from, what their culture is, what they like, do not like, what are they studying, future plans, help them in over coming SSB anxiety, say all the best or help a little during tasks, take a step back during GT and let others give ideas for a change so that they can shine as well. you forget to be a human and that’s why SSB is damn difficult.It is the easiest way to get class I gazetted top security clearance job which pays for literally everything to you. But yes, you have to complicate stuff cz otherwise it ain’t no fun.Disclaimer- by using ‘you’, I don’t mean the one who asked the question, I mean the reader/candidate- you.Hope it helps.Regards.

Timothy Mauch brings up a good point (I still can’t reply to him).I am going to tell it from the Recruiter perspective though. When some kid or parent for that matter shined me on, I didn’t really take it as a challenge per se, though there are those recruiters. I looked at it as an opportunity to have some fun. Recruiting is a thankless job, sure you are not deployed, you don’t have to worry about going to sea or getting called away at the last minute and missing anything fun or important. But it can be long hours, especially depending upon how well you are or aren't doing in finding applicants.When I first started I was on fire, 4 contracts in the first full month. Then 2 the next month, 3 the month after that. Then in the ensuing spring I started rolling donuts (zero contracts) for a few months in a row, then I got 1 barely. It became difficult just to get an interview scheduled. We go to some extreme lengths to cover every possible avenue. Cold-calling from phone books, going to every pizza joint in the zip code to poll for interest and then some. At one point I was working 0900 to 2100 Monday to Saturday, and driving 200 miles a day.Of course after a while you start learning tricks. How to exploits ASVAB lists, how to utilize influential members of the community, how to go outside college financial assistance offices to look for desperate soon to be college drop outs and much much more.Cold calling is one of the most frustrating things you can do. Kids will play around, parents will talk shit. If I am calling from an ASVAB list what they do not realize is that I have not only their phone number but their address as well. We usually blocked time periods every day for cold calling, like between 4 and 5 during the school year, first thing in the morning in the summer. When somebody ticked me off all I would do is go get a RAD (info mail-in) for every service. I usually had them all on hand. And fill one out in the kids name, sometimes in the parents name. One for Navy Nuclear field, Navy Reserve, the USAF, USAFR, Air National Guard, US Army, Army Reserve, Army National Guard, USMC, USMR, Officer Programs. Submitting a RAD is like dialing 911 for a recruiter. The district will get it and initiate a protocol that a recruiter in that zip code must find this person, on the phone, in person. Yeah its basically an Asshole Cocktail. I will dedicate the rest of my cold calling block to ensure people are calling your house and mailing you things for the next year non-stop and you will hate it.So basically do not waste a Recruiters time, don't tell them you are interested and run them around. Make sure you, your parents or siblings don’t trash them if they call. Just say you are not interested nicely. Don't say “I would never join the Military, I am interested in peace not killing” “Don’t call here again I will sue you” “I am going the Marines they are the only service with real men” “I would never join the Navy I don't like being naked around dudes” (really? We get more tail than anyone).Another tip, do not get ‘Job Locked’. Job Locked is a recruiting term that is taboo and often leads to failure. Jobs are always available in limited quantities depending on the specialty. There is also always a chance you might not qualify in some way for that job, i.e. low ASVAB score, diopter problem for aviation and so on. Always have a backup or 2. Be open minded.Also and I cannot emphasize this enough, tell your recruiter everything. Do not try to hide tickets, arrests, injuries, ailments. Tell them everything and let them sort it out. Being open from the beginning can avoid delays or even disqualification.

Hey, great question, Peter Kruger. I’m glad you asked it, especially after that hit answer to What is your cynical take on US politics? We need ourselves a bit of a pick-me-up after that cheery bit, don’t we?If you’re going through hell, keep going. - Winston ChurchillThere’s something called the Stockdale Paradox. It’s named after Admiral James Stockdale, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He survived, relatively unbroken. He was later asked about his optimism despite repeated torture.Stockdale noted that the optimists were actually the first to break. They would set deadlines for when they would get out, which would come and go. In trying to be optimistic, they would end up denying the brutal facts of their present existence, until they were overwhelmed by them and broke.When asked how he made it when the optimists didn’t, Stockdale sagely stated: “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”It’s pretty grim out there right now, honestly.As I write this, the impeachment trial of Donald John Trump, 45th President of the United States, is getting underway.The facts themselves are not in dispute, not really. And they are brutal.The President illegally withheld foreign aid appropriated by Congress.[1] He did so to coerce Ukraine — a nation fighting a war against another nation, which is openly hostile to the United States and attempting to annex territory — into announcing a sham investigation into a political opponent.[2] The barest fig leaves of a defense against this have been continually stripped away by the steady dripping of evidence from career State Department and national security civil servants,[3] the President’s hand-picked ambassador,[4] and now associates of his personal attorney[5] — the one tasked with coordinating this corrupt scheme.[6]And Republicans… just kind of don’t care.[7]It’s been assumed that there is a virtual certainty that Trump will not be removed from office through this route. And twenty party defections has a very, very low probability of occurring at this point.The is the key part of the Stockdale paradox, though, is the firm belief that you will prevail in the end.That last piece is crucial. In the end.Not today, not tomorrow. Not in a definite time frame. But eventually.My optimism is not that the current dysfunction in U.S. politics will be defeated in 2020, or 2022, or in any definite time frame.Rather, it is to remember that the arc of history is long, but does bend toward justice.We have come a long way, the people of this nation of ours.Sure, we have.230 years ago, life was a lot more unjust for a lot more people than it is today, and that injustice was enshrined in law.Progress is never linear, certainly not in this country. It’s not even two steps forward, one step back.Progress in the United States has been one drunken pratfall forward, some rolling around in the dirt for a bit, shakily regaining our feet backwards, staggering sideways for a moment, squinting crosseyed at the horizon trying to find our balance, taking a swipe at the air for insulting us, and taking another drunken lurch forward again.We’ve managed to come forward through that, though. Not prettily, not easily, not without lasting scars. But forward.At various times, we have been global leaders and the envy of the world for our freedoms and inclusiveness. We have been a land of opportunity, and while that sometimes depended on the color of your skin and your place of birth, people have fought and won battles to expand that opportunity to more and more people.And at times, we’ve stagnated, abandoned our role as the shining city on the hill that other nations looked up to as a model. And at times, we’ve acted downright shamefully, discrediting and humiliating ourselves in the international community and even here domestically.But our darkest days have always been followed by our finest hours, and when we get it right, we have accomplished some of the most incredible feats in the history of mankind.We have put men on the moon, explored the solar system. We have developed miracles of modern medicine and technologies that were inconceivable two generations ago. We have cultivated some of the world’s greatest artists and musicians. We have fostered some of the greatest prosperity in the history of the world.When the United States is at its best, we are some of the finest, most generous, most welcoming people in the world.We are not always at our best. We are not at our best right now, without question.But I have optimism about the hearts of the American people. I have faith that what you see amplified and twisted right now is not our genuine selves.Those who voted Trump into office are not, by and large, evil people, though some are. Many of them are simply desperate. They’ve been humiliated. They voted for hope and change with the last guy, and some of them, in fact a lot of them, never got it.Many of them are afraid. Some of that is fear that is pumped into them by those who would profit off that fear, such as gun manufacturers who pay vast sums of advertising money to convince people that they need to arm themselves for protection, despite falling rates of violent crime.Bringing the people of this country back to their best selves will take some leadership, and some tremendous effort by peacebuilders to bridge the gaps. It will require rebuilding trust among our countrymen. It will mean checking our biases and prejudices at the door and having serious conversations with people who are very different from us.It can be done.Some argue that technology, especially social media, has reached a critical point where we can’t overcome it. The disinformation and ability to incite, they argue, means the end of civilization.I disagree.Disinformation is new, of course. Purely a modern invention.In fact, let me tell you of a recent story of disinformation. A toddler went missing on Easter Sunday, and a local minister made up a story out of whole cloth about who was responsible. His narrative went viral in the community, who formed a mob that rounded up over a dozen innocent people, tortured, and killed them. The Pope tried to intervene, but the preacher refused to even meet with him, and he eventually caved to popular pressure to canonize the boy and ascribe over a hundred miracles to him.Except this wasn’t recent. This was from 1475, in Italy. The people blamed were Jews, who were accused of murdering the boy, draining his blood, and drinking it to celebrate Passover. The boy is known today as Saint Simon.All based on a lie.After the invention of the printing press, it was common to find forged government documents meant to bring down local authorities in scandal, fictional accounts of natural disasters, published as true, meant to swindle sympathetic donations, disinformation about the Catholic Church widely published to drum up support for the Protestant Revolution across Europe, and more.The sinking of the Maine in the Havana harbor was whipped by “yellow journalism” into a nationwide frenzy that dragged the United States into the Spanish-American War. All to help Pulitzer and Hearst fight a newspaper circulation war.Benjamin Franklin, one of the great Founders himself, used his newspaper to print false propaganda stories about murderous Indians scalping colonists in league with King George III.Author Arthur Brooks was interviewed recently about his new book, Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America.[8] (And as a side note, I wholeheartedly recommend it, as it is a truly fantastic read.)He notes that communications technologies tend to have three phases to them.First, there’s the promise phase: all the ways this technology is going to make our lives better, and encourage greater connectivity between people. This encourages early adoption.The second phase is the dystopia phase. The technology ends up driving wedges between people, bringing out our worst instincts, taking away from human interaction and instead leading to hysteria and mob mentality, because it substitutes for human interaction.But eventually we progress to the third phase where we figure out how to use the technology to complement our human relationships rather than to substitute for them. We begin to develop etiquette and ethics and protocols around the technology as the technology becomes commonplace and ubiquitous.In the late 50’s, when the telephone began to become ubiquitous, there were problems with people who would literally spend all day on the telephone and never leave the house, sometimes for weeks at a time.When was the last time you made an actual phone call on your smartphone? When was the last time one of those calls lasted more than fifteen minutes?Young adults are actually using Facebook less than their older peers, and typically use it and other social media to coordinate face-to-face meetups, rather than interact solely online. They’re on these sites, but they spend surprisingly less time actually interacting with others on them. Social media instead has become more of a journalism tool for them, a way to document their life, rather than a substitute for it entirely.Younger people are starting to become better consumers of information, as well, than their older peers.[9] They’re better at separating fact from opinion, and considerably better at spotting disinformation.Technology never really lives up to the initial promise. But eventually, we find an equilibrium again.It may take some time. But I have faith that we’ll get there, just as we did with the printing press and every other previous communications technology.Careful the things you say, children will listenCareful the things you do, children will seeAnd learnChildren may not obey, but children will listenChildren will look to you for which way to turnTo learn what to beCareful before you say "Listen to me"Children will listen…Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods, “Children Will Listen”Where I am most optimistic is in our youth.Someday, whether today or tomorrow or years from now, adults will need to explain to their children, and grandchildren, why Donald Trump remained in office. How he was elected in the first place. How Brexit happened. How all of the many ways that the world is falling apart right now happened. How they could let it happen.They will have to face the questions of their children as to why they let the world continue to burn, both literally and figuratively.Just as they themselves had to ask their parents why Vietnam was left to burn. Why black people shouldn’t have civil rights and why there were race riots. Why Nixon was elected and stayed in office as long as he did when the public knew about Watergate.There’s a saying, that we don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. And that bill always comes due.I think the lesson our children are learning right now from watching us is the consequences of institutionalized selfishness. There’s an irony here, that the eldest generation believes that kids today are more selfish than ever, more self-centered, because of their use of technology.But my time in education showed me the opposite. Kids use technology most often to help each other. They are more informed than ever, and more diverse than ever. And honestly, I think they really have more empathy than I see in those who came before me. They share more than ever. They collaborate more than ever, using tools like Slack, Discord, Twitch, and others.I see young people interested in peacebuilding and community building and social justice. They’re heavily engaged. They want to learn these things. They’re hungry for real interaction, and for a more equitable world.Our children are listening right now. And they’re angry about what they hear.They’re pissed that those in charge can be so callous, so focused on the next quarter that they completely disregard the next generation. They’re angry about the older people in charge who climbed up a publicly provided ladder to success and then yanked it up after them, only to admonish the younger generation that they would be successful if only they made the same choices.I believe in our upcoming generations. I really do.We’ve been through hell before as a nation, multiple times.We’ve been through many situations where it looked like the country wasn’t going to make it. We’ve been through civil war and racial strife and cultural upheavals. We’ve been through technological revolutions that threatened to destroy us all, literally. We’ve been through times when the nation burned around us.All of these situations have been the result of the last gasp of desperate reactionaries trying with all their might to cling to what they have. Slavery. Unmitigated greed. Segregation. Patriarchy. Class hierarchy.And every time, we’ve grown back just a little stronger. A little more resilient. A little more inclusive. A little more equitable.We will get better, eventually.It’s brutal right now. It’s ugly. We’re seeing the worst sides of this nation. We’re scared. All of us, even the people who are causing this disaster. They’re scared, too.We’re going through hell right now.We just have to keep going.Together.Footnotes[1] https://www.gao.gov/assets/710/703909.pdf[2] Key Moments From Sondland, Cooper and Hale Testimony[3] 6 things we learned from Fiona Hill and David Holmes’ impeachment testimony[4] 'Everyone was in the loop.' Sondland confirms quid pro quo[5] Rudy Giuliani’s Bagman Lev Parnas Blows Up Trump’s Ukraine Defense[6] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf[7] White House violated the law by freezing Ukraine aid, GAO says[8] IQ2 Interview: Should You Love Your Enemies?[9] Younger Americans are better than older Americans at telling factual news statements from opinions