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Around about the end of my sophomore year or the start of my junior year, the Army ROTC program came up with something called “Professional Military Educational Requirements,” or something like that. The acronym was PME, the reaction was, “Oh f—-!” The PME was a list of courses the Army had decided all ROTC cadets needed to take, and it included many classes that were not part of some people’s majors. For instance, I majored in broadcast journalism, but ended up having to take courses in politcal science and military history, plus an additional English course, to fulfill these new requirements to get my commission. Many of my fellow Army ROTC cadets ended up going from the 4–year program to the 5 or 6–year program because so many of the PME did not fall within their degree field and they had already completed 2 years of college not knowing they’d need to take these classes. It kind of sucked.
However, looking back I can understand the need for the extra classes I was required to take. I was going into the Army, after all. Military history might not have been related to my degree, but it was certainly related to my plans to join the Army. It just would have been nice if they could have informed my classmates and I about this before we’d already spent two years taking classes.
