LAC Daniel Hawinkels reports on his recent attendance at the July 2014 Junior NCO Course:
Day one. We got straight into training from the moment we arrived on Base. Our bus from Wellington was significantly late, so it was straight into the van and to the Officers Commissioning Course ceremony, then to the Mess for lunch. After lunch we had until dinner to sort out our barracks. After dinner we went straight into our first lesson of Ethos and values.
The next five days were pretty much the same. Get up at 0600, breakfast at 0630, lessons from 0700 to 1130, lunch at 1200, lessons from 1230 until 1730 and finally dinner at 1800 with free time after dinner. Most of our free time was spent revising for terminals the next day.
On the Syndicate side, our Syndicate was voted the best Syndicate overall by the Course Staff. Somehow we were always the first to get to our meals and lessons. On the last night we had a talent show in which our Syndicate performed a remix of the ‘birdie dance’, funky town (from Shrek), and Everything is awesome (from the Lego movie). Our performance was voted the biggest fail of the night. When we were asked to think of a name for our Syndicates I came up with the name of #BokChoy, which we all liked and so it stuck.
To sum it up, the only things I didn’t enjoy about this course was the fact that I had to sleep next to someone who snored all night every night, and we weren’t allowed to go to Hotshots (the Base shop) until the last night, by which time it had closed for the night. Overall the course went very well and I look forward to coming back for the Senior NCO course.
