Somebody Ain’t Gonna Make it… (A Leadership Lesson)
The Army Physical Fitness is comprised of three events (2 minutes of pushups, 2 minutes of sit-ups, and 2-mile run). I enlisted into the Army Reserve in 2002 and I still get nervous almost 20 years later every time I have to take that damn test. Many moons ago though, I wanted to more than just pass the damn test; I wanted to score high enough to earn the Army Physical Fitness Badge. It was during this trial that I learned a great lesson in leadership.
In 2002 I drank the Kool-Aid and enlisted in the United States Army Reserve. It was one of the best decisions that I have ever made, but I came to this decision point after struggling to make it financially my first year at the University of Virginia. I needed a better option than cooking pizza and taking out trash on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at a restaurant on campus called the Treehouse. See, I was a victim of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FASFA). Per the FASFA, I was going to receiving a lot of parental assistance with my pursuit of higher learning. Fake News! I didn’t so I stumbled trying to figure everything out like many other young Americans. At the time I was mad at my dad for not preparing his only son’s academic pursuits, the FASFA for spewing Fake News, water for being wet, and ice being cold. What made it worse was that so many damn privileged kids from all nationalities that “didn’t have to work as hard as me” surrounded me. The breaking point second semester first year was a physics class that I had to withdrawal from. Yes a mechanical engineer had to take Physics I twice. So at the end of the semester after doing some heavy self-reflection, I realized that I could not go back and repeat that beating again. It is funny now because I remembered folks talking about getting refund checks after their loans dispersed, but I got a refund bills saying that the loans that they would approve a 18/19 year old kid for (without a means to pay it) wasn’t enough to cover tuition and room and board. Regardless, I took out a private loan for the first semester and an angel in the Office of Minority Programs (OMP) in the engineering school; found me a scholarship the second semester for the most unscholarly man on campus.
So there I was, on a van driving down from Virginia to South Carolina to attend basic combat training (bootcamp) with the other new recruits. We get off of the bus and they filed us into some barracks and I see a kid in a military uniform with a shoelace belt in the reception area. I later found out that he was on suicide watch. It was at that point I realized that I just might have messed my life up forever. Regardless, I started and finished bootcamp (which is also a great story that I will talk about later) and started Advanced Individual Training (AIT) in the fall of 2003.
In bootcamp, I failed every diagnostic run test until the record event. Don’t laugh because not too many 225 lbs kids can run eight times around a 250-meter track in 15 minutes and 25 seconds. There must have been something in the food or the fact that I was able to get some damn sleep but in AIT my 2-mile run times went down to 14 minutes. One of the muses put into my head two months before graduation that I could and should try to obtain the Army’s Physical Fitness badge before graduation which would require me score at least 90 points in each individual event. I was confident I could do that in the pushup and sit-up events but I would need to run 2 miles in at least 13 minutes and 42 seconds at 200 plus pounds. This was insane but Chudi being Chudi went after it anyway. So the last two months of my six-month school I ran with the A-Group during run days for morning physical training. I still remember my first day after we split up after accountability formation and my big ass migrated to the A-Group for the morning run. Seriously, it was like a pitbull running with cheetahs. Laugh out Loud. I don’t know how long we ran but I remember mid-run we started singing:
“Somebody ain’t gonna make it!
A weak heart just can’t take it!
Somebody ain’t gonna make it!
Their weak little bodies can’t take it!
Don’t let your dog tags dingle in dirt,
Pick up your dog tags and put ’em in your shirt!”
I thought they were calling me out. So I sucked it up, gathered power from the ancient spirits, and I pressed on like an Igbo Super Sayain. Little did I know that they actually sang that during every run. Laugh out Loud. Regardless, in the morning of 01MAY2003 I took the last APFT for my class. I warmed up and 2-minutes of pushups (100 points!), 2-minutes of situ-ups (94 points!), 2-mile run (13:59 thumbs down). I missed getting 90 points by 17 seconds. There is something about laps 6–7 (of 8 total laps) where I die, fall off pace and then come back to life and Michael-Johnson-it from laps 7–8. Regardless, the drill sergeant for my platoon told me I was taking it again next week and he will be there to grade this time. Like a good private in the US Army I agreed. See my drill sergeant was a runner and the part of the cadre leading the runs most days in the A-Group on run days. He knew I could do it and even though I graduated in 10 days, he knew that it was important enough to not let me fail.
Round II of the last damn APFT at AIT. I again crush the pushups and sit-up events. I also again begin my ceremonial run death on lap 6 going to lap 7. My drill sergeant saw this and on lap 7 and he dropped his clipboard and ran with me for the final two laps. It was cold and in the morning, he was not stretched out, and he was probably in his early to mid-40s but he did it any way. See this is the type of leader I aim to be. Sometimes you just gotta suck it up and get down and dirty to help someone who needs it. There is a lesson and a beauty in that. Oh yeah I made my time.
