Below is a video of a Future Soldier, who found my videos on YouTube and felt the desire to share his excitement for becoming a US Soldier.  He recently posted this video and in response to it I had the following to say to him (below the player).

Look Timothy, in your mind you're already a soldier and that's the way you should look at it. You're proud of your choice, and hold onto it! As for ideas, perhaps you can look into the long list of Future Soldier Training that you can be learning and vlog about your "pre-soldier" experience. I view vlogging as visual journaling and art. It's mostly for yourself, and hopefully for others to follow your journey. Remember that! :) Be real, be authentic. More importantly, be yourself. -David

I hope he takes what I said to heart.  He's young and he'll figure it all out. :)

Just thought I'd share. 

Oh and while I'm at it, there are more like him that either I subscribed to on YouTube or vice versa--ranging from folk joining or in the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force.  Great people we have in this country!

I've been following this development as closely as I can and it seems that these changes are for the better.  The elimination of unnecessary tasks and drills from BCT seemed necessary in my mind, especially when I see that bayonet training is still happening.  Soldier's don't even carry bayonets on their weapons anymore.  Physically speaking, I bet there are definite benefits to bayonet practice, but in that same time spent poking a stationary tire dummy, a far more relevant skill can be learned.  And I think the same applies for the rest of the phased out tasks and drills.

Here is an excerpt from the TRADOC (Army Training and Doctrine Command) release that was put out yesterday, March 29, 2010.

"We now have a list which has been unanimously approved by all Army commands universally," said Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, TRADOC's deputy commanding general for Initial Military Training (IMT). "Some of old tasks and drills introduced in basic training were not relevant - they were not things most Soldiers would use at any point in their careers. They'd see it one time and then never see it again." The old tasks and drills list were organized under headings such as "shoot," "communicate," "urban operations," and "move and fight," and contained roughly 32 tasks, 207 subtasks and 12 battle drills. The new list is streamlined, with 15 tasks, 76 subtasks and four battle drills, organized under the headings "shoot," "move," "communicate," and "survive and adapt."  Read more...

To download the PDF of the new tasks and drills, click here.

Yesterday afternoon I shot a video for the second episode of Go David Strong and it took me an hour and a half because of my brain hiccups, loud vehicles passing by and my family interrupting.

I ended doing 106 takes total, just so that I could get at least four good takes of me saying The Soldier's Creed without any cuts. I only got three uninterrupted takes of the entire recitation before I lost good daylight from outside.

Now I am sorting out the good takes from the undesirable one's in Final Cut at the moment. Then once I have a good edit, I'll export it to After Affects to fix some things, color and what not. I'll bring it back into my Final Cut project and add final edits, such as titles, credits, music and sounds.

I'm sharing so that you have an inside peek at my editing process with episodes. I don't, however, do all this for vlogs. I just cut out as many "ums" and awkward pauses without compromising the message. I add titles and then I'm done.

All I can say is wowza! This episode will take a while.

Just thought I'd share with you what I do for a living and what not.

Add me:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/godavidstrong
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Go-Davi...

I'll get to the title of this post in a minute--I wanna take the long route. :)

Today we had a future soldier gathering of all current recruits awaiting shipping out to BCT from various select cities in our county. We met up at the beach with blue skies and a beautiful ocean. It was awesome and VERY exciting. The only downer is I couldn't participate fully because I over exerted myself and thereby over worked my left calf muscle. Been limping a bit since. It's so not serious, but it had me out of commission for the last two days plus today. At any rate, we all got into formation, stretched, exercised and then began an alleged 1 mile run (was actually around 3 miles). I didn't run, obviously. So while the group was gone us beat and hurt folk chilled and talked army stuff, both recruits and sergeants alike. Afterward, there was food, volleyball and basketball games. I left early but during the time I was there I really absorbed the experience.

The time that I spent "networking", I guess is how I can put it, I found to be the most beneficial aspect of the event. Not only was it cathartic in terms of settling nervousness of not knowing each other, but also boosted confidence in what we are all there for, and this is why I'm loving my army experience thus far.

Here is where the title comes in. A large majority of the recruits that I've met from my station and then from other stations are younger than me. I'm 27, soon to be 28 in April. The others are like in or just out of high school. And some graduated a while back are in their late teens to early twenties. On the other end of the spectrum I think there were maybe three guys that I counted on one hand that appear to be in their 30s--everyone else is under 30, judging by appearance. Now I bring up age, because I've been getting a lot of comical ice-breaking reactions from the younger recruits because of my young look. I appear to be in school. Some thought I was a high school senior, and some thought I was in college, therefore my early twenties. So today, while me and other recruits from our station were talking, one guy asked me my rank. I said, Specialist. There was an awkward silence and they then another who already met me a month ago added, "Yeah, I know him. He's the specialist guy". And all I can think is, is this a bad thing or a good thing? lol So today I've been dubbed by the folk 7 to 9 years younger than me as "The Specialist Guy".

So one of the common questions I've been getting lately are inquiries about my age and/or rank. Generally, I have been led to understand that my speech and smile, specifically give my age away. And while all this isn't new to me, I still find the reactions very amusing to say the least.