PME- a wider view

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Susan Bowes
  • 35th Medical Operations Squadron
MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan --  Professional Military Education is something that gets drilled into a military member's head as soon as we enter our initial training program. We're told to do it if we have any desire to make rank and stay in the military. I was advised to do it early so that if something unexpected came up, it would already be done. It was also stressed that the time in which I completed it would reflect on me at time of promotion. While these facts are certainly true, I've now come to believe there is a greater reason to complete PME.

As embarrassed as I am now to admit it, and not unlike many officers in the medical career field, my initial opinion of PME was that it was a necessary evil one had to do to make rank but the content didn't really apply to me. I enrolled in Squadron Officer School. I was surprised to find some of the material interesting and I felt some even pertained to me; mostly around the leadership topics. But I didn't understand why I needed to know about air tactics used in the Vietnam War or how the military budget system flowed. Nevertheless, I finished and was glad to have it behind me.

I remember the first time it struck me that I actually learned something from my PME that allowed me to understand something outside of my own career field. I was deployed and we were talking about generating aircraft and discussing how deployment planning evolved. I wasn't exactly able to discuss it thoroughly, but knew enough to ask somewhat intelligent questions. I never believed I would be talking about sortie generations or platforms during a lunchtime conversation when I first became part of the Air Force.
As our careers progress, expectations of us grow as well. We're expected to know more than our own career field and the group we belong to. We're expected to know how the other groups run so that we can better interface with our counterparts in other areas of the military.

Now after having finished the PME I never thought I would do, I can look back and see the utility in all of the courses I have completed. PME builds a foundation for a more strategic view of the Air Force and the other military branches and allows us to better see why decisions made at the higher levels of the military and government.

There are many more important reasons to do your PME than making rank. It broadens your perspective of not only the military, but of our world. It teaches us to think critically and it immerses us into the larger military helping build cohesion with units around us. Through PME, I have become a better-rounded military professional. It has made me feel a part of a bigger Air Force, not just the medical asset. So when you enroll in your next PME course, think of it not as a hurdle to jump, but rather an opportunity to broaden yourself and become something bigger than ourselves.