Originally Posted by
CALTanker
The "non-flying queep" as you put it is the smart thing to do. Gaining additional leadership abilities and skill sets diversifies your ability to go further in a career and expand your horizons. We need to be diversified in our skills just like your stock portfolio needs to be diversified, thus enabling us to weather the storm of economic downturns. FWIW, most of my additional duties were far from menial.
Yes, you are correct. Hours and hours of time spent doing CBT about flight line driving, CBRNE, Human Trafficking, and the like is very helpful for my development as a person and professional. Additionally, the time spent writing performance reports for people who aren't going to read them and do not understand the content is also excellent.
Who can argue with the fourth trip through the altitude chamber? Yep, those are my symptoms, still stinks in here, travel and time wasted. Another boon to my personal development has been PME. The useful things that I have learned there are almost unimaginable. Being tested over obscure opinions of obscure AU faculty who write one anothers' prognostications into their syllabuses as if they're Sun Tzu is mind-expanding.
Squadron snack-o. That's where it's at. You learn many useful life skills to include: diet, finance, debt (restructuring, settlement, and more frequently how to write-off loss), retail management and marketing, supply-chain and inventory management, etc., etc.
I could go on with this post all day.
PIPE