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Post by Captain Erys Murai on Feb 20, 2013 11:23:50 GMT -5
Well, here's the problem with saying that the Academy is just the basics, and everything is "on the job training". We have a little marksmanship training, some science (more science than anything else, really), and a couple basics courses that make sense. But nowhere near enough training to show the kind of expertise that even junior officers were showing on their first day. Geordi once stated that he "excelled at engineering" in the Academy. The only real engineering-related course in our core curriculum is damage control, so how could he excel at something if there's only one course in it? There's a few electives, sure, but that doesn't account for the kind of skill he had even as a junior officer. Harry Kim was fresh out of the Academy, but he clearly knew exactly what he was doing at Operations. Tom Paris never went anywhere but the Academy, and he also stated that he "perfected his skill" while in the Academy. The only piloting skills in the core curriculum are electives, and nowhere near enough to show his level of skill. Maybe they just had natural talent in those areas. Wesley and Nog both showed a high level of skill (or talent) in Engineering even before they went to the Academy. We do know that the entrance exams were very hard (Picard had to try twice to get in, as did Wesley), so maybe all Academy students have decent skills before they get in. Either way, by the time they graduate from the Academy, even Junior Officers have the necessary skills to do their job. Probably not expert-level (unless you're a "genius" like Wesley seemed to be), but at least enough to do their job without breaking something every 5 minutes.
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Post by Captain Joyaus Dalun on Feb 20, 2013 12:01:11 GMT -5
(unless you're a "genius" like Wesley seemed to be) I maintain that Wesley was an idiot savant with no common sense.
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Post by CDR Kadae Misaki on Feb 20, 2013 14:21:10 GMT -5
Well, if the time spent in the academy changes, I'll probably have to adjust my character's age to account for the new rules. And what have you.
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Post by Captain T'Pang on Feb 20, 2013 14:21:32 GMT -5
That's why I started off by saying the Players Handbook is incorrect, Malitzka My point is that we need to talk about whether or not to get that correct or whether or not it is the intention of the fleet to say that the first portion of Starfleet Academy, the general portion, actually takes four years. I, personally, might need to correct some dates depending on what I thought the intention is at the time of creation. So official question: does general officer training take 2.5 years or 4? (and this isn't a question you can answer, Erys) One idea would be to adopt a system where the Officer Curriculum in section five would remain the same and then add the Specializations from the TNG sourcebook to section five and get rid of all of the branch training (except for medical). Then each branch can get some form of post graduate advanced training. Then the official answer would be that general officer training takes two years and the special training takes the other two years.
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Post by Captain T'Pang on Feb 20, 2013 15:06:30 GMT -5
Well, if the time spent in the academy changes, I'll probably have to adjust my character's age to account for the new rules. And what have you. I am uncertain at what age her species are considered adults, but assuming 4 years at the academy would mean she entered the academy at 12 (four years of academy training plus 2 years of service. just based on data from your transfer request.) which seems fairly young. Starfleet wouldn't allow any person to join before being considered legally an adult. 17 or 18 would be terribly young for an officer character, you might get away with that for an enlisted character though.
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Post by CDR Kadae Misaki on Feb 20, 2013 15:44:06 GMT -5
Her species mentally become adults at six, and their equivalent of high school lasts from then to age ten or so. They enter their physical prime at 12, which lasts until they are 80. Legally, their homeworld lists the age of majority as ten, as far as their species is concerned. I calculated her age based on 4 years of the standard curriculum and then whatever it was for the science branch school.
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Post by Captain Erys Murai on Feb 20, 2013 15:54:32 GMT -5
That's not all that unusual, actually. Klingons, for example, are fully mature much earlier than humans. Alexander Rozhenko entered service for the Klingon Empire in 2374. Since he was born in 2366, that means he was only 8 years old, but he was clearly an adult.
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Post by Vice Admiral Nyoko Honda on Feb 20, 2013 17:04:52 GMT -5
Or the ds9 writers screwed up. lol
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Post by Captain T'Pang on Feb 20, 2013 17:27:19 GMT -5
One note on adulthood is that there are two different measures of adulthood. The first is physical (sexual) maturity and is (for humans anyway) somewhere between the ages of 10 and 12 (depending if you are boy or girl)
Then there is legal adulthood, which depending on your culture here on Earth ranges from 13 to 21. Legally, adulthood essentially means that one can engage in a contract. There are other legal ramafications to being an adult depending on the culture.
Presumably in the Federation legal adulthood for a human is 18.
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Post by Captain T'Pang on Feb 20, 2013 17:52:58 GMT -5
That's not all that unusual, actually. Klingons, for example, are fully mature much earlier than humans. Alexander Rozhenko entered service for the Klingon Empire in 2374. Since he was born in 2366, that means he was only 8 years old, but he was clearly an adult. I would suspect that with a culture like Klingons that physical maturity and legal adulthood are one and the same.
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Post by CDR Kadae Misaki on Feb 20, 2013 18:06:23 GMT -5
I thought legal adulthood for Klingons was when you got sent to some nest of giant worms and had to kill all of them and come back. Or is that a different fiction?
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Post by Captain Joyaus Dalun on Feb 20, 2013 18:23:27 GMT -5
Or the ds9 writers screwed up. lol Or it was made up at that time because we didn't have any info on tha tpart of the klingon lifecycle ANYways. Because the DS9 writers screwed up. At very least, for T'Ruri's age, she's a Vulcan in her 30s anyway, so no big deal. Joy entered the academy late too, having been a graduate of the Trill Science Institute anyway, which I'd bet would count as a sort of college credit for the Academy anyway. I'm covered. Yay.
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Post by Captain Anja Malitzka on Feb 20, 2013 20:11:16 GMT -5
That's not all that unusual, actually. Klingons, for example, are fully mature much earlier than humans. Alexander Rozhenko entered service for the Klingon Empire in 2374. Since he was born in 2366, that means he was only 8 years old, but he was clearly an adult. K'Tali entered the Academy at around age 9, which is why she managed to be a CMO at only age 21 (although that was partially because the Sentinel's CMO isn't exactly required to have the most experience). I do, however, want to know officially whether or not Academy training takes 4 years for general curriculum or whether it should be 2.5 with 1.5 for the majority of branch training... because Nassan entered Academy at the earliest possible age and is a new graduate.
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Post by Captain Erys Murai on Feb 20, 2013 21:58:06 GMT -5
Well, like you said, I can't tell you how it is, I can only tell you how it should be in relationship to canon Trek (which I already did). And realistically, SFA should prepare you for whatever field "in general", where a branch school would be like graduate school for those who are trying to go in at a higher rank. But in order to have that work, SFA would need to be adjusted somehow to enable that. I talked to my dad tonight about his training (he was enlisted USAF). He told me he spent 6 weeks in boot camp, and a total of around 6 months in tech school for a technician / mechanic field. Different fields would take different amounts (more or less than 6 months depending on the field), and he knew enough to do his job well. On-the-job training adds to that, of course, and he had to go back for other training when he wanted to get to the higher NCO ranks. Even so, his initial training that prepared him for his job, was enough to qualify him for first aid, marksmanship, and the other "general" skills that every Airman is expected to know (and all of that within 6 weeks). The field-specific stuff took up the majority of his training time (6 months compared to a month and a half). The ratio with officers appears to be similar, for military academies at least. The first year or so is spent entirely with Core training, with the second year starting to see some field-specific classes. by the last year, it's almost completely field-specific. I would expect SFA to have a similar layout. So if I had to put a definite separation, I'd say maybe 1.5 for Core, and 2.5 for Branch. Btw, according to Memory Alpha, Nog only served two years as a Cadet (and apparently only one year was actually in the Academy). This is probably due to the fact that they were at war and needed everyone they could get. He went to the Academy in Little Green Men (2372), and returns to DS9 in The Ascent (2373). He's commissioned as an Ensign in Favor the Bold (2374). He was also promoted to Lieutenant Commander that same year, but that was only a provisional promotion by Red Squad.
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Post by Captain T'Pang on Feb 21, 2013 1:32:06 GMT -5
Well, like you said, I can't tell you how it is, I can only tell you how it should be in relationship to canon Trek (which I already did). And realistically, SFA should prepare you for whatever field "in general", where a branch school would be like graduate school for those who are trying to go in at a higher rank. But in order to have that work, SFA would need to be adjusted somehow to enable that. I talked to my dad tonight about his training (he was enlisted USAF). He told me he spent 6 weeks in boot camp, and a total of around 6 months in tech school for a technician / mechanic field. Different fields would take different amounts (more or less than 6 months depending on the field), and he knew enough to do his job well. On-the-job training adds to that, of course, and he had to go back for other training when he wanted to get to the higher NCO ranks. Even so, his initial training that prepared him for his job, was enough to qualify him for first aid, marksmanship, and the other "general" skills that every Airman is expected to know (and all of that within 6 weeks). The field-specific stuff took up the majority of his training time (6 months compared to a month and a half). The ratio with officers appears to be similar, for military academies at least. The first year or so is spent entirely with Core training, with the second year starting to see some field-specific classes. by the last year, it's almost completely field-specific. I would expect SFA to have a similar layout. So if I had to put a definite separation, I'd say maybe 1.5 for Core, and 2.5 for Branch. Btw, according to Memory Alpha, Nog only served two years as a Cadet (and apparently only one year was actually in the Academy). This is probably due to the fact that they were at war and needed everyone they could get. He went to the Academy in Little Green Men (2372), and returns to DS9 in The Ascent (2373). He's commissioned as an Ensign in Favor the Bold (2374). He was also promoted to Lieutenant Commander that same year, but that was only a provisional promotion by Red Squad. Again I want to point out that when it comes to training for enlisted personnel six months to a year sounds about right. The civilian world equivalent is trade school. In trade school things are fairly bare bones and they mostly concentrate on the area of interest or courses directly involved in any job related to that field. If they have few if any general education courses. On the other hand military academies are mostly like any college, with elelments of boot camp thrown in on top. You have to take all the same sort of classes to earn a degree as you would at any four year school. The only difference between a bachelor degree at Stanford and the Navy Academy is that at the Navy acdemy they have all that military training thrown in on top. Classes include things like english, history, and other genral education classes. Officers are expected to be leaders, and administrators, as well being teachers, and knowing how to do specific jobs. So thier education needs to be well rounded. They can't just focus on job specific information. It really makes no sense for a person to go in and get a medical degree in only four years . Eight years on average, is about right. So if medical school takes four years then by implication then thier time at the academy takes four years. Acording to the player handbook right now what ever the characters learn in section five "academy training" takes four years, then they move onto branch school, which in the case of medical school is another four years. Now I realize that all that stuff in section five isn't much and certainly doesn't seem like it would take four years to learn compared to the stuff in "branch school". Additionally for most Starfleet jobs it seems like their "branch" school should actually be part of thier academy training otherwise most real training for Starfleet officers takes place after graduating from the academy. One theory is that most Starfleet Academy time is taking up drinking and partying . My point is that if their education system is so good that they can churn out doctors in half the time then why on earth would they need to keep security people in school for four years? I can't speak about how they depict this stuff in the Star Trek shows. I suspect that half that stuff is written more in order for it to into a story line than for it to be logical, consistent, or conform in anyway to reality.
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