No better time than now for PME

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Anne Sproul
  • 65th Medical Operations Squadron
LAJES AIR FIELD, Azores (USAFENS) --  Many of the conversations I have had over the last week with Lajes officers and enlisted personnel have centered around the completion of Professional Military Education.

PME is an important step in the development of Airmen and completion of PME plays a huge role in promotion to the next grade.

Many career-impacting decisions are made based on whether or not you have completed PME. Being “almost finished” does not matter to a board.

Three years ago I attended Air Command and Staff College in residence. At the final ACSC graduation banquet, a fellow student named Rob and I were reminiscing about our year at school and how much we had learned about Air Force operations. I remember passing along a tip to him that I received from one of my previous wing commanders.

He told me, “Start working on Air War College immediately after you complete ACSC. You are already in the studying mode and you will use what you learned at ACSC as a platform for your Air War College studies.”

Leaving Maxwell Air Force Base, I was fired up about PME and planned to make the education center my first stop at my new base.

I PCSd to Patrick Air Force Base a few weeks after graduation and unfortunately did not heed my wing commander’s advice. I threw myself into my new job and began preparing for a wing Operational Readiness Inspection.

Shortly afterwards, our medical group deployed over half of our family practice providers and we were responsible for finding local care for our 45,000 beneficiaries, most of them retirees.

The day after our providers deployed, we received our 30-day Health Services Inspection/Joint Commission notification and I was appointed the project officer.

My husband, Jack, was commanding a squadron of over 400 personnel and we had a 9-month old baby still getting up in the middle of the night. All valid excuses for not completing PME, right?

I met up with my friend Rob at an executive leadership symposium in Dallas a few months ago. He thanked me for passing along my PME tidbit to him and boasted that he completed his Air War College within the first year after we graduated from ACSC.

When he asked me about mine, I quietly replied, “I have one paper left to write.”

Looking back now, those were not valid reasons.

There will always be an inspection looming on the horizon, you will always be faced with challenges to overcome, and you will always be given additional responsibilities. You may not always have a new baby in the house, but you may have a sick child to care for or you may be trying to complete a difficult college class.

If you still have PME to finish up, make a commitment to yourself, carve out the time you need, and get it done. There will never be a better time to complete PME than right now.