Credibility

As taken from Dictionary.com....

cred·i·ble /ˈkrɛdəbəl/
–adjective 1. capable of being believed; believable: a credible statement.
2. worthy of belief or confidence; trustworthy: a credible witness.

I used to tell my soldiers that we live and die, succeed and fail based on our credibility. To an inspector there is nothing more important. Rank, position, title, all of these were socond to credibility. I had lengthly conversations with soldiers on this topic not all related to wearing the uniform. Credibility when you go home, on the streets, in varying environments and audiences. As I walked through my day today this topic kept coming to mind over and over.

I must admit that Antioch is kind of kicking my ass here lately. I'm not panicking, I just have to step up my "game" and get on top...so to speak. I wonder however if I'm beginning to lose credibility with the folks that accepted me so readily. Not a very comfortable place to be and not a place I plan on staying for long.

Antioch students question everything, its part of the learning process. Question authority, government, patriarchy, class, gender, yourself....everything! This questioning leads to exploration and a deep and thorough understanding of the world around you and your place in it. Something that seems pretty damn necessary if your going to be making wise decisions about trying to change the world. The outward appearance however seems to the casual viewer to be "wierd" or "toxic" or any number of negative adjectives that serve to destroy credibility. How painfully ironic that this element that should be embraced and celebrated is used to dehumanize and demonize the Antioch experience.

I read an article complaining that Antioch students get college credit for attending demonstrations. I have no idea if this is true or not or when it was true or not or in what context it was true or not but I have a story about situational learning. When I was 20 years old I was deployed to Bosnia. I got tasked one day to accompany a small group of soldiers downtown so that some officer could meet with some public officials. I was pretty new to the Army, I didn't want to be where I was at and I sure as hell didn't want to be dragged all over freaking Bosnia for some officer. When we stopped and the important people went inside us joes (slang for lower ranking soldiers) had to pull security. I stood there in all my heavy gear with my rifle in my arms scanning the city in front of me. I wondered if I would even see a sniper up there or if the world would just stop. Some little kids came running up to us with flowers, it was really heartwarming. As this herd of children surrounded us wanting to touch our gear, our weapons, our trucks some older kids came walking up. One of the soldiers I was with noticed that one of them had his hand hidden under his shirt. The soldier said loudly "heads up" and alerted the rest of us to the boy. I learned more about myself, human nature, fear, courage and youthful stupidity in the five seconds that followed than any time spent in any classroom could ever yield. This boy, this child wanted to show off his cool pocket knife to the big tough american soldiers. He wanted to show that he was tough too.
No, we didn't shoot him.
The point is that there is no better teacher, or harsher, than real life. So before you go criticizing someone for what they may or may not have received college credit for go put your ass on the line for something you believe in for five seconds.