Marine Corps Mess Night Tradition

Marine Corps Mess Night TraditionMarine Corps Mess Night TraditionWhen members of the 1953 3rd Marine Regiment combat swim team were invited to have dinner with their British rivals in the midst of an annual competition, they did leid realize the following events would lead to one of the Marine Corps most honored traditions. During the competition, Marines from the swim team were invited to attend what the British Royal Marines call a mess night. It was a tradition that dates back to the days of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. The Tradition As Gunnery Sgt. Johnnie C. Watkins, the Sergeants Course staff noncommissioned officer in charge at SNCO Academy, Camp Hansen explained, the event has evolved into a distinct celebration unique to U.S. Marines conducting it today. The purpose mess night is to recognize and pay homage to the Marines who came before us, the Brunswick, Ga., native explained. It also gives us a chance as a band of brothers to socializewith one anot her in our best dress uniform.? The mess night is fashioned to fit a formalgathering with a military flavor present. A Marine is assigned to be president of the mess he is in charge and controls the flow of events. The vice-president of the mess, or Mr. Vice, as the title has come to be known, acts as the enforcer of the presidents decisions and also regulates who may speak to the president. Invited guests are also part of the group. Conventionally, their place is at the head table with the president. The remainder of the participants makes up the mess. They are the heart of the eventand are expected to pay fines as the president sees fit for issues brought up by the mess men. During the formal meal portion of the mess night, members of the mess have the opportunity to charge another mess man with a fine if he has a legitimate reason to. A mess member must stand at attention and ask Mr. Vices permission to address the mess. Mr. Vice has the option to turn the request away or to forw ard it to the president. If the president grants permission, the mess member must state his case on why his comrade must be fined. If the mess member makes a good case, the president fines the guilty party a certain amount as determined by him, or forces the defendant to perform a show for the mess, Watkins said. The president also forcescertain members of the mess to perform humorous rituals, Watkins added, It all depends on how creative the Marine sitting in as president is. Other procedures also go into the tradition of mess night. It starts with a social hour where Marines of the mess have drinks with one another as well as meet and greet the guests. The formalities of mess night begin when the mess marches in, followed by the head table guests. Then the fun of mess night begins with the meal. Marines of the mess sit down to a formal dinner, normally Prime Rib. During this time, Marines bring forth outrageous situations to be fined, Watkins explained. In the 25 plus mess nights Ive been to since Ive been a Marine, Ive seen a lot of insane situations, Watkins recalls, For example, Ive seen Marines have a pizza delivered to another member of the mess during the meal. An intermission will then sound after the mess portion of the night, followed by the toasts given by members of the mess. Tributes are given to battles Marines have fought in the past as well as the future, Watkins said. The toasts of the mess is what mess night is all about, Watkins mentioned. It pays honor and respect to all the campaigns the Marine Corps has fought in. The final toast is always to the success of the Marine Corps, stated Watkins. Other portions of the mess night are included as well. Normally a guest speaker will make a presentation, The Prisoner of War/Missing in Action table is recognized, and the kitchens head chef will parade the beef in regards to the mess liking. For some Marines, mess night is a rare occasion that all Marines should take full advantage of, said Sgt. Iri s M. Feliciano, wire noncommissioned officer in charge, communications platoon, 12th Marine Regiment. How often do Marines get in their best dress uniform and spend an evening like this with the people they work with? the Chicago native asked. Its rare to have everyone from a unit, from the commanding officer to the lowest private, all in one place to socialize with one another, he explained. Feliciano also feels that mess night is mora than just a tradition its a learning experience as well. Mess night builds knowledge on customs and courtesies, as well as camaraderie, Feliciano claimed. One of its purposes is to build Esprit de Corps, and until youre a part of one it doesnt mean much, explained Feliciano. For those who have not been a part of a mess night, Marines who have been around the Corps several years and attended many mess nights recommend that no one pass up the opportunity to participate in one. I strongly encourage all Marines to attend and support a mess night in their unit, said Sgt. Maj. Efrem A. Wilson, director of SNCO Academy. Its all about educating, training and leading Marines.

4 ways to be productive this holiday week

4 ways to be productive this holiday week4 ways to be productive this holiday weekWhen you walked into the office after the holidays, how many people were at their desks? Three? Four? Take this as your cue for the rest of this week.Heres how to get work done if youre at work during this festive season, but most of your colleagues arent.Dont send a ton of emaillesChances are, at least some of your contacts are on vacation, so you might as well press pause on sending email requests and follow-ups.Referencing a tweet about how people wont want to receive your emails until this week is over,Lifehacker staff writer Nick Douglas writes in the publication about how people wont be very receptive to them this week.Dont email people this week unless you have to. This isnt about being nice, its about being effective. Unless your email is the very most important thing arriving in someones inbox, they arent going to bother with it until later, and maybe never, he writes, before advising that you can draft them instead.Use the time for things that require deep focusRevel in the fact that you can finally get the silence you need, even if you work in an open office.If youre working on a huge project due at the end of this week or getting ahead for a new campaign youll be heading up in the new year, toil away in a part of the office where youre best able to work.Get lunch with someone elseYou might as well use the time to get to know someone you work with.Freelance journalist Kate Rockwood writes in Mental Floss that when most people arent at the office at the end of the December, you should invite a coworker to lunch, and features advice from an expert.A skeleton crew at the office can be a good excuse to mix up your usual routine and socialize with someone new at the office, Rockwood writes. It can come in handy the next time youre in a work crunch and need more people to pitch in.Have a one-on-one meeting with your bossDo you have any questions youd like to get off your ches t?If you dont have performance reviews, you might want to make this time to discuss expectations and responsibilities for 2018.Make a list of your questions, concerns, and ideas for new ways you can contribute to your team beforehand, and go into the meeting feeling prepared for what comes your way.After all, if you dont schedule time to meet with your boss and you already dont have assessment periods, how will you know exactly where you stand?Its better than blindly continuing into the new year, unprepared for changes that will come your way.Also ask yourself these seven career questions before 2018 comes around in a few days. You dont even have to wait to begin working on your New Years resolutions - get a head start on them in the office when things are quiet and you can think a lot more clearly.

Understanding the Mechanics of Tissues

Understanding the Mechanics of Tissues Understanding the Mechanics of Tissues Kristin Myers is a traditionally trained mechanical engineer, conducting a battery of mechanical tests to understand the capacity of materials to withstand loads. But the materials she is working with are far from the metals and other hard materials mechanical engineers typically work with.When the mechanical engineering professor at Columbia Universitys school of engineering is in her lab, she is poking and prodding soft tissues of the menschenwrdig body, mainly female reproductive organs, more specifically the cervix.When I tell people Im a mechanical engineering professor, they think cars or airplanes or bridges. I can work on those things too, she says. Thats how I see pregnancy. You know, if the structures weak it will fail. And if there is a defect, you will have a catastrophic failure. It sometimes sounds horrible because I simplify things down to basic units like theres a load on the structure, and if the structure fails, the structure will fall through. Thats how engineers think.Myers is investigating the mechanical behavior of tissues to gain a better understanding of how tissue architecture affects body behavior to aid in early diagnosis and treatment of disease and other conditions. She is focused mainly on the cervix to learn more about prematurity and pre-term birth.Her work with the reproductive system she is trying to learn how can we help the clinician better assess if a woman is going to have a pre-term birth, and how can we help prevent those from happening, she says.Professor Kristin Myers. namen Columbia UniversityA native of Detroit with family and friends in the automotive industry, she actually thought she was on track to follow suit. She loved cars and loved her mechanical engineering classes at the University of Michigan. She spent several summers as an intern at General Motors. But one summer, she thought she should try something else and joined a professors lab, looking at the mechanical properties of soft polymers and elastomers. Thats how I got involved in academic engineering and wanting to become a professor, she says.When she began searching for a graduate program, she wanted a research lab opportunity in the up-and-coming area of biomechanics where she could use her traditional mechanical engineering skills. She found Simona Socrate, an assistant professor at MIT who was starting a new project in pregnancy biomechanics. Myers recalls, That was totally different from anything I had ever heard of. I thought that was really cool that I could use my skills as a mechanical engineer who studies structures and materials and the mechanical properties of solids to do that.Myers had just won a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship and decided to use the money for that at MIT, collaborating with Socrate. There are just no data on the mechanical properties of various tissues in the female reproductive system, she says. Fo r orthopedic and cardiovascular biomechanics, there were hundreds of articles on the material properties of bone or cartilage or tendon. These material properties of the female reproductive system are really important because the tissues support the growing fetus and keep it safe and then at the appropriate time they have to deliver the baby safely.It involves a lot of interaction between biological processes and the material properties of the uterus, cervix, and fetal membrane. We want to relate all of these things, she says. She remained at MIT for her doctorate and did post-doctoral research at Johns Hopkins University before joining the Columbia University engineering faculty and opening her lab in 2010.Working closely with clinicians and molecular biologists, she and the four doctoral students in her lab approach the work in two different ways animal studies with mice and human studies that have involved building a computer model of the pregnant abdomen to simulate forces of pr egnancy using information from a womans ultrasound imagery.My main goal with the computer models is to be able to identify if there is some sort of unfavorable mechanical environment for pregnancy. We hypothesize that women who have tissue that stretches too much will deliver pre-term because women who have a higher number of gestations, like twins, typically deliver pre-term. We just want to understand the mechanical factors that drive it, she says.With the model, she will be able to calculate how fiber-based composite materials the team has identified are going to hold the loads (the fetus) in. We can ask the model various what-if scenarios, she says. What if my uterus is stronger than my cervix or what if my cervix is too weak? What if we apply a biomedical device to hold the cervix in place? Or can we place it better somehow?In the animal work, the team recently published a paper on how the material properties of the cervix in a mouse changed during gestation. The next step is t o test what happens if the tissue gets inflamed with infection, what happens to the tissue if we apply different hormonal stimuli, she says.Myers says her work is extremely rewarding. There is no current model to show how a pregnancy is going to progress. There are so many questions surrounding pregnancy, she says. Myers wants to come up with a tool that can answer some of those questions to help put a womans mind at ease and to prevent preterm birth.Nancy S. Giges is an independent writer.Learn about the latest trends in bioengineering at ASMEsNEMBConference. For Further Discussion There is no current model to show how a pregnancy is going to progress. There are so many questions surrounding pregnancy.Prof. Kristin Myers, Columbia University