FYOP Case Study

1266 Words3 Pages

For many officer cadets at RMC the First Year Orientation Programme (FYOP), is often the greatest challenge they will face both in their lives at the college and in their military careers in general. For First Years, the challenge comes from having to function in a stressful environment marked by daily inspections, demanding physical activity, frequent punishments, and limited time to connect with loved ones through either phone calls or email. Meanwhile, for the third and fourth years in charge of them, the challenge comes from making sure that their assigned ‘flights’, which range in size from eighteen to twenty individuals, successfully learn, often through the use of strict discipline, the skills they will need to effectively integrate …show more content…

Based on research by Yerkes and Dobson, it shows that performance reaches its optimal peak when an individual is at a level of moderate arousal, with increasing levels of arousal after this point corresponding with decreased levels of performance due to overstimulation (Feist et al., 2016, p. 411). Likewise, in the case of FYOP, the way this optimal level of arousal is reached is typically through stress applied on the individual, usually through disciplinary action like punishment PT. Therefore, it would stand to reason that when punishment PT is overused, the performance of the individual would not only decrease, but the individuals health would also start to become …show more content…

On one hand, it is undeniable that due to the nature of FYOP, third and fourth years in charge of flights have limited powers to give out rewards and typically have no options but to consistently fall back on punishment for enforcement. However, on the other hand, the overuse of disciplinary measures like punishment PT is detrimental to overall flight performance as it causes flight members to move above the optimal level of arousal that is needed to maintain optimal performance as well as safeguard themselves from illness and injury. Therefore, taking both these factors into consideration, what I have personally concluded is that the third and fourth years in charge of flights should place a greater emphasis on negative punishment. This type of punishment, which involves the removal of a stimulus, often one that the individual being disciplined finds pleasant, tends to cause less stress on the individual than positive punishment like PT, while at the same time achieving the goal of reducing the rate of undesirable behaviour that would make it difficult for a First Year to integrate into the college or, at the very least, not die of dehydration during the first week of freedom because a lost

More about FYOP Case Study

Open Document