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Ha! The Air Force hasn't changed much since my day.

*Really* John....you can't be surprised, can you???

lol

No!!

Ha, that's the depressing part Pinch.

Go ahead and laugh, perhaps you don't rate anyone. It's about time we ditched the arcane practices that go into writing an EPR today.
Naturally, equally esoteric rules will spring up in due time. But I for one won't miss all the damned head-scratching and thesaurus-searching that EPR time always brought.

Um... I got briefed on processing changes (all electronic via AKO) for NCOER's last January.

The USAF ain't the only ones guilty of the paperwork drill.

SgtF:
WTFO? Evals have never been easier! You should have had to do them when they were typewritten using carbon copies and a 1-9 scale.
The best thing that ever happened to APRs - now called (ugh!) EPRs, was computers. Sure everyone then thought they had to be perfect, so you have to redo them more often, but you can also save your original version to reuse after everybody in the chain gets tired of marking up your work.
Follow these easy steps:
1. Find a copy of Tongue and Quill
2. Take some technical writing courses.
2. Know the regs and criteria inside and out.
3. Know your people and their work.
4. Know what's important.
5. Know how to keep the illiterate reviewers from screwing up your writing (beat them over the head with #1-#3.)
Life will never get simpler. Just wait until you tangle with the civilian versions in Corporate America!

SMSgt Mac,
Thanks for your comments- by the way, I read your blog regularly- but my writing skills aren't an issue here, although #5 certainly has been from time to time. (The boss sent back the last EPR I wrote because she thought I'd made up the word "adroit.")
I spend more time trying to shape a bullet statement to fit exactly into the line, with no more than three spaces left over, than I do putting together the bullets.
That's arbitrary and silly, and all too typical. A new form means the head shed will have to sit back and watch a bit before it can start issuing memos on "correct" performance reporting, and even after things are re-complicated we have a simpler form to write.

Postscript- I couldn't agree more regarding computers, having cut my teeth on an ancient and ill-remembered piece of machinery, called a "typewriter." A manual one, at that- no electricity involved. Good lord, how on earth did people manage to get anything done before the advent of the word processor?