 Soldiers on J-Bear competed in order to obtain the Expert Infantry Badge, or EIB. The EIB is presented for completion of a course designed to demonstrate proficiency in basic infantry skills. The EIB is pretty difficult to obtain because it's a long course. It takes numerous hours to study for it, and not only that, but you have to understand each task in its entirety before you can move on to the next task. It's a pretty big deal for the infantry. Right now, we started out with about 75 candidates for my company, and we're down to below 20, so it's a pretty tough selection process. Right, 2-0-0, add 3,000. I'm an executive officer, so I'm not a platoon leader anymore, but it's still important for me to show soldiers in my company that I can come out and do the same thing that we expect them to do on a daily basis. Well, we had two weeks of train up, but prior to that, we would train in any downtime we had. It's a pretty big deal, especially for someone like me, I'm non-deployed. I don't have a CIB right now, so it's a pretty big deal for me. You know, you go to a board and people look at you like he knows his stuff. Of the 700 soldiers who competed in the course, only 136 had what it took to receive their EIB badge. This badge will help set them apart from their fellow soldiers and may help lead to promotion later down the road. Senior Airman Sarah Tracty, joint base Elmendorf Richardson, Alaska.