Volume 2 - Chapter 105 - The Talk II
| "You've all sat through the boring theory. You know what a Gate is by now. Today we start experimenting with it. Small draws only—thimble-sized, nothing more. I will demonstrate a basic application of Psyfocus once, and then you will each replicate it. Always watch your thresholds and trust your instincts. [...] Now, begin on my count—" These are the final recorded words of Psychic Instructor Marienne Solveig-Adda, Training Hall B-4, IGS Monsoon, PFC 688. The theory course in question had covered thresholds for a total of one early morning, a full month prior—with an entire Assessment sitting between the initial lesson and the application. Two hundred and ninety-four personnel were Zeroed in the resulting cascade. The IGS Monsoon required extensive repairs over the course of the following seven months, before it could pick up a new Recruitment Drive. UHF investigators later noted that the instructor's lesson plan was, for a class of properlytrained Psykers, downright flawless. The instructors of the so-called "Competence Assumption Era" were, by every professional measure, skilled Psykers and diligent teachers. Their shared, fatal error was simpler than incompetence: They taught the students they expected to have, rather than the students they actually had. This incident, and many similar ones during that era, is the direct reason all UHF Psychic education was subsequently rebuilt from the ground up in PFC689. Psychic education, per modern UHF doctrine, now starts from the ground floor and requires consistent, intermittent testing of knowledge—with each layer of theory confirmed in full—before any practical experimentation is offered to the budding Psykers in question. All initial experimentation must additionally be performed in the presence of a Null, to further curtail cascading failures. [Excerpt from "A Brief History of Instructional Failures" — UHF Marine Corps Training Command internal orientation material, PFC 927]
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