October 26
Victory run went poorly. Our squad leaders couldn’t stay aligned so our whole platoon looked sloppy. I was having a hard time keeping in step because the cadence was so fast but the pace was so slow, I had to take these extremely short choppy steps the whole 3 miles. Very uncomfortable. We also had 2 drop out of the platoon because they couldn’t keep up, and our DI showed up during breakfast and tore them apart, threatened to roll them. I wish so much that a class officer would be around when he did that.
Bad day for mental health. Sorry to say I really don’t want to talk about it.
Morning classes were hard to stay awake in again thanks to the drolling on of senior chief Washington. I’m really worried about the final in her class which will be on Friday. Lots of study to do…
I was given the email address for my detailer, so I wrote him asking for more information about IW. I hope I hear from him soon.
Afternoon engineering classes were interesting enough to keep me awake. It was all about weapon systems and electronic warfare. Not the sort of stuff I’ll be doing, but very interesting anyway. The final for engineering is tomorrow. Not too worried about it, again it’s just Friday that worries me.
So now that the victory run has happened, class 03-12 are candi-os. It’s strange to see them in their khaki uniforms. We walked in for breakfast and there they were, all in khakis, sitting and eating like normal people and chatting. They all looked like kids at Christmas. Most had coffee or chocolate milk or all of the other things we’re never allowed. What a fantastic feeling that must be! Back in the house, we now have to brace the bulkhead and give the greeting of the day to them. They’re not used to it yet, it’s pretty funny, every time we’d snap to attention and scream “GOOD AFTERNOON SIR!!!” (or whatever time it was) they’d just lose their bearing completely and smile and laugh. They’re not used to it, heck they were doing it to the 02-12 candi-os just yesterday. We had a lot of fun with it.
I should mention that as a normal class, we only ever wear NWUs or PT gear (blue shorts yellow shirts). The khaki uniform is what candi-os wear when outside, inside they wear custom PT gear. Each class custom designs a t-shirt, a sweater (same design as t-shirt), and sweatshorts. The custom t-shirt will have a drawing of some kind, a list of all the names of the class, and a nickname specific to the owner. It’s how we tell candi-os from normal OCs when we all have PT gear on. Their shirts are grey, the design on the back is a ripoff from their DI’s last class (the old class t-shirts are framed and hung all over the walls, so we know what they all look like. It’s the EXACT same design but has 03-12 in the middle and with a different border, very disappointing and unoriginal, but they’re proud, and I’m happy for them. It’s been fun to ask them “how did you end up with that nickname?” We’ve been working on nicknames for each other in 04-12 for awhile now, when it comes time to order our custom shirts and sweats we’ll be ready.
The SWO’s in our class (surface warfare officers, their job is to be a division head on a ship, be it food services or supply or whatever) picked their ships today. They were given a list of ships and available jobs, and “discussion” began. The arguments were brutal. Blood spit and lung fragments were flying. Then again, it is the next 2 years of their life at stake, I’d argue to the death too. Then after they all got settled and decided (and several people now have no chance of ever getting along again), they were given their CELL PHONES back to call family and give them the news and make plans, etc. Deighan has his cell phone. NOT FAIR. They obviously are forbidden from using them, but of course all of them DO use them when nobody is looking, and they can browse the internet and listen to music…. Total crap. Class team was supposed to take the cell phones away again, but they didn’t and nobody is going to say anything about it. I won’t get my cell phone till CandiO phase.
Bedtime now, goodnight everyone.
October 27
Lots happened today, mixed emotions right now.
The morning PT in the freezing rain sucked as always. I’m amazed every time I make it through.
Then study time, another naval orientation class and then the engineering final exam. I was VERY confident going into this thing, it’s the naval orientation final tomorrow that I’m worried about. Exam comes and goes, and I scored a lousy 84% (sorry Uncle Kelly). Now I’m concerned. If “confident” bags me an 84%, what the heck will “worried” get me tomorrow? This test is all mass memorization, and believe it or not I am having a VERY hard time retaining information in my perpetual half-awake state. I’m really quite stressed at this point.
Our watch bill coordinator (classmate who schedules which one of us stands which watches) has put me on ANOTHER 0000 to 0400 for next week. There are many in our class (including her) who have not stood that watch yet, so THEY should be standing it, NOT me. It’s all bias. Visava, my first roommate, offered to switch with me for another (2000 to 0000 so almost as bad) shift. We need to stand one of each shift. I swear, if she puts me down for another 0000 to 0400 watch, I’m going to raise hell until it’s changed or she’s fired. They’ve recently discontinued sleep chits, so now if you have to stand a shift at night, too bad, no sleep for you that night. Deal with it.
I was given the chance to call my detailer finally, but he didn’t answer. Our class officer gave me the email address of an IW LTJG that was in OCS at the same time he was, so I shot her an email and got a reply. So great to finally have a bit of insight into IW, but the news was less than thrilling. Apparently after OCS and IWBC, we go to one of the four places I’ve mentioned before. We stay there until we get qualified as an information dominance corps officer, then get put on DIRSUP or direct support. DIRSUP means we’re stationed on shore, but get called out to ships, subs, or air squads whenever they need an IW officer. To be frank, I hate the idea. Everything about it. Who would want to work a job where they could get a call randomly “oh by the way, you leave for a submarine next week and will be gone for 6 months. Ciao!” Don’t get me wrong, I joined the Navy knowing I would deploy. I WANTED to deploy, at least before I learned how hard it is to be away from Amanda. My mind will probably change vastly after leaving OCS, but it’s going to take some time to come to terms with this. She also said that IW officers, when underway in certain areas, will live a live VERY similar to the life here. Always “at work”, 4 hours of sleep per night, constant stresses, standing watches, 15 minute meals, it just sounds like hell.
When I left Reno for OCS, I was SO ready to finally begin my professional life. Now here I sit, miserable, constantly being hit with bad news about life in the Navy. There’s just nothing good to look forward to. I can only sit and remind myself why it was the right choice, and hope that I’ll love the work. If I don’t… I’d rather not even think about it.
Sleep now, tomorrow is Friday, which to the DI’s means “beatdown Friday” on the PT field. Need all the sleep I can get to survive that and have enough left to take the final. Goodnight.
October 28
Terrible. This morning it was 30-something degrees outside so we had to PT indoors. It was an EXACT repeat of that disgusting sweat puddle scenario. We did the exact same routine. Almost threw up, not because of gross factor but because of the beating. Running indoors for a half hour, sprinting, pushups situps and mountain climbers with hands slipping all over the floor because of other peoples sweat, and several DIs screaming at you for slipping. It’s dehumanizing.
After breakfast I came back to my room to find my locker bent open. That can only mean one thing: candiO’s stole my rifle. My lock was still on the locker, so they must have jiggled the door until the dummy bolt slipped (my inside dummy bolt is bent so badly that it slips out if jiggled hard enough, even though I close it as far as it can close) and then they pried it open, bending the hell out of the metal rings that the masterlock attaches to, and managed to open a gap just wide enough to steal my rifle. According to the rules, the candiO’s are supposed to steal as many rifles as they can every day and give them to class team, who then beats the crap out of the owner. It’s just a way to make sure everyone locks their lockers at ALL times. Rifle beatings are bad beatings, the kind nobody should have to suffer. So instead the candiO’s just gave my rifle to our class president. I was absolutely furious, blind rage. I had locked my dummy bolt and my locker, just like I do every day, exactly like I’m supposed to do. We always give our peers quite a ripping when we catch them not locking their lockers, because they risk getting beat and getting all of us beat too by not locking up. So now I’m getting an earful and I’ve done NOTHING wrong. It was just as unfair as unfair can get. Now I have to stand an extra watch from 0400 to 0800 on Suday, that’s the punishment for those who have their rifle stolen. Loss of precious sIeep time, we have to be up an hour before the watch starts. I raised hell, I got my complaints sent all the way up the candiO chain of command, and apparently now they’ll stop the BS breaking into lockers and only take rifles out of lockers that were actually left unlocked, but my punishment watch can’t be reassigned once it’s assigned, so I still have to get punished for nothing.
After that we had 6th week PI reinspects for the two in our class that failed. Again, everyone in the class got their stuff ready. They came to me and asked me to shine their shoes, so of course I did. Visava, my first roommate, came up to me and took one of the shoes and challenged me to see who could shine better. It’s all very flattering in a sad way. Anyhow, I absolutely whipped him in the shoe shining contest. I took those things from dull, dusty black to GLASS. After I finished, I had Wardlow (the PI failure who’s shoes I had just shined) put them on and walk down the pway. No joke at all, as he walks by people start poking their heads out commenting on the shoes. “Those look like mirrors! How did you do that??” and he’d credit me. It’s so amusing to me that out here, we have nothing else to draw our attention than shiny shoes, and that they’re my handiwork. Two other candidates came to me afterward and had me teach them how to shine boots, and I kid you not, after classes our class CPO walks into our p-way, we all stand at attention, and as she walks down the hall she stops in front of 3 people and comments on how nice their boots look. Guess which 3. The whole class shines their boots regularly, but only us 3 were complimented.
The naval orientation final went well, thankfully. 86% (sorry again Uncle Kelly). I’m so relieved to have not failed, it would have been VERY easy for them to make that test ‘picky’ enough to fail all of us because of the depth of information and stats we had to review. Now that it’s over, I have nothing big until week 8. Week 7 is supposed to be super slow, nothing going on but PT, class and whitespace. Then week 8 has ORLP, 8th week PI, the last PFA, and two finals. It’ll be brutal, but if you survive week 8 you end up in week 9, where you become a Candidate Officer at last!
Got my always-long-awaited phone call to Amanda and it felt great. The relief of passing the final and talking to Amanda brought me back to life after an otherwise abysmal day. Going to bed now, PT in the morning, then we start all new classes. Exciting stuff for OCS life. Goodnight.
October 29
3 mile interval run. Could not describe how bad it feels. Threw up several times but kept it inside. Even after that terrible run, our DI just kept beating us and beating us. We had to carry the PT table (very heavy wooden platform) all the way down and back across the football field. Carrying that table is usually punishment, but even so we’ve never had to carry it that far, my back is so screwed up… He made us do it as punishment for “chatting with candiOs”, apparently 4 people had been caught chatting casually with a candiO. As it turns out, the 4 people were from class 05-12, so we got beat for their screw-up. No justice.
It didn’t get any better as time went on. We were sharked all of breakfast. I was having a really hard time dealing with it. We were forced to stand up and run around our tables because someone “was sucking on their teeth”. ANYTHING they could see as wrong and we were punished. After breakfast, he called us in for drill practice. Normally that means change out of the sweaty PT gear, put NWUs on, get our rifles and go to the gym. Not this time, he told us to leave our PT gear on and to go the gym. Freaked, we all got our rifles and went to the gym. The first 20 minutes or so were normal practice, but then he snapped. It was a beating that lasted from 9:20 to about 10:30. Squats with rifles above heads, legs locked to butt on heel contact. Mountain climbers. Pushups. Lunges (standing to knee-to-deck). It was easily top three on the worst beatings we’ve ever taken.
Now we’ve got the whole afternoon to sweep, mop, and wax the floors. It’s relaxing at first, but the hours start to drag as we finish, then we have nothing to do and we just sit around. That’s the worst.
Contacted the IW LTJG again. She said that she didn’t do DIRSUP, instead she went straight to a ship. I may do the same just because DIRSUP sounds so terrible. She said that some IWOs get deployed to overseas bases instead of ships/subs, and spend their time flying on intel planes. That sounds more interesting to me by far, I know that one such base is in Japan. I hope to learn more soon.
Still no use of condiments in the chow hall. I’m so tortured now to sit in front of a bottle of hot sauce that I can’t touch. The food is so terrible… best thing I get to eat are the apples, bananas, and peanut butter sandwiches. Had 6 bananas today total, I’m becoming an addict.
We ran through “indoc Sunday” practice with 03-12 (or I guess I should stop calling them 03-12 and just call them the candiOs now. That’ll take some getting used to). I played an indoc, did some screaming, and played an “intimidator” or guy who stands at parade rest with the cover pulled down past the eyes, just looking scary. It was fun to see it from the non-stressful side. Still, I can only feel so sorry for the poor people about to start this hell.
I need to go to bed exactly at 2200 tonight because of the bull**** watch I have to stand due to the locker incident. Still very, very angry about being forced to lose precious sleep for no good reason. Standing watch is a game of survival, the whole point is to try to NOT mess something up and get RPT’d. I hope I do well because I’m so sore that I’m afraid a good RPT would send me to the hospital. Goodnight all.
October 30
I don’t even know which of these days is going to have the worst start. It’d be a damn tough contest. BOOD watch from 0330 to 0730 was just terrible. NOTHING to do but stand and stare blankly from 0330 to about 0500, then the candiOs started waking up and scrambling around like hell to prepare for 06-12. For me that meant constant “good morning sir/ma’am” and always looking over my shoulder. Then they started using me to do the stuff they hadn’t prepared, was getting orders barked at me from everywhere. Got yelled at for not signing out of the BOOD when I had indeed signed out. In the middle of it all the operations officer of OCS showed up and had me move a bunch of stuff (very random/rare thing for an actual officer to show up). Almost didn’t get breakfast.
After breakfast (daily banana count: 3) it was just whitespace. I’m exhausted and desperate for sleep, but can’t at risk of ridiculous punishment. NOTHING happened until lunch. It was basically just another 4 hours of suffering, but this time I could sit down. After lunch (daily banana count: 5) Finally the indocs (06-12) finished the paperwork stuff and the screaming started. I was an intimidator on 3rd deck, meaning I stood at parade rest stone-still, looking angry and blocking an incorrect path that they might take, had a great view of it all. Some looked scared, some looked motivated, but they all looked shocked. It brought back some unwanted memories for sure.
There’s just so little to write about on Sundays. All we did was run around and help the unorganized candiOs get through indoc Sunday. It was a lot of “hurry up and wait”, which again gives you that terrible unwanted thinking time. I’ll be sleep deprived as heck this week, tomorrow Deighan has BOOD watch from 0330 to 0730 so he’ll no doubt wake me up when he has to leave the room at 0300. Friday I have to be the section leader, so that’s even less sleep and more pain.
Not sure if I’ve ever explained that. Every day we have a section leader. The section leader is a member of our class who becomes the first person on our chain of command. They’re responsible for the class’s operation, basically standing in front and barking orders all day. In the morning they report to the DI in his office. It’s a long dance of military procedures that are basically impossible to execute correctly on your first (and only) try, and they universally get beaten when they mess up. I’ve been practicing, but once under that much pressure, nobody does it perfectly. Then they have to run morning PT, which is heavily DI monitored and the section leader is –almost- always beaten for messing something up. After that it gets a bit easier, you just have to know where all 42 class members are at all times (including bathroom calls, becomes very hard to keep track of). The most annoying part is that the section leader runs the class through all chow-hall procedures, so they get less time to eat and more opportunities to be beaten for messing up. Everyone must be section leader at least once, my day is coming. NOT looking forward to it.
They ran out of bananas at dinner.
This weeks schedule came out, looks like we start our new classes tomorrow and stay in class all week. I like the idea of a routine, once adjusted I think it may help the days go by a bit faster. Mornings will be the worst because of PT, so I may fall out for medical one of these mornings to get a break. My feet are getting worse and I have a very infected wound on my left thigh, enough to merit a visit but also ignorable.
I’d like to again thank everyone who has been writing to me. I don’t have the time to respond to them, I hope you understand that I wish I could. The encouragement, the updates on the real world, and the laughs you’ve sent mean so much.
Goodnight.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Oct. 24 - Oct. 25
Here's the last two days. Man, it feels like I haven't sent you an email in weeks, but it was only the day before yesterday.... So depressing....
Oh well, must move foreward!
October 24
The verdict: 105 situps, 47 pushups, 9:59 run. Beat my record in each area. Would love to celebrate BUT I only managed to do this by manipulation. Knowing that the DIs are NOT correcting bad form nearly as bad as they used to, I did relatively bad-form pushups to get to 47. It was so weird, normally I’m absolutely dead around 45, but doing the poor-form pushups I bet I could have gone clear to 60. I stopped at 47 because that’s the minimum requirement for our next PFA. I took the gamble to look around and as it turns out, NOBODY is doing perfect pushups. That’s how everyone else is doing so many… (My pushup score is in the bottom 5 in the whole class). However, situps max out at 105 so I got a perfect situp score and a pretty damn good run which made my overall score above class average.
I had really hoped to get studying done today but that didn’t happen. Instead I sat in class unable to stay awake in the morning, then in the afternoon we had 4 solid hours of class with the senior chief who can’t teach worth a damn. Her voice lulls everyone to sleep. I stayed awake well, but even then, sitting front and center, I couldn’t follow the lecture because she’s such a terrible teacher. She reads the powerpoint slides and then attempts to explain them but it’s clear that she doesn’t understand it all herself. The slides are too incomplete to be self-study material, so now I have no idea how I’ll learn this stuff for the final at the end of this week. Just another thing to stress about.
The class officer spent the day pulling us out of class one by one to talk to us. Not normally done at OCS, but he just wanted us to know where we stand as far as class team is concerned. He told me I was just above average, which is exactly where I’m happy to be.
6th week PI prep tomorrow, we spent the evening preparing and studying. I snuck off for a few minutes to do more research into IW on the internet, but didn’t find anything helpful at all. I’m confident in my uniform and bearing, but my knowledge isn’t quite there so I hope to pull it all together before the inspection tomorrow morning. I got more letters today, again thank you all so much for writing to me. I don’t have the time to reply to them but I really wish I did.
October 25
Woke up to more screaming and sharking from class team. Breakfast was tense as hell, everyone was getting yelled at and threatened. One of our classmates has a beating coming from Bomba, he must be terrified…
6th week PI was a huge success for me. A perfect score is 30/30. The inspector couldn’t find anything wrong with me at all, and I answered all of my questions clearly and correctly, so he just stood there for awhile staring at me then finally said “Nametag, minus one” and walked away. My nametag is perfect, even our class team said so when I asked. They just don’t want anyone to have a perfect score because it makes them look bad as an inspector, so I got a 29/30. Rather flattering.
Had a minute to chat with Aziz. He’s doing much better now, he’s off whatever medication they put him on. He said he had a seizure/some sort of heat stroke. He blacked out, doesn’t remember the panic attack at all, but woke up in the hospital and right-hooked one of the medics before realizing what had happened. Interesting story, really.
After lunch it was back to class, we had another long lecture on “leadership self-assessment”. They did a briggs-meyers personality test, got INTJ which is what I got last time I took it if memory serves. Then again they proceeded to hammer us with impossible moral questions and made us feel terrible for our answers and told us that we need to become different people, etc. I hate it all so much, they’ve already crawled up into our heads and now they’re infesting the deepest parts of our minds. There’s a fine line between training a person to perform a job, and just full out trying to change a person. The latter is surely happening to us. I want to perform my job to the best of my ability, but I will not change who I am as a person for a job. Ever. I can be the best officer my community has ever seen WITHOUT becoming heartless. I just need to survive the mind games and make it to the other side…
The evening passed with more victory run practice, then some group PT, and some study time. Got on the google page with Amanda while everyone was at Mom’s birthday dinner (Happy birthday!), boy it was just SO WRONG to think I could have sat and chatted with everyone over Amanda’s phone. It hurts too bad to switch from OCS to normal chat and then back to OCS again, I learned this from our phone calls. Few feelings on earth are lower than having a wonderful conversation Amanda for a couple of hours on Sunday and finally feeling normal again, only to hang up, turn around and remember where I was and how much longer I have to be here. I would love to just dive into that family dinner conversation and catch up with everyone, but it’s not worth the pain, or the risk.
On a side note, it’s also pretty sucky to think about all the wonderful food they are eating while I’m here looking forward to my next peanut butter sandwich because that’s the tastiest thing I get out here. I’d kill for a cheddar biscuit…
Anyhow, now that we’ve passed 6th week PI (after writing that statement I had to look at the beginning of this entry to double check that it was TODAY that the inspection happened. It feels like it was so long ago…) we’ve earned the anchor on the left collar and the anchor on the cover. We can’t wear them until Friday though, when we become the senior class on deck and class 03-12 become the candi-os. When that happens we’ll move to another pway again, and there’s no telling if I’ll be lucky enough to get an “unlocked” computer again. Can’t remember if I ever mentioned it, but this computer is unlocked, meaning the security protocols are mostly missing and I can access a lot more of the internet than other computers can. This one can go to google hence the trick with google pages, other computers can only go to navy.mil and the training email. They say there are 8 or 9 unlocked computers in the pway we’re about to move into (out of about 60). If the computer is a standard locked computer I won’t be able to use the google page trick anymore and it’ll be back to weekend-only communication. I hope I win that lottery twice, I really lean on that secret line of communication with Amanda.
On the UPSIDE (hah, there is an upside every now and then!) once we become the senior class on deck we move tables again in the chow hall. The final set of tables we move to have CONDIMENTS on them! Now, there’s no guarantee at all that our DI will let us use them, but if he does, man I’m going to eat so much hot sauce that they’ll need to order it by the keg to keep supply up. It’s pathetic, but I’m SO excited!
Time for bed. Victory run will be at around 0500 tomorrow, hope it goes well. I’ve heard the DI’s RPT the crap out of the junior class on the run (us) regardless of how well we do on the run, so I’m just going to go into it expecting.
Goodnight.
Oh well, must move foreward!
October 24
The verdict: 105 situps, 47 pushups, 9:59 run. Beat my record in each area. Would love to celebrate BUT I only managed to do this by manipulation. Knowing that the DIs are NOT correcting bad form nearly as bad as they used to, I did relatively bad-form pushups to get to 47. It was so weird, normally I’m absolutely dead around 45, but doing the poor-form pushups I bet I could have gone clear to 60. I stopped at 47 because that’s the minimum requirement for our next PFA. I took the gamble to look around and as it turns out, NOBODY is doing perfect pushups. That’s how everyone else is doing so many… (My pushup score is in the bottom 5 in the whole class). However, situps max out at 105 so I got a perfect situp score and a pretty damn good run which made my overall score above class average.
I had really hoped to get studying done today but that didn’t happen. Instead I sat in class unable to stay awake in the morning, then in the afternoon we had 4 solid hours of class with the senior chief who can’t teach worth a damn. Her voice lulls everyone to sleep. I stayed awake well, but even then, sitting front and center, I couldn’t follow the lecture because she’s such a terrible teacher. She reads the powerpoint slides and then attempts to explain them but it’s clear that she doesn’t understand it all herself. The slides are too incomplete to be self-study material, so now I have no idea how I’ll learn this stuff for the final at the end of this week. Just another thing to stress about.
The class officer spent the day pulling us out of class one by one to talk to us. Not normally done at OCS, but he just wanted us to know where we stand as far as class team is concerned. He told me I was just above average, which is exactly where I’m happy to be.
6th week PI prep tomorrow, we spent the evening preparing and studying. I snuck off for a few minutes to do more research into IW on the internet, but didn’t find anything helpful at all. I’m confident in my uniform and bearing, but my knowledge isn’t quite there so I hope to pull it all together before the inspection tomorrow morning. I got more letters today, again thank you all so much for writing to me. I don’t have the time to reply to them but I really wish I did.
October 25
Woke up to more screaming and sharking from class team. Breakfast was tense as hell, everyone was getting yelled at and threatened. One of our classmates has a beating coming from Bomba, he must be terrified…
6th week PI was a huge success for me. A perfect score is 30/30. The inspector couldn’t find anything wrong with me at all, and I answered all of my questions clearly and correctly, so he just stood there for awhile staring at me then finally said “Nametag, minus one” and walked away. My nametag is perfect, even our class team said so when I asked. They just don’t want anyone to have a perfect score because it makes them look bad as an inspector, so I got a 29/30. Rather flattering.
Had a minute to chat with Aziz. He’s doing much better now, he’s off whatever medication they put him on. He said he had a seizure/some sort of heat stroke. He blacked out, doesn’t remember the panic attack at all, but woke up in the hospital and right-hooked one of the medics before realizing what had happened. Interesting story, really.
After lunch it was back to class, we had another long lecture on “leadership self-assessment”. They did a briggs-meyers personality test, got INTJ which is what I got last time I took it if memory serves. Then again they proceeded to hammer us with impossible moral questions and made us feel terrible for our answers and told us that we need to become different people, etc. I hate it all so much, they’ve already crawled up into our heads and now they’re infesting the deepest parts of our minds. There’s a fine line between training a person to perform a job, and just full out trying to change a person. The latter is surely happening to us. I want to perform my job to the best of my ability, but I will not change who I am as a person for a job. Ever. I can be the best officer my community has ever seen WITHOUT becoming heartless. I just need to survive the mind games and make it to the other side…
The evening passed with more victory run practice, then some group PT, and some study time. Got on the google page with Amanda while everyone was at Mom’s birthday dinner (Happy birthday!), boy it was just SO WRONG to think I could have sat and chatted with everyone over Amanda’s phone. It hurts too bad to switch from OCS to normal chat and then back to OCS again, I learned this from our phone calls. Few feelings on earth are lower than having a wonderful conversation Amanda for a couple of hours on Sunday and finally feeling normal again, only to hang up, turn around and remember where I was and how much longer I have to be here. I would love to just dive into that family dinner conversation and catch up with everyone, but it’s not worth the pain, or the risk.
On a side note, it’s also pretty sucky to think about all the wonderful food they are eating while I’m here looking forward to my next peanut butter sandwich because that’s the tastiest thing I get out here. I’d kill for a cheddar biscuit…
Anyhow, now that we’ve passed 6th week PI (after writing that statement I had to look at the beginning of this entry to double check that it was TODAY that the inspection happened. It feels like it was so long ago…) we’ve earned the anchor on the left collar and the anchor on the cover. We can’t wear them until Friday though, when we become the senior class on deck and class 03-12 become the candi-os. When that happens we’ll move to another pway again, and there’s no telling if I’ll be lucky enough to get an “unlocked” computer again. Can’t remember if I ever mentioned it, but this computer is unlocked, meaning the security protocols are mostly missing and I can access a lot more of the internet than other computers can. This one can go to google hence the trick with google pages, other computers can only go to navy.mil and the training email. They say there are 8 or 9 unlocked computers in the pway we’re about to move into (out of about 60). If the computer is a standard locked computer I won’t be able to use the google page trick anymore and it’ll be back to weekend-only communication. I hope I win that lottery twice, I really lean on that secret line of communication with Amanda.
On the UPSIDE (hah, there is an upside every now and then!) once we become the senior class on deck we move tables again in the chow hall. The final set of tables we move to have CONDIMENTS on them! Now, there’s no guarantee at all that our DI will let us use them, but if he does, man I’m going to eat so much hot sauce that they’ll need to order it by the keg to keep supply up. It’s pathetic, but I’m SO excited!
Time for bed. Victory run will be at around 0500 tomorrow, hope it goes well. I’ve heard the DI’s RPT the crap out of the junior class on the run (us) regardless of how well we do on the run, so I’m just going to go into it expecting.
Goodnight.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Oct. 20 - Oct. 23
October 20
PT this morning was worse than yesterday, by a lot. Our DI wasn’t there so our Chief ran it. She has a favorite thing to do: put us in pushup position, tell us to lower ourselves almost all the way to the deck, then she’ll leave us there. We spent no less than 15 minutes doing this, and keep in mind that this starts to REALLY suck after about 10 seconds. She screams at the people who can’t hold themselves up for very long, and the unlucky ones get pulled out and RPT’d. After holding that unforgiving position for awhile, she had us lined up and we’d sprint 40 yards then hold that position, then sprint back 40 yards and hold it, repeat… You don’t get a good workout from this because your form sucks after the first minute of holding that position. After about a minute you either arch your hips down to the deck or put your arms under your body and try to rest on your wrists or lean hard to one side and lock that elbow or whatever you need to do, but the fact is we are no longer working the proper muscle groups for pushups so all of this pain isn’t helping improve pushups.
PT ended up being the worst part of the day. After PT we had breakfast (sharked the whole time…) and then off to classes. Class was particularly bad because we had Senior Chief Washington teaching, and she is sooooooo bad. She speaks monotone, unanimated and uninterested, reads directly from the slides, and always puts long silent pauses between statements. For a group of sleep deprived and beaten candidates, this is no way to learn. We all just sit and struggle to stay awake, not learning a damn thing.
Lunch was terrible but we didn’t get sharked. One of our roll-outs who is now in 05-12 was getting torn apart by their DI. His name is Rosell. It was so hard to listen to, they had him standing there on his own screaming aye sir while they yelled at him because was a vegetarian and he apparently told his class officer about it, which they translated as skipping the chain of command. Pretty much the whole of OCS and a bunch of other people are in the chow hall at this point so it must have just been humiliating.
More class after lunch, I stayed awake by drawing. Juvenile, but effective.
After lunch I got the google pages trick going with Amanda. Basically I created a webpage template that both she and I can edit at the same time, making it an effective chatroom. Obviously all emails and messengers and social media are blocked on these computers, but they’re out of their leagues if they think they can stop me. Chatting with Amanda for the 20 or so minutes that I had free was wonderful!
It’s amazing how when I first got here I was told I need to “live from chow to chow.” I took that advice to heart, but quickly found that I actually HATED eating by the numbers so much that going to chow was something to fear. I really did hate the prospect of going to eat for the first couple of weeks. For the third and fourth weeks I was growing indifferent about the chow hall. Today, for the first time, I really did live from chow to chow. I caught myself actually feeling excited by the prospect of going to eat even though it is by the numbers. It’s a great change.
Winding down now. Gonna study for the 2 quizzes tomorrow then go to bed. I can honestly say that today was the easiest day I’ve had so far at OCS. The morning was the only unbearable part, then it was just a regular awful day. I’m so used to constant torture that a day of minimal torture is a welcome thing. Goodnight all.
October 21
PT this morning was absolutely brutal again. I almost threw up trying to keep up with our DI, he ran us for 3 miles at a pace I could barely stand. 6 or 7 dropped way behind the platoon, and of those 6 or 7, 3 of them couldn’t even run anymore they were so broken. He lined us up afterwards and said he’s going to roll them. Nobody doubts him. It’s so f***ing unfair that these 3 people who can PASS the PFA and thus are within Navy physical fitness standards are now possibly going to roll just because our DI doesn’t like them.
I usually write these journals in the couple of minutes of downtime between doing things, but today’s been so busy that it is now 5pm and I haven’t written in the journal since after PT at about 6am. After breakfast we went to class and took a quiz on naval orientation, got 80%, and then our class CPO came in and gave us more lectures on the Navy’s core values. Of course everyone is so damn afraid of her (or anyone on our class team) that we were all just completely locked up and not really learning anything. Once again her lectures on the Navy’s core values made me just absolutely furious. She preaches that we have to be perfect robotic police of every Navy code and standard, we need to basically be jackasses and treat nobody as if they were human. It’s a bunch of bull, if I am a department head and I see something improper going on, I will attempt to end the problem myself before sending it up the chain of command and getting people fired. If I witness a code violation I will correct the individuals myself before sending the violators to a review board. She’s going as far as to tell us to never drink in public bars if you’re on deployment because there may be enlisted sailors around. We’re supposed to stay “locked on” both at work and off duty, meaning even if we’re not at work there’s no smiling and cracking jokes and letting yourself act how you please. All the things that I enjoy doing on a daily basis are somehow wrong to do now. And while the logical side of me KNOWS that all of it is a load of crap and that naval officers are normal people when off work (and often times while at work), it still gets under my skin and makes me think “oh God, what have I signed up for…” I can’t live my life like that, it’s just the polar opposite of my personality. I NEED to unlock and smile and laugh and act like a 20-something, because that’s who I am. Hell, I’ll probably be just a big kid even when I’m 70. But out here, sleep deprived, beaten, whipped, afraid, its almost impossible to brush those words off. Everything they say burns into us.
After she left us (much to our relief) we went back to our p-way to line up for lunch. It’s such a terrible feeling when we’re in our little safe zone, our p-way, and class team walks in. But of course it happens, she shows up again and pulls two people out of the p-way and proceeds to just brutally RPT them. Apparently they were having a hard time keeping their eyes open in class (we ALL have this problem, mind you, so I couldn’t tell you why she chose those two. I was sitting near one of them and he was no different from everyone else). It just went on and on and on, we’re all in the p-way at attention staring at the wall opposite while listening to the helpless screams of our two classmates and the terrifying angry screams of the CPO. Physical torture for the two unlucky ones, mental torture for the rest of us…
Then an engineering quiz, got another 80%. Some people stay up after hours to study more, I NEVER do so because sleep is pretty much our most precious possession out here. Considering I study so much less I’m happy with 80%.
They just told us the internet will be down all weekend again. We only get to use our emails on Sunday, but last Sunday the internet was down and this Sunday … the internet will be down. Sound fair?
Bedtime
October 22
This morning they marched us on to the track and said “run 12 laps”. 3 miles on a track is -usually- a terrible way to spend time, but I was having a blast. I could run at my own speed, look around (when the DI’s weren’t near) it was fantastic. Sadly, this is where the news gets bad again. I’m slowing down. Not sure if it’s my body adjusting to the increased oxygen or what, but I’m running slower now that I did when I was sick. My first mile time was just over 7 minutes and my 3 mile time was 22:40. I’m unhappy for sure, but that’s the least of my worries. I have to improve on every PFA in every category. If not, that’s an OLQ and a chance to get rolled for failure to show improvement. That’s the kind of stuff you really wish someone would have warned you about, I’m at risk of rolling if I can’t beat my last PFA, in which I set a personal record in all 3 categories. It’s just another bull**** move by our DI, even though we are in shape and fall well within the Navy’s physical fitness standards, he’ll roll us if we don’t improve every time. So now I’ll surely be stressed out and that won’t help… The next PFA is on Monday.
We went to the NEX to get our heads shaved again, this is the last time. Next time we have to go we’ll be allowed to keep some top hair and start growing military regulation haircuts. Being in the NEX, in a normal shopping center with normal people and normal clothes, it’s so normal it’s overwhelming. I had to leave the NEX quickly and get my mind back to OCS because it was just too painful to see the normal world.
Took awhile to recover from the NEX. It really messes me up to see normal things, knowing what I still have to go through. I bought some tide-to-go pens for inspection and an electric razor. The website said to bring a regular razor but the OCR (OCS manual that sets ALL of the rules) specifically mentions that electric razors are allowed. I’m hiding it just to be safe. It will probably be a very significant quality of life improvement.
In the afternoon we had a mock- 6th week PI inspection. We got our khakis on and marched to the gym, it felt great to wear something that wasn’t NWUs or PT gear. I passed my mock inspection and was complimented on my shoes, and the guy next to me got torn apart for his shoes. The inspector screamed “YOU CANT HAVE SHOES LOOKIN LIKE THAT WHEN YOURE STANDIN NEXT THAT GUY” and gestures at me. Felt great. Shining shoes with wax is surprisingly hard but I’m quite good at it after NJROTC. My shoes are quite a bit shinier than the rest of the class. Several people approached me afterwards and asked me to teach them so I guess I get to hold a shoe-shine workshop.
Not sure how I feel about being good at shoe shining. Guess it means I could get a little airport kiosk if my job with the Navy doesn’t work out.
We practiced the victory run procedures with 03-12 tonight. It was a great release to just hang out with another class with no DIs or CPOs or class officers around. Some of their running cadences are so funny we all laughed out loud, and OH MAN it feels good to sit and laugh! Called Amanda again after that, and it’s always bittersweet. My heart is lifted each time I hear her voice, but that call always has to end, and it just hurts. Long call hours tomorrow though.
Gonna try to sleep as much as possible, I have a lot of memorizing to do tomorrow for 6th week PI and I plan on being on the phone a lot. Goodnight.
October 23
I’ve had a terrible morning. Sunday means no class team, relaxed atmosphere, and time to get stuff done, so I’d expect to be very happy. Yet here I’m really doing bad again. I’m feeling depressed, trapped, and loathing the way my future looks. I’ve developed irrational fears about my job in the Navy. Maybe it’s just fear of the unknown, but I keep thinking “what if the job is really high-stress? I’ll be miserable…” or “what if the job is just paper pushing for 12 hours a day? I can’t live like that for 4 years…” or “what if they deploy me on some ship where, like here, I’ll have no lines of communication with Amanda? I can’t stand being away from her…” All of these negative thoughts are eating away at what little motivation I have left. I just don’t know how much of this I can handle. Every now and then I just snap and my thoughts get even worse. I’ve asked to talk to someone in my field to get some much needed insight, but of course there is nobody to talk to. I believe there are actually less than a thousand IW officers in all of the Navy, which is just ridiculously low. As badly as I need to know what life is like for an IW officer, a part of me doesn’t want to know because I’m afraid of the answer. Every day I struggle with my decision to join the Navy because, like everyone else who joins, I know absolutely nothing about my job and I’m dedicated to it for at least 4 years. I ALWAYS do a ton of research before making any major life decisions, but in this case there was simply no way to know. There are no IW officers around in Reno, nobody knows what they do, and the few I found online in various forums can’t talk about their work. It makes me feel stupid for signing up. How on earth could I have made that decision without knowing what I’ll be doing? Most of our class are pilots or SWO officers. For them, they can make it through each day because they know that on the other side of this hell they get to lead a division in an area of their choice or they get to fly aircraft. For IW, it’s just blind. I have nothing but more fear to look forward to after this hell. It’s causing me so much distress.
Talking to Amanda is so nice. It’s reenergizing. Saying goodbye until next weekend, however, is just devastating. I can’t NOT call her given the opportunity, but man it hurts to hang up.
Spent the day preparing for 6th week PI. My uniform is staged, pressed, steamed, and ready to be inspected. My shoes are shiny and my cover is squared away. All that remains is my knowledge, I have a lot of memorizing still to do. I’m having a very hard time retaining information. Probably sleep related.
I forced Deighan to chat with me for awhile. I can’t remember if I ever mentioned that I rather hate Deighan, he never chats. Everyone needs someone to share themselves with, ESPECIALLY out here, but this guy is just oblivious. Anyway, turns out that he applied for IW but was rejected, so he took SWO in hopes that he can transfer to IW eventually. Then I had another chat with one of our H class roll-ins Faulkner and another guy Wenzel, both of whom are feeling about as terrible as I am. Wenzel is here to build his experience and to get a job, but he really doesn’t seem to want to be here at all. Faulkner is here to have a job but like me seems to second-guess his being here all the time. Interestingly, he ALSO applied for IW but didn’t get it. It does me good to suffer with someone rather than suffer alone.
Well, tomorrow is the mid-PFA. I’ve only gotten worse but I’m expected to do better. I expect I’ll PASS, which should be the only thing that matters, but I won’t improve. I’ll give it hell, but I know where I’m at, it will not be an improvement in all three categories. Hopefully the beating will be survivable.
Study time then bedtime. I sincerely hope I hold it together tomorrow. The beating is coming, and it will be bad.
PT this morning was worse than yesterday, by a lot. Our DI wasn’t there so our Chief ran it. She has a favorite thing to do: put us in pushup position, tell us to lower ourselves almost all the way to the deck, then she’ll leave us there. We spent no less than 15 minutes doing this, and keep in mind that this starts to REALLY suck after about 10 seconds. She screams at the people who can’t hold themselves up for very long, and the unlucky ones get pulled out and RPT’d. After holding that unforgiving position for awhile, she had us lined up and we’d sprint 40 yards then hold that position, then sprint back 40 yards and hold it, repeat… You don’t get a good workout from this because your form sucks after the first minute of holding that position. After about a minute you either arch your hips down to the deck or put your arms under your body and try to rest on your wrists or lean hard to one side and lock that elbow or whatever you need to do, but the fact is we are no longer working the proper muscle groups for pushups so all of this pain isn’t helping improve pushups.
PT ended up being the worst part of the day. After PT we had breakfast (sharked the whole time…) and then off to classes. Class was particularly bad because we had Senior Chief Washington teaching, and she is sooooooo bad. She speaks monotone, unanimated and uninterested, reads directly from the slides, and always puts long silent pauses between statements. For a group of sleep deprived and beaten candidates, this is no way to learn. We all just sit and struggle to stay awake, not learning a damn thing.
Lunch was terrible but we didn’t get sharked. One of our roll-outs who is now in 05-12 was getting torn apart by their DI. His name is Rosell. It was so hard to listen to, they had him standing there on his own screaming aye sir while they yelled at him because was a vegetarian and he apparently told his class officer about it, which they translated as skipping the chain of command. Pretty much the whole of OCS and a bunch of other people are in the chow hall at this point so it must have just been humiliating.
More class after lunch, I stayed awake by drawing. Juvenile, but effective.
After lunch I got the google pages trick going with Amanda. Basically I created a webpage template that both she and I can edit at the same time, making it an effective chatroom. Obviously all emails and messengers and social media are blocked on these computers, but they’re out of their leagues if they think they can stop me. Chatting with Amanda for the 20 or so minutes that I had free was wonderful!
It’s amazing how when I first got here I was told I need to “live from chow to chow.” I took that advice to heart, but quickly found that I actually HATED eating by the numbers so much that going to chow was something to fear. I really did hate the prospect of going to eat for the first couple of weeks. For the third and fourth weeks I was growing indifferent about the chow hall. Today, for the first time, I really did live from chow to chow. I caught myself actually feeling excited by the prospect of going to eat even though it is by the numbers. It’s a great change.
Winding down now. Gonna study for the 2 quizzes tomorrow then go to bed. I can honestly say that today was the easiest day I’ve had so far at OCS. The morning was the only unbearable part, then it was just a regular awful day. I’m so used to constant torture that a day of minimal torture is a welcome thing. Goodnight all.
October 21
PT this morning was absolutely brutal again. I almost threw up trying to keep up with our DI, he ran us for 3 miles at a pace I could barely stand. 6 or 7 dropped way behind the platoon, and of those 6 or 7, 3 of them couldn’t even run anymore they were so broken. He lined us up afterwards and said he’s going to roll them. Nobody doubts him. It’s so f***ing unfair that these 3 people who can PASS the PFA and thus are within Navy physical fitness standards are now possibly going to roll just because our DI doesn’t like them.
I usually write these journals in the couple of minutes of downtime between doing things, but today’s been so busy that it is now 5pm and I haven’t written in the journal since after PT at about 6am. After breakfast we went to class and took a quiz on naval orientation, got 80%, and then our class CPO came in and gave us more lectures on the Navy’s core values. Of course everyone is so damn afraid of her (or anyone on our class team) that we were all just completely locked up and not really learning anything. Once again her lectures on the Navy’s core values made me just absolutely furious. She preaches that we have to be perfect robotic police of every Navy code and standard, we need to basically be jackasses and treat nobody as if they were human. It’s a bunch of bull, if I am a department head and I see something improper going on, I will attempt to end the problem myself before sending it up the chain of command and getting people fired. If I witness a code violation I will correct the individuals myself before sending the violators to a review board. She’s going as far as to tell us to never drink in public bars if you’re on deployment because there may be enlisted sailors around. We’re supposed to stay “locked on” both at work and off duty, meaning even if we’re not at work there’s no smiling and cracking jokes and letting yourself act how you please. All the things that I enjoy doing on a daily basis are somehow wrong to do now. And while the logical side of me KNOWS that all of it is a load of crap and that naval officers are normal people when off work (and often times while at work), it still gets under my skin and makes me think “oh God, what have I signed up for…” I can’t live my life like that, it’s just the polar opposite of my personality. I NEED to unlock and smile and laugh and act like a 20-something, because that’s who I am. Hell, I’ll probably be just a big kid even when I’m 70. But out here, sleep deprived, beaten, whipped, afraid, its almost impossible to brush those words off. Everything they say burns into us.
After she left us (much to our relief) we went back to our p-way to line up for lunch. It’s such a terrible feeling when we’re in our little safe zone, our p-way, and class team walks in. But of course it happens, she shows up again and pulls two people out of the p-way and proceeds to just brutally RPT them. Apparently they were having a hard time keeping their eyes open in class (we ALL have this problem, mind you, so I couldn’t tell you why she chose those two. I was sitting near one of them and he was no different from everyone else). It just went on and on and on, we’re all in the p-way at attention staring at the wall opposite while listening to the helpless screams of our two classmates and the terrifying angry screams of the CPO. Physical torture for the two unlucky ones, mental torture for the rest of us…
Then an engineering quiz, got another 80%. Some people stay up after hours to study more, I NEVER do so because sleep is pretty much our most precious possession out here. Considering I study so much less I’m happy with 80%.
They just told us the internet will be down all weekend again. We only get to use our emails on Sunday, but last Sunday the internet was down and this Sunday … the internet will be down. Sound fair?
Bedtime
October 22
This morning they marched us on to the track and said “run 12 laps”. 3 miles on a track is -usually- a terrible way to spend time, but I was having a blast. I could run at my own speed, look around (when the DI’s weren’t near) it was fantastic. Sadly, this is where the news gets bad again. I’m slowing down. Not sure if it’s my body adjusting to the increased oxygen or what, but I’m running slower now that I did when I was sick. My first mile time was just over 7 minutes and my 3 mile time was 22:40. I’m unhappy for sure, but that’s the least of my worries. I have to improve on every PFA in every category. If not, that’s an OLQ and a chance to get rolled for failure to show improvement. That’s the kind of stuff you really wish someone would have warned you about, I’m at risk of rolling if I can’t beat my last PFA, in which I set a personal record in all 3 categories. It’s just another bull**** move by our DI, even though we are in shape and fall well within the Navy’s physical fitness standards, he’ll roll us if we don’t improve every time. So now I’ll surely be stressed out and that won’t help… The next PFA is on Monday.
We went to the NEX to get our heads shaved again, this is the last time. Next time we have to go we’ll be allowed to keep some top hair and start growing military regulation haircuts. Being in the NEX, in a normal shopping center with normal people and normal clothes, it’s so normal it’s overwhelming. I had to leave the NEX quickly and get my mind back to OCS because it was just too painful to see the normal world.
Took awhile to recover from the NEX. It really messes me up to see normal things, knowing what I still have to go through. I bought some tide-to-go pens for inspection and an electric razor. The website said to bring a regular razor but the OCR (OCS manual that sets ALL of the rules) specifically mentions that electric razors are allowed. I’m hiding it just to be safe. It will probably be a very significant quality of life improvement.
In the afternoon we had a mock- 6th week PI inspection. We got our khakis on and marched to the gym, it felt great to wear something that wasn’t NWUs or PT gear. I passed my mock inspection and was complimented on my shoes, and the guy next to me got torn apart for his shoes. The inspector screamed “YOU CANT HAVE SHOES LOOKIN LIKE THAT WHEN YOURE STANDIN NEXT THAT GUY” and gestures at me. Felt great. Shining shoes with wax is surprisingly hard but I’m quite good at it after NJROTC. My shoes are quite a bit shinier than the rest of the class. Several people approached me afterwards and asked me to teach them so I guess I get to hold a shoe-shine workshop.
Not sure how I feel about being good at shoe shining. Guess it means I could get a little airport kiosk if my job with the Navy doesn’t work out.
We practiced the victory run procedures with 03-12 tonight. It was a great release to just hang out with another class with no DIs or CPOs or class officers around. Some of their running cadences are so funny we all laughed out loud, and OH MAN it feels good to sit and laugh! Called Amanda again after that, and it’s always bittersweet. My heart is lifted each time I hear her voice, but that call always has to end, and it just hurts. Long call hours tomorrow though.
Gonna try to sleep as much as possible, I have a lot of memorizing to do tomorrow for 6th week PI and I plan on being on the phone a lot. Goodnight.
October 23
I’ve had a terrible morning. Sunday means no class team, relaxed atmosphere, and time to get stuff done, so I’d expect to be very happy. Yet here I’m really doing bad again. I’m feeling depressed, trapped, and loathing the way my future looks. I’ve developed irrational fears about my job in the Navy. Maybe it’s just fear of the unknown, but I keep thinking “what if the job is really high-stress? I’ll be miserable…” or “what if the job is just paper pushing for 12 hours a day? I can’t live like that for 4 years…” or “what if they deploy me on some ship where, like here, I’ll have no lines of communication with Amanda? I can’t stand being away from her…” All of these negative thoughts are eating away at what little motivation I have left. I just don’t know how much of this I can handle. Every now and then I just snap and my thoughts get even worse. I’ve asked to talk to someone in my field to get some much needed insight, but of course there is nobody to talk to. I believe there are actually less than a thousand IW officers in all of the Navy, which is just ridiculously low. As badly as I need to know what life is like for an IW officer, a part of me doesn’t want to know because I’m afraid of the answer. Every day I struggle with my decision to join the Navy because, like everyone else who joins, I know absolutely nothing about my job and I’m dedicated to it for at least 4 years. I ALWAYS do a ton of research before making any major life decisions, but in this case there was simply no way to know. There are no IW officers around in Reno, nobody knows what they do, and the few I found online in various forums can’t talk about their work. It makes me feel stupid for signing up. How on earth could I have made that decision without knowing what I’ll be doing? Most of our class are pilots or SWO officers. For them, they can make it through each day because they know that on the other side of this hell they get to lead a division in an area of their choice or they get to fly aircraft. For IW, it’s just blind. I have nothing but more fear to look forward to after this hell. It’s causing me so much distress.
Talking to Amanda is so nice. It’s reenergizing. Saying goodbye until next weekend, however, is just devastating. I can’t NOT call her given the opportunity, but man it hurts to hang up.
Spent the day preparing for 6th week PI. My uniform is staged, pressed, steamed, and ready to be inspected. My shoes are shiny and my cover is squared away. All that remains is my knowledge, I have a lot of memorizing still to do. I’m having a very hard time retaining information. Probably sleep related.
I forced Deighan to chat with me for awhile. I can’t remember if I ever mentioned that I rather hate Deighan, he never chats. Everyone needs someone to share themselves with, ESPECIALLY out here, but this guy is just oblivious. Anyway, turns out that he applied for IW but was rejected, so he took SWO in hopes that he can transfer to IW eventually. Then I had another chat with one of our H class roll-ins Faulkner and another guy Wenzel, both of whom are feeling about as terrible as I am. Wenzel is here to build his experience and to get a job, but he really doesn’t seem to want to be here at all. Faulkner is here to have a job but like me seems to second-guess his being here all the time. Interestingly, he ALSO applied for IW but didn’t get it. It does me good to suffer with someone rather than suffer alone.
Well, tomorrow is the mid-PFA. I’ve only gotten worse but I’m expected to do better. I expect I’ll PASS, which should be the only thing that matters, but I won’t improve. I’ll give it hell, but I know where I’m at, it will not be an improvement in all three categories. Hopefully the beating will be survivable.
Study time then bedtime. I sincerely hope I hold it together tomorrow. The beating is coming, and it will be bad.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Oct. 17 - Oct. 19
| October 17 Drill competition this morning. Everyone was nervous. Nobody wanted to lose but we were all afraid because of how incredibly rare it is for a class to win. Our DI happens to be the head of the Drill Committee for the whole of OCS so to lose with him as our DI would be very bad for us. We showed up, lots of sweaty palms and high nerves. I was furiously reminding people that everyone will try to speed up and that we need to keep things slow and deliberate. The scoring system is by percent, you need an 85% to win. The last class got a 74%, a pretty normal score. We all just wanted that 85. The competition came, very tense with every DI at OCS walking around with red clipboards. Competition ended, we all stood there nervously, and the Master Gunnery Sgt came up and said “Your score was 91. Well done.” Oh Lord it was hard for us to maintain bearing! Not only did we get the streamer that no class since 15-11 got, we set a new freakin high score! Nobody has been above 90 since they changed the scoring system awhile back. Sprinted back to our hallway, waited for our DI to come back. When he arrived he put us on our faces for the 9% worth of mistakes, but then got us together and gave us the happiest speech I’ve ever heard out of him. He only swore a few times, and ended it with a “That’s the shit right there.” We were shocked. Words of approval sound SO foreign in his voice. We were all so proud that nobody minded the pushups at all, they were like victory pushups! OCS is already buzzing about how 04-12 got the drill streamer. Feels good for me especially since I worked with so many people for so long working out the kinks. I’m getting a lot of thanks and congrats from the class. Ugh, but the fantastic morning gives way to class. Had to struggle to stay awake the whole time, it is SUCH TORTURE. I had to stand in the back for the first two classes, and almost fell asleep standing up during the second. The third class was an engineering class and actually managed to hold my attention enough to merit sitting down. Classes are over now. I was just writing an email to my recruiter requesting OHARP duty so I can work in Reno a bit between OCS and IWBC (information warfare school) when the fire alarm went off and we all had to sprint out of the building and form up on the football field. The DI’s passed the time by sharking the crap out of us. It was an annual fire drill, pretty damn annoying. The other DI’s all seem to be after us today. That drill streamer may as well have been a bullseye. It actually sucks having it. And straight back into the fire. We just lost 3 more classmates, they apparently failed the sea power final. I don’t know why losing classmates is sending me straight down into depression, I would expect to just be sad and feel sorry for them, but I feel so much more than that. It’s overwhelming me. The thought of what they are feeling right now just absolutely kills me, I can’t stand it. I just can’t take it. This turned out to be a very long day. Long and terrible. Having something to celebrate ended up being a curse, the happiness brought me back to normal for awhile and I had to come to terms with being at OCS again. Losing more classmates… that just kills me. We’ve lost probably around 30% of our original members at this point, and I miss them. Going to try to sleep as much as possible, so goodnight. October 18 High ropes course today. We woke up early for breakfast and in the chow hall we had to listen to Rozell, one of the four we lost to RLP, getting absolutely torn apart by GySgt Cross (the DI for 05-12). He’s taking so much sharking after getting rolled. How he’s still sane I’ll never know. Anyway the ropes course was extremely easy. Crawl across two parallel ropes, then across one rope, then across two single rope bridges, then across two sets of ropes that were one above another, then an unsuspended rope bridge, upside down rope crawl, a tarzan swing over a whopping 6 feet and a zipline to the bottom. The only even mildly challenging bit was the bridge, a lot fell off but I didn’t. It took all morning to complete and they only gave us a little bit to eat at around noon so I’m pretty hungry. The worst part is that since it took so long to get everyone through I had lots of time to sit and reflect on the misery. I hate it so much. We just lost another classmate. Our class’s medical body, Pierce, just failed the review board after failing the test, so she’s off to H-class. As our med body she worked really hard for us, it was a difficult job that she had volunteered to do. She got nothing but less sleep and study time for all that extra work, and now she’s rolled for it. I’m just… numb. Can’t take it in. Our class CPO just came into our p-way and RPT’d the crap out of all of us. Apparently some people didn’t fill out the ropes course evaluation forms out properly, leaving the instructor name or date blank. So we all got beat. Mine was filled in properly… For some reason while I was doing squats my left knee just started hurting like I’d slammed it into the floor or something. It has kept up all evening, I’m limping up and down stairs pretty noticeably. I need to keep it hidden. They’ll put me in med hold and if I miss something important they’ll roll me for it. I have the balls to four watch shift tonight. I’m so afraid. If I fall asleep or get tired and lean against the wall or fail to give someone a greeting, and if I get RPT’d for it with this knee I just know they’ll send me to med hold. Miss something because of med hold and you roll. OCS isn’t a school at all, it’s just a torture chamber. It’s almost strange how desperately I want to speak to a counselor right now. I'm just desperate for someone to help me work through these mental/emotional struggles I'm having out here. I won’t write my thoughts down in one of these letters. I write them constantly to keep track of myself, but they’re very, very hard to read because the message is so dark. The letters I’m getting from you all are keeping me alive out here more than you may realize. Bedtime for now, gotta wake up again in less than 4 hours. Love you all. October 19 The hopes for that tolerable OCS where we spend our days studying are dead. Just as my future seemed a bit brighter, it all goes back to hell. This morning was torture. Our DI just kept beating us harder and harder. My arms have never hurt so bad, I seriously had absolutely nothing left to hold myself up with. I’ve never experienced such exhaustion. Then we went to breakfast while getting screamed at and a meeting where we were all blamed for becoming complacent and more threats. Also we were lectured by our class officer about how it’s so unusual for a class to lose as many as we are losing this late in the game and how it’s our fault. It’s not that we’re any different from any other class, it’s just that we have DiCosimo and he doesn’t care. Managed to stay awake in class, though after standing watch from 0000 to 0400 I’m not even sure how the hell I managed. We saw Pierce at lunch in H-class (well, we heard her at lunch, since we can’t look around). It’s so hard to listen to, she’s still crying. More classes after lunch, VERY hard to keep myself awake. I’m so exhausted. We were supposed to have drill practice but it’s raining pretty hard so that’s been cancelled. We just lost classmates again. After our noon class we got the word that the other 2 people from our class who went to the academic review board were rolled. Ruizburerra and Negronruiz. Ruizburerra was a former Navy enlisted girl, didn’t know her too well. Negronruiz is from Mexico and is still learning English, he lived across the pway from me so I talked to him constantly and helped him with rifle drill, and Deighan helped him with studies. He had a very difficult time reading the questions. He’s a smart guy, it’s just that OCS has no place for those with a special need. I just can’t keep taking these hits. I can’t stand it. I’m right back to I-week, just so desperate to make it stop. I feel overwhelming sadness and guilt. Winding down now, almost time for bed. We’ll be getting less sleep now because 05-12’s DI has told us we can’t use the bathrooms when we normally use them because now his class will use them during that timeframe so we have to get up earlier. Our DI, of course, doesn’t care. Shocking. I’m so excited to get to bed after today’s struggles against sleepiness. Goodnight. |
Monday, October 17, 2011
Oct. 11 - Oct. 16
October 11
Went to sick call again today, got antibiotics. While we were sitting in the waiting room a DI by the name of Cross walked in when another candidate from my class turned around to ask me if I was done yet so we could go rejoin the class. Cross exploded on us for talking even though such talk is permitted. He told our DI about it and got us beat. No justice. The doctors said I don’t have pinkeye but they don’t know why I’m getting so much mucus in my eyes.
Missed a good chunk of class for that visit which sucks. Final is on Friday on the history of the navy from 1775 to today. Names and dates and battles, bland memorization. It’s hard to do when this tired…
We had drill practice which went poorly, so we had to sprint around two buildings then got thrown in the SUYA again. I was doing bad in the SUYA because of my sickness which got me screamed at extra. That aside, before dinner a group in our class consisting of our class president, VP, our 3 SpecWar guys, and our prior marine decided to do a 15 minute crossfit. I joined them. Do not work out with SEALs. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.
More drill after that. Still got beat but not in the SUYA which was nice. Then more RLP prep followed by a HUGE stack of mail! No time to respond, it’ll probably be awhile before I can so apologies. I love getting mail so much!
The only other noteworthy thing that happened is immunizations. They lost my medical record so I have to get EVERY shot on the list (like 11 or so). I don’t have a problem with needles but my arms hurt like hell and I only got 5 shots today, the others will come later.
Bedtime, love you all.
October 12
Painful day. PT was interval running, which is the absolute worst and most painful kind of running out there. Lots of punishment pushups afterwards, ended up with a bloody knee from the astroturf. More RLP prep afterwards but again I’m behind. I’ll start asking for help from the ones who are further along.
After that it was drill, class, lunch, drill. The first drill went decently, class was impossible to stay awake in as always and then drill afterwards was another trip to the SUYA with two DIs and me getting screamed at more. My hips were sagging in the pushup position due to weakness and one of the DI’s kicked me in the waist to get me to raise it up. Not a very hard kick but it threw a ton of sand into my face. The nail clippers I was using to IP my uniforms fell out of my pocket and I had to be sneaky to grab it and put it back in my pocket without being noticed.
When I took my shoes off I noticed that the vast majority of skin under my toes has died in one thick layer and is now falling off. The layer of skin falling off is thick enough that the skin beneath is dark red and bleeding in places while the dead skin is yellow. I change socks often so kind of surprised to see that… Used a damp cloth to rub loose skin off but now it hurts to walk. Not what I need right now…
Had to stay up till 1AM to finish RLP prep stuff. Sleep deprivation while sleep deprived. Lord I’m one miserable *****. Just want RLP to be over already…
October 13
RLP day at last.
I passed RLP, though I shouldn't have and only did because I have very good bearing. The inspector tried SO hard to get me to break, but didn't. Basically we were setting up frantically, I noticed that I needed to trim my belt (only 2 inches of slack is allowed) so I ran out of our wing into the killzone (main hallway) to get scissors from the supply closet. On the other side of the killzone, hiding behind a POW flag that hangs from the middle, is the DI Gunnery Sgt Cross. I don’t see him so I don’t snap to attention or give him the greeting of the day, so he proceeds to rip into me and forces me to stand there until RLP was 5 minutes away. Thoroughly stressed, when he released me I flew back into my room to find that my roommate and a couple of others had finished the couple of things I hadn’t put into place yet. I thanked them then got ready. RLP started, screaming, spit and blood flying, sweat flowing. About 15 minutes in our inspector squares off in front of Deighan so he’ll go first and me after. He does decent with knowledge and bearing, but when they go into the room the inspector screams WHAT’S THE SERIAL NUMBER OF YOUR RIFLE? Deighan and I made a point to memorize this, so he says his, and the inspector screams ARE YOU KIDDING ME? YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE IN THE ENTIRE CLASS WHO HAS GOTTEN THAT WRONG, YOUR NUMBER IS …” and proceeds to read my serial number. I’m outside the room at attention, my mind saying Deighan, you IDIOT! You put MY RIFLE on YOUR BED and YOURS ON MINE!!! The inspector was furious. He tried HARD to fail us. You can get RPT’d if the inspector so chooses, but most don’t. My inspection starts and the inspector instantly RPT’s me and keeps going the entire inspection. Pushups while reciting the articles of the code of conduct, in-and-outs reciting enlisted rank structure, rifle above head squats while singing Anchors Aweigh, more pushups while reciting officer rank structure, mountain climbers reciting orders of a sentry, and I didn’t miss a single damned question in spite of it all.
I passed.
Deighan passed too, but only because his inspection was half over by the time the rifle problem was discovered. We had 8 failures. Now that I’ve passed RLP I’ll get phone privelages during a two hour window fri, sat, and Sunday. I’ll get to move upstairs to a room with a computer, though the computer will only be good for typing as I’ll probably only get email access on Sunday, and I’ll get to wear a gold anchor on one of the collars of my NWU uniform. This is a major evolution and I’m glad it’s over. Relieved too, very few people roll out of a class once they’ve survived past RLP. According to the rest of the regiment, this was the top of the hill.
After RLP we went to drill, and instead of our DI, FOUR DI's show up and start watching. Then out of nowhere (premeditated methinks) they just start destroying us. I got individually RPD'd three f***ing times because I can't do a six inch leg lift (lying on back, legs locked out, six inches above deck, rifle held straight above body with hands) with my combat boots on. My legs are too long and my boots too heavy, I simply cannot do it. So every time our DI would scream "SIX INCHES" which is our cue to assume said position, I'd fail and that other DI would run over, start screaming about how weak I am, then pull me out of the group RPT and just absolutely destroy me. I'm an odd mix of extremely pissed off and depressed. Not long after, our DI gives us another long and disturbingly convicing speech about how we don't belong here and how he's gonna get us kicked out and sent to boot camp unless we push harder, then one of my few friends in the class, Aziz, had what looked like a heat-related fatigue injury and then a panic attack. Ambulance was called and we were all rushed out hence my being in the computer lab right now. I'll go crazy if we lose Aziz.
Actually, immediately after the drill beating we got "hurricaned." That means our DI had us run from our beating in the gym to our building, post outside our hatches (rooms) and then he'd scream something like "GET YOUR BEDSHEETS RIGHT NOW, which we'd do, then it was THROW THEM ON THE DECK. Next was GET YOUR MATRESS followed by STAND IT UP ON THE WALL, then GROUND THEM ON THE DECK. Next was chairs, then our NWU's then coats then other random uniform items. The hallway is very narrow and at this point you can't even come close to navigating it. Our DI, being satisfied with the destruction, would march out (over all of our stuff) and scream I'LL BE BACK IN ONE-FIVE MINUTES, FIX MY HOUSE OR WE'LL DO IT AGAIN. Then the furious re-assembly begins.
Towards the latter part of re-assembly is when Aziz had his attack. If you remember an earlier letter where I wrote that I had a really bad breakdown and it took a couple of other candidates from my class to snap me out of it, the couple of candidates I was referring to were Aziz and Satish. To answer Amanda’s question: Aziz is not my roomate, my roomate is Deighan, a history major, and I really hate him. Painfully nerdy (seriously, if I am embarrassed for YOU being nerdy, there’s something REALLY wrong), not interested in casual conversation in any form, and stinky and clumsy as hell. Aziz is an H-class roll in, and a great guy. He's been here 3 weeks longer than any of us so he knows his stuff better. He rolled into H from 03-12 because of a PFA failure. (PFA is PRT is PFT, all different acronyms for the same dang physical pushup situp run test).
Lunch was sausages with onions and green peppers. So rare to have a tasty meal in that chow hall, even though I was eating by the numbers it was bliss. Unfortunately it didn't end well though, when we were standing up to leave the DI Bomba saw me lick my lips to get some peanut butter out of the corner. That's a reeeeeally bad thing. He told my DI, they were on the other side of the chow hall but I have them tuned in so hard that they may as well have been sitting in front of me. Bomba said "there...that tall one by the scrawny one on the left. He licked his lips. I saw it." Translated from DI to english that statements reads "there...that tall one by the scrawny one on the left. Hurt him." Nothing has happened to me yet and maybe they've forgotten since the Aziz incedent, Lord I hope so...
There's a scale in the back of the classroom they stowed us in a second ago. I took the opportunity to weigh myself. 203 with sweaty NWU's and combat boots on. I really wonder how heavy all that is. Man, I'd just really like to know if I've gained or lost weight out here. Been working out like a football player, but eating like one as well...
Well I guess that’s all for today. Major day here at OCS. The three biggest days so far have been Wake-up Wednesday, Outpost, and RLP. The major days to come are 6th Week PI, ORLP, 8th week PI and the Victory Run. PI is personal inspection, and the Victory Run is a 3 mile run to a nearby decommissioned aircraft carrier and back, after which we become Candidate Officers. I wish the time would go by faster.
Gonna try to catch up on some sleep now, didn’t get much last night. Love you all.
October 14
Waking up still feeling VERY sleep deprived. Not a good sign. PT this morning was running. I run with the “medium” pace group out of slow, medium, or fast. Our freaking class officer made us run faster than the fast group. Was in so much pain I almost vomited.
Normal day after that. We took our Sea Power final exam, got an 86%. Considering I spent zero minutes studying on my own, I’m pretty proud. We had 6(?) failures on the exam. They’ll get a retake but if they fail again, they roll.
After that it was RLP Retake prep. Those who failed RLP get to reinspect tomorrow, so the whole class is prepping their stuff for them. Like an idiot I volunteered to help sweep some SUYA sand out of the Indoc wing (it’s so nice that it’s happening to 05-12 and not just us now). By the time that was done, everyone had their assignments for RLP help so I wound up sitting in my room polishing boots which gives me time to think. Time to think is the enemy. I need to NEVER have time to think.
So I got all depressed again and tried to snap out of it with pushups but the second round of immunization shots was today and my arms hurt like hell. Aziz came back to the class so I got to go say hi to him for awhile, was quite a relief. Also I saw H-class today and they have 4 members. That means 05-12 has lost at least 4 so far because now that 05-12 has started, all of the old H-class entered 05-12 earlier this week and there was no H-class for a couple of days. The terrible thing about it is that one of the 4 I saw in H was a girl from OUR CLASS, which means she failed Outpost again (the one who took my heavy bag). I’m about to hit week 5 and she’s still stuck on DAY 5. She looked like she’d been crying her eyes out. Don’t even want to think about how miserable that must feel, oh God, it must be so far beyond crushing.
Word from class team is that we won’t get our phone calls till Sunday now. Bunch of crap.
We’re starting BOOD duty this week (battalion officer of the deck). That means we stand at parade rest in the BOOD station for 4 hour shifts, making sure that “everything is in order”. Basically, watch the hallways. To that I’d ask, what the hell can even go wrong? Everyone on the 2nd floor is monitored from wake up to lights out, so only the night BOOD has anything to watch for. Anyway… there is ALWAYS a BOOD on duty. 24/7. They have to scream the greeting of the day (good morning/afternoon/evening sir or ma’am) every time a staff member walks by and every time they fail to do so or screw it up, it’s RPT. So basically it’s 4 hours of torture. Pay attention for 4 hours or die. Once per hour the BOOD walks the hallways to make sure all lockers are locked and that the emergency ice buckets by the sand pits are full. My first shift is the worst shift of them all, 0000 to 0400, on Wednesday. We call that shift “balls to four”. It’s the worst because, unlike any other shift, you get screwed out of sleep. The 2000 to 0000 shift gets extra sleep during PT so they actually sleep for 5 and a half hours. I get to go to bed at 1930 and wake up at 2320, three hours and fifty minutes of sleep. I’ll get relieved and then be allowed to go back to bed, but wake up is at 0430 so there’s hardly even time to get back to your room and change. We all have to stand one of every shift, so I’m just getting that one out of the way.
Class 05-12 finishes their indoctrination period today. It was their Outpost today, it’ll be interesting to see if H class has more than 4 people in it come tomorrow. Now that they’re not indocs, we get to welcome them into the regiment. Lovely for them, crap for us because we need to be formed up outside by 0430, so I don’t get a chance to catch up on more sleep. Stinks that this email isn’t supposed to go out till Sunday, I may sneak this one out on Saturday though. Goodnight all.
October 15
Woke up really early to welcome 05-12 into the regiment. Basically, they wake up at like 0330 and get their asses kicked in their poopy suits for the last time (though they don’t know its their last time), then they get run outside at about 0500 where the other three classes 04-12, 03-12, and 02-12 are in formation and we cheer for them and give them a welcome speech. Now they can wear their NWUs and we don’t have to hide from them or ignore them anymore. It was so cold outside this morning. The PT uniform of the day was sweattops but no sweatbottoms. The admins actually changed the uniform of the day to sweats on top and bottom and forced us all to run inside to change. They usually just make us tough it out and change the uniform for the next day.
Now I’m in the middle of a panic attack. I’m seriously out of my mind right now. My heart rate is soaring, I’m breathing hard, and not thinking clearly. Our DI constantly threatens to roll us, and the threats are always serious and terrifying, they are not just there to stress us out. It’s generally easy to tell the difference between a fake threat to stress us out and a real threat. His were always real, but I managed to survive by telling myself that they were fake threats and he was just very, very good at head games. No, they are real. He just rolled 4 of us. 2 were just terrible at drill so nobody was surprised, but the other 2 were fantastic candidates. One was ok at drill and PT, the other was seriously top of our class in both drill and PT. Still got rolled. He rolled them through RLP reinspect. I just can’t believe it. Harris, the good one, had all of his stuff squared away, knows his stuff, and has fantastic bearing. I just can’t even begin to accept the fact that our DI rolled HIM. Apparently during RLP our DI found a pair of scissors on top of his locker, no items except the ones for inspection should be out so he failed him. We had the WRONG RIFLES on our beds and passed, but Harris failed because he didn’t notice a pair of scissors that he probably didn’t even put up there. Now he has to suffer 3 weeks of H-class then roll into 05-12 which is run by the second-worst DI here, Gunnery Sgt. Cross. When every day here is as long, painful, and miserable as they are, the thought of 3 weeks is just like the end of the world. I’m losing my mind. Trying to imagine how painful that must be is like trying to imagine losing an immediate family member, you know it’s terrible but dare not consider exactly how terrible. We’ve lost family members. Fantastic ones. Harris was doing better than I was. So what safety do I have? I need to find a way to calm down…
Now it’s later on in the day and things are normalizing again. I’m still a bit shaken up, it’s so hard to cope with the fact that any of us, at any time, could be rolled if the DI decides he doesn’t want us. How well we perform is irrelevant. Being here is like playing russian roulette, but the bullet is 3 more weeks in hell.
Life has improved to the point where “normal” is actually tolerable. This life is the life I knew had to come at some point or nobody would be able to survive OCS. We keep busy with studies or sweepers and enjoy the opportunity to unlock and chat with ourselves and 03-12. Of course we still have to live in constant paranoia, DIs will kill us for talking and they love to sneak up on people and RPT the hell out of them when they don’t give the DI the proper greeting. We are the middle class now, 05 is the junior class, 03 is the senior class and 02 is the Candi-O class that runs everything. We got another roll in earlier from med hold, something about really bad rashes got him sent to medical until he recovered.
Now it’s evening, just got back from Drill practice without class team. The marine prior in our class, Sanderson, is our “drill body” and I’m the assistant drill body, so he runs the practices and I pull out the people who really suck and work with them individually. I taught drill a lot in high school and became good enough at it that the class made me the assistant, don’t think I ever mentioned that. Happened a couple weeks ago. Anyway, our new roll-in sucks so I pulled him and a couple others out to work with them. He started talking to me about what it’s like to be in class 04-12 with our notorious DI. (We really are a feared class, NOBODY else here wants to be with us because of how terrible our DI is.) He was clearly scared, so I tried to calm him down and then he started talking exactly like I was talking a couple of weeks ago when I was going through my breakdowns. It was so weird. I recognized that tone and those eyes instantly as my own, and it just proves to me more that there are plenty of others suffering as bad as I was out here. This place just breaks people.
Very little sleep over the past couple of nights, so its bedtime now. I get phone calls tomorrow!
Goodnight.
October 16
Phone calls this morning. It was awkward, I called Amanda at 0520 her time (because I couldn’t stand to wait any longer) and couldn’t even think of anything to say except “Uhh… … … Hey!”. Not the heartwarming words I had hoped to pull off. Cried at various points in the couple of hours we talked, it was a bit embarrassing since all the payphones are in the main hallway. It brought me back to life to have a conversation with Amanda. Same with the call home afterwards. Hearing her voice did more good for me than I could possibly explain.
Managed to pass the time by looking around this computer. These computers are barebones. They’re basically typewriters with email capabilities. We can access the network storage drive upon which is stored the powerpoints for our classes, along with data for every OCS class since 11-09. I took it upon myself to do a bit of snooping. I found pictures of 04-12 during indoc Sunday, wake-up Wednesday, and Outpost. Not many of me, but I have a seriously hard time picking myself out of the crowd, we all look too similar. I only found myself a couple of times by looking for my shoes. I also found a folder that has a bunch of music that class 01-12 was using to make a slide show to send home. What a great discovery that is! I need to keep it secret but I’ll definitely be listening to it after hours or when nobody is around. I’m so excited to hear music!
And MORE good news today! Class team gave us “hygiene at will”, which means no more timed showers! Now it’ll be more like “30 minutes to taps, hygiene at will” meaning I could take the standard 1 minute shower or a 25 minute shower (so long as nobody is waiting behind me). Just another thing that I’ll actually get to CHOOSE! I’m gonna take such a looooong shower tonight, and I’ll enjoy every moment of it. It’ll probably be good for my dying toes too.
Spent the evening shining my boots. Took a 30 minute shower, felt fantastic! Actually almost stayed in for too long. We don’t have watches so we never really know what time it is, but someone from 03-12 walked in so I got to ask what time it was to find out I had 5 minutes to be upstairs. Time flies when you can relax! Drill competition is tomorrow. We’ll either celebrate or die, man I just hate to think about what would happen if we didn’t win. Winning means getting a score of 85 or above and earning a little streamer for our guide flag (it’s not a real competition, it used to be a battle between two halves of a class but now it’s just one platoon competing against the scoreboard). We have one streamer so far, the RLP streamer, for having a high class average on the RLP. We need to get 5 of the 6 streamers to be an Honor Class, which is what our DI is demanding. No class since 15-11 has won drill competition so we’re understandably nervous, but no class since 13-11 has had our DI. 13-11 got the streamer. My wrists are starting to hurt like hell when I get down to the pushup position, I’m starting to worry about it, not sure if there are such things as wrist splints but if there are I think I have them.
Well, guess I’m off to bed. Can’t believe that the email server is still down, I’d really like to send off all of these letters. I’m starting to feel like all my writing is never going to get read! Goodnight all.
Went to sick call again today, got antibiotics. While we were sitting in the waiting room a DI by the name of Cross walked in when another candidate from my class turned around to ask me if I was done yet so we could go rejoin the class. Cross exploded on us for talking even though such talk is permitted. He told our DI about it and got us beat. No justice. The doctors said I don’t have pinkeye but they don’t know why I’m getting so much mucus in my eyes.
Missed a good chunk of class for that visit which sucks. Final is on Friday on the history of the navy from 1775 to today. Names and dates and battles, bland memorization. It’s hard to do when this tired…
We had drill practice which went poorly, so we had to sprint around two buildings then got thrown in the SUYA again. I was doing bad in the SUYA because of my sickness which got me screamed at extra. That aside, before dinner a group in our class consisting of our class president, VP, our 3 SpecWar guys, and our prior marine decided to do a 15 minute crossfit. I joined them. Do not work out with SEALs. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.
More drill after that. Still got beat but not in the SUYA which was nice. Then more RLP prep followed by a HUGE stack of mail! No time to respond, it’ll probably be awhile before I can so apologies. I love getting mail so much!
The only other noteworthy thing that happened is immunizations. They lost my medical record so I have to get EVERY shot on the list (like 11 or so). I don’t have a problem with needles but my arms hurt like hell and I only got 5 shots today, the others will come later.
Bedtime, love you all.
October 12
Painful day. PT was interval running, which is the absolute worst and most painful kind of running out there. Lots of punishment pushups afterwards, ended up with a bloody knee from the astroturf. More RLP prep afterwards but again I’m behind. I’ll start asking for help from the ones who are further along.
After that it was drill, class, lunch, drill. The first drill went decently, class was impossible to stay awake in as always and then drill afterwards was another trip to the SUYA with two DIs and me getting screamed at more. My hips were sagging in the pushup position due to weakness and one of the DI’s kicked me in the waist to get me to raise it up. Not a very hard kick but it threw a ton of sand into my face. The nail clippers I was using to IP my uniforms fell out of my pocket and I had to be sneaky to grab it and put it back in my pocket without being noticed.
When I took my shoes off I noticed that the vast majority of skin under my toes has died in one thick layer and is now falling off. The layer of skin falling off is thick enough that the skin beneath is dark red and bleeding in places while the dead skin is yellow. I change socks often so kind of surprised to see that… Used a damp cloth to rub loose skin off but now it hurts to walk. Not what I need right now…
Had to stay up till 1AM to finish RLP prep stuff. Sleep deprivation while sleep deprived. Lord I’m one miserable *****. Just want RLP to be over already…
October 13
RLP day at last.
I passed RLP, though I shouldn't have and only did because I have very good bearing. The inspector tried SO hard to get me to break, but didn't. Basically we were setting up frantically, I noticed that I needed to trim my belt (only 2 inches of slack is allowed) so I ran out of our wing into the killzone (main hallway) to get scissors from the supply closet. On the other side of the killzone, hiding behind a POW flag that hangs from the middle, is the DI Gunnery Sgt Cross. I don’t see him so I don’t snap to attention or give him the greeting of the day, so he proceeds to rip into me and forces me to stand there until RLP was 5 minutes away. Thoroughly stressed, when he released me I flew back into my room to find that my roommate and a couple of others had finished the couple of things I hadn’t put into place yet. I thanked them then got ready. RLP started, screaming, spit and blood flying, sweat flowing. About 15 minutes in our inspector squares off in front of Deighan so he’ll go first and me after. He does decent with knowledge and bearing, but when they go into the room the inspector screams WHAT’S THE SERIAL NUMBER OF YOUR RIFLE? Deighan and I made a point to memorize this, so he says his, and the inspector screams ARE YOU KIDDING ME? YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE IN THE ENTIRE CLASS WHO HAS GOTTEN THAT WRONG, YOUR NUMBER IS …” and proceeds to read my serial number. I’m outside the room at attention, my mind saying Deighan, you IDIOT! You put MY RIFLE on YOUR BED and YOURS ON MINE!!! The inspector was furious. He tried HARD to fail us. You can get RPT’d if the inspector so chooses, but most don’t. My inspection starts and the inspector instantly RPT’s me and keeps going the entire inspection. Pushups while reciting the articles of the code of conduct, in-and-outs reciting enlisted rank structure, rifle above head squats while singing Anchors Aweigh, more pushups while reciting officer rank structure, mountain climbers reciting orders of a sentry, and I didn’t miss a single damned question in spite of it all.
I passed.
Deighan passed too, but only because his inspection was half over by the time the rifle problem was discovered. We had 8 failures. Now that I’ve passed RLP I’ll get phone privelages during a two hour window fri, sat, and Sunday. I’ll get to move upstairs to a room with a computer, though the computer will only be good for typing as I’ll probably only get email access on Sunday, and I’ll get to wear a gold anchor on one of the collars of my NWU uniform. This is a major evolution and I’m glad it’s over. Relieved too, very few people roll out of a class once they’ve survived past RLP. According to the rest of the regiment, this was the top of the hill.
After RLP we went to drill, and instead of our DI, FOUR DI's show up and start watching. Then out of nowhere (premeditated methinks) they just start destroying us. I got individually RPD'd three f***ing times because I can't do a six inch leg lift (lying on back, legs locked out, six inches above deck, rifle held straight above body with hands) with my combat boots on. My legs are too long and my boots too heavy, I simply cannot do it. So every time our DI would scream "SIX INCHES" which is our cue to assume said position, I'd fail and that other DI would run over, start screaming about how weak I am, then pull me out of the group RPT and just absolutely destroy me. I'm an odd mix of extremely pissed off and depressed. Not long after, our DI gives us another long and disturbingly convicing speech about how we don't belong here and how he's gonna get us kicked out and sent to boot camp unless we push harder, then one of my few friends in the class, Aziz, had what looked like a heat-related fatigue injury and then a panic attack. Ambulance was called and we were all rushed out hence my being in the computer lab right now. I'll go crazy if we lose Aziz.
Actually, immediately after the drill beating we got "hurricaned." That means our DI had us run from our beating in the gym to our building, post outside our hatches (rooms) and then he'd scream something like "GET YOUR BEDSHEETS RIGHT NOW, which we'd do, then it was THROW THEM ON THE DECK. Next was GET YOUR MATRESS followed by STAND IT UP ON THE WALL, then GROUND THEM ON THE DECK. Next was chairs, then our NWU's then coats then other random uniform items. The hallway is very narrow and at this point you can't even come close to navigating it. Our DI, being satisfied with the destruction, would march out (over all of our stuff) and scream I'LL BE BACK IN ONE-FIVE MINUTES, FIX MY HOUSE OR WE'LL DO IT AGAIN. Then the furious re-assembly begins.
Towards the latter part of re-assembly is when Aziz had his attack. If you remember an earlier letter where I wrote that I had a really bad breakdown and it took a couple of other candidates from my class to snap me out of it, the couple of candidates I was referring to were Aziz and Satish. To answer Amanda’s question: Aziz is not my roomate, my roomate is Deighan, a history major, and I really hate him. Painfully nerdy (seriously, if I am embarrassed for YOU being nerdy, there’s something REALLY wrong), not interested in casual conversation in any form, and stinky and clumsy as hell. Aziz is an H-class roll in, and a great guy. He's been here 3 weeks longer than any of us so he knows his stuff better. He rolled into H from 03-12 because of a PFA failure. (PFA is PRT is PFT, all different acronyms for the same dang physical pushup situp run test).
Lunch was sausages with onions and green peppers. So rare to have a tasty meal in that chow hall, even though I was eating by the numbers it was bliss. Unfortunately it didn't end well though, when we were standing up to leave the DI Bomba saw me lick my lips to get some peanut butter out of the corner. That's a reeeeeally bad thing. He told my DI, they were on the other side of the chow hall but I have them tuned in so hard that they may as well have been sitting in front of me. Bomba said "there...that tall one by the scrawny one on the left. He licked his lips. I saw it." Translated from DI to english that statements reads "there...that tall one by the scrawny one on the left. Hurt him." Nothing has happened to me yet and maybe they've forgotten since the Aziz incedent, Lord I hope so...
There's a scale in the back of the classroom they stowed us in a second ago. I took the opportunity to weigh myself. 203 with sweaty NWU's and combat boots on. I really wonder how heavy all that is. Man, I'd just really like to know if I've gained or lost weight out here. Been working out like a football player, but eating like one as well...
Well I guess that’s all for today. Major day here at OCS. The three biggest days so far have been Wake-up Wednesday, Outpost, and RLP. The major days to come are 6th Week PI, ORLP, 8th week PI and the Victory Run. PI is personal inspection, and the Victory Run is a 3 mile run to a nearby decommissioned aircraft carrier and back, after which we become Candidate Officers. I wish the time would go by faster.
Gonna try to catch up on some sleep now, didn’t get much last night. Love you all.
October 14
Waking up still feeling VERY sleep deprived. Not a good sign. PT this morning was running. I run with the “medium” pace group out of slow, medium, or fast. Our freaking class officer made us run faster than the fast group. Was in so much pain I almost vomited.
Normal day after that. We took our Sea Power final exam, got an 86%. Considering I spent zero minutes studying on my own, I’m pretty proud. We had 6(?) failures on the exam. They’ll get a retake but if they fail again, they roll.
After that it was RLP Retake prep. Those who failed RLP get to reinspect tomorrow, so the whole class is prepping their stuff for them. Like an idiot I volunteered to help sweep some SUYA sand out of the Indoc wing (it’s so nice that it’s happening to 05-12 and not just us now). By the time that was done, everyone had their assignments for RLP help so I wound up sitting in my room polishing boots which gives me time to think. Time to think is the enemy. I need to NEVER have time to think.
So I got all depressed again and tried to snap out of it with pushups but the second round of immunization shots was today and my arms hurt like hell. Aziz came back to the class so I got to go say hi to him for awhile, was quite a relief. Also I saw H-class today and they have 4 members. That means 05-12 has lost at least 4 so far because now that 05-12 has started, all of the old H-class entered 05-12 earlier this week and there was no H-class for a couple of days. The terrible thing about it is that one of the 4 I saw in H was a girl from OUR CLASS, which means she failed Outpost again (the one who took my heavy bag). I’m about to hit week 5 and she’s still stuck on DAY 5. She looked like she’d been crying her eyes out. Don’t even want to think about how miserable that must feel, oh God, it must be so far beyond crushing.
Word from class team is that we won’t get our phone calls till Sunday now. Bunch of crap.
We’re starting BOOD duty this week (battalion officer of the deck). That means we stand at parade rest in the BOOD station for 4 hour shifts, making sure that “everything is in order”. Basically, watch the hallways. To that I’d ask, what the hell can even go wrong? Everyone on the 2nd floor is monitored from wake up to lights out, so only the night BOOD has anything to watch for. Anyway… there is ALWAYS a BOOD on duty. 24/7. They have to scream the greeting of the day (good morning/afternoon/evening sir or ma’am) every time a staff member walks by and every time they fail to do so or screw it up, it’s RPT. So basically it’s 4 hours of torture. Pay attention for 4 hours or die. Once per hour the BOOD walks the hallways to make sure all lockers are locked and that the emergency ice buckets by the sand pits are full. My first shift is the worst shift of them all, 0000 to 0400, on Wednesday. We call that shift “balls to four”. It’s the worst because, unlike any other shift, you get screwed out of sleep. The 2000 to 0000 shift gets extra sleep during PT so they actually sleep for 5 and a half hours. I get to go to bed at 1930 and wake up at 2320, three hours and fifty minutes of sleep. I’ll get relieved and then be allowed to go back to bed, but wake up is at 0430 so there’s hardly even time to get back to your room and change. We all have to stand one of every shift, so I’m just getting that one out of the way.
Class 05-12 finishes their indoctrination period today. It was their Outpost today, it’ll be interesting to see if H class has more than 4 people in it come tomorrow. Now that they’re not indocs, we get to welcome them into the regiment. Lovely for them, crap for us because we need to be formed up outside by 0430, so I don’t get a chance to catch up on more sleep. Stinks that this email isn’t supposed to go out till Sunday, I may sneak this one out on Saturday though. Goodnight all.
October 15
Woke up really early to welcome 05-12 into the regiment. Basically, they wake up at like 0330 and get their asses kicked in their poopy suits for the last time (though they don’t know its their last time), then they get run outside at about 0500 where the other three classes 04-12, 03-12, and 02-12 are in formation and we cheer for them and give them a welcome speech. Now they can wear their NWUs and we don’t have to hide from them or ignore them anymore. It was so cold outside this morning. The PT uniform of the day was sweattops but no sweatbottoms. The admins actually changed the uniform of the day to sweats on top and bottom and forced us all to run inside to change. They usually just make us tough it out and change the uniform for the next day.
Now I’m in the middle of a panic attack. I’m seriously out of my mind right now. My heart rate is soaring, I’m breathing hard, and not thinking clearly. Our DI constantly threatens to roll us, and the threats are always serious and terrifying, they are not just there to stress us out. It’s generally easy to tell the difference between a fake threat to stress us out and a real threat. His were always real, but I managed to survive by telling myself that they were fake threats and he was just very, very good at head games. No, they are real. He just rolled 4 of us. 2 were just terrible at drill so nobody was surprised, but the other 2 were fantastic candidates. One was ok at drill and PT, the other was seriously top of our class in both drill and PT. Still got rolled. He rolled them through RLP reinspect. I just can’t believe it. Harris, the good one, had all of his stuff squared away, knows his stuff, and has fantastic bearing. I just can’t even begin to accept the fact that our DI rolled HIM. Apparently during RLP our DI found a pair of scissors on top of his locker, no items except the ones for inspection should be out so he failed him. We had the WRONG RIFLES on our beds and passed, but Harris failed because he didn’t notice a pair of scissors that he probably didn’t even put up there. Now he has to suffer 3 weeks of H-class then roll into 05-12 which is run by the second-worst DI here, Gunnery Sgt. Cross. When every day here is as long, painful, and miserable as they are, the thought of 3 weeks is just like the end of the world. I’m losing my mind. Trying to imagine how painful that must be is like trying to imagine losing an immediate family member, you know it’s terrible but dare not consider exactly how terrible. We’ve lost family members. Fantastic ones. Harris was doing better than I was. So what safety do I have? I need to find a way to calm down…
Now it’s later on in the day and things are normalizing again. I’m still a bit shaken up, it’s so hard to cope with the fact that any of us, at any time, could be rolled if the DI decides he doesn’t want us. How well we perform is irrelevant. Being here is like playing russian roulette, but the bullet is 3 more weeks in hell.
Life has improved to the point where “normal” is actually tolerable. This life is the life I knew had to come at some point or nobody would be able to survive OCS. We keep busy with studies or sweepers and enjoy the opportunity to unlock and chat with ourselves and 03-12. Of course we still have to live in constant paranoia, DIs will kill us for talking and they love to sneak up on people and RPT the hell out of them when they don’t give the DI the proper greeting. We are the middle class now, 05 is the junior class, 03 is the senior class and 02 is the Candi-O class that runs everything. We got another roll in earlier from med hold, something about really bad rashes got him sent to medical until he recovered.
Now it’s evening, just got back from Drill practice without class team. The marine prior in our class, Sanderson, is our “drill body” and I’m the assistant drill body, so he runs the practices and I pull out the people who really suck and work with them individually. I taught drill a lot in high school and became good enough at it that the class made me the assistant, don’t think I ever mentioned that. Happened a couple weeks ago. Anyway, our new roll-in sucks so I pulled him and a couple others out to work with them. He started talking to me about what it’s like to be in class 04-12 with our notorious DI. (We really are a feared class, NOBODY else here wants to be with us because of how terrible our DI is.) He was clearly scared, so I tried to calm him down and then he started talking exactly like I was talking a couple of weeks ago when I was going through my breakdowns. It was so weird. I recognized that tone and those eyes instantly as my own, and it just proves to me more that there are plenty of others suffering as bad as I was out here. This place just breaks people.
Very little sleep over the past couple of nights, so its bedtime now. I get phone calls tomorrow!
Goodnight.
October 16
Phone calls this morning. It was awkward, I called Amanda at 0520 her time (because I couldn’t stand to wait any longer) and couldn’t even think of anything to say except “Uhh… … … Hey!”. Not the heartwarming words I had hoped to pull off. Cried at various points in the couple of hours we talked, it was a bit embarrassing since all the payphones are in the main hallway. It brought me back to life to have a conversation with Amanda. Same with the call home afterwards. Hearing her voice did more good for me than I could possibly explain.
Managed to pass the time by looking around this computer. These computers are barebones. They’re basically typewriters with email capabilities. We can access the network storage drive upon which is stored the powerpoints for our classes, along with data for every OCS class since 11-09. I took it upon myself to do a bit of snooping. I found pictures of 04-12 during indoc Sunday, wake-up Wednesday, and Outpost. Not many of me, but I have a seriously hard time picking myself out of the crowd, we all look too similar. I only found myself a couple of times by looking for my shoes. I also found a folder that has a bunch of music that class 01-12 was using to make a slide show to send home. What a great discovery that is! I need to keep it secret but I’ll definitely be listening to it after hours or when nobody is around. I’m so excited to hear music!
And MORE good news today! Class team gave us “hygiene at will”, which means no more timed showers! Now it’ll be more like “30 minutes to taps, hygiene at will” meaning I could take the standard 1 minute shower or a 25 minute shower (so long as nobody is waiting behind me). Just another thing that I’ll actually get to CHOOSE! I’m gonna take such a looooong shower tonight, and I’ll enjoy every moment of it. It’ll probably be good for my dying toes too.
Spent the evening shining my boots. Took a 30 minute shower, felt fantastic! Actually almost stayed in for too long. We don’t have watches so we never really know what time it is, but someone from 03-12 walked in so I got to ask what time it was to find out I had 5 minutes to be upstairs. Time flies when you can relax! Drill competition is tomorrow. We’ll either celebrate or die, man I just hate to think about what would happen if we didn’t win. Winning means getting a score of 85 or above and earning a little streamer for our guide flag (it’s not a real competition, it used to be a battle between two halves of a class but now it’s just one platoon competing against the scoreboard). We have one streamer so far, the RLP streamer, for having a high class average on the RLP. We need to get 5 of the 6 streamers to be an Honor Class, which is what our DI is demanding. No class since 15-11 has won drill competition so we’re understandably nervous, but no class since 13-11 has had our DI. 13-11 got the streamer. My wrists are starting to hurt like hell when I get down to the pushup position, I’m starting to worry about it, not sure if there are such things as wrist splints but if there are I think I have them.
Well, guess I’m off to bed. Can’t believe that the email server is still down, I’d really like to send off all of these letters. I’m starting to feel like all my writing is never going to get read! Goodnight all.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Saturday, October 1, 2011
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