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.