Oct. 26 - Oct. 30

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.