Sunday, November 13, 2011

Nov. 7 - Nov. 13

November 7 & 8

Way too busy yesterday to find the time to write, and only have a few minutes today.

Monday was different. Went to medical in the morning and some very unusual things happened that I’d rather not discuss. Then classes most of the day, typical troubles staying awake. All evening was spent preparing for ORLP (out - room, locker and personnel inspection). Uniforms to prep, knowledge to memorize, routines to learn, etc… My service dress blues don’t quite fit correctly, but there’s just no opportunity to get it fixed. I end up helping out the others with measurements for collar device placement, ribbon placement, etc because I tend to be really anal about them. I was moving from 0500 to 2300 without a break. I’d like to say it helped the day go by faster, but that’s really not the case. Classes dragged like hell and I was feeling very down most of the day which just makes things go slower. Also got my toes stepped on by someone, normally not a big deal but it put a divot in the leather. No way to polish that out, so much for the perfectly smooth finish on that boot. Major disappointment.

Today we woke up and immediately went to breakfast, then came back for the last hour and 30 minutes of prep before ORLP. Lots of lint-rolling, dusting, and other last minute fixes. We had SO much stuff that we were supposed to have memorized, and of course nobody actually did. It was a major stressor. We had to have memorized: chain of command, general orders of a sentry, articles of the code of conduct, rank structure and emblems of the Navy and Marine Corps, phonetic alphabet, types of warfare, mission of the Navy, breast insignias and sleeve/shoulder devices for most designators, leadership traits and definitions, different types of Naval missiles and specs, Naval ship’s gun types and specs, Naval aircraft and specs, Naval ships and their missions and specs including submarines, and all of the stuff from any of our classes. All of this is fair game on ORLP. Any missed question (missed meaning you didn’t know or you didn’t recite something verbatim) is minus one point. Lose eleven points and fail.

Again, I passed. AGAIN, it was only by INCREDIBLE luck.

Also any discrepancies with the uniform (wrinkles, loose strings, pieces of lint or visible dust anywhere on the uniform, etc, etc, etc) are minus one point and anything wrong with our display (we had to set up several items on the desk in exactly such a manner at exactly the right positions) are minus one point.

During RLP we could lose 46 points and pass, granted there were many more items to inspect but FAR less knowledge. I took 27 hits on RLP.

Perhaps that puts the stress of ORLP into perspective. I was terrified. Of the list of things to memorize, I knew everything up to the leadership traits memorized verbatim except I was sometimes shaky on the types of warfare and breast insignias. Everything after that I only ‘sort of’ knew, I never had the time to memorize it all. Nobody really did, though there are of course the one or two who can memorize quickly and did have everything down. Anyhow, ORLP started at 0800 with everyone standing at attention outside of our doors just like before. We wait until an inspecting officer squares off in front of us at which point we salute, say “Sir, Officer Candidate Souba, room 4318, standing by for inspection.” Then it begins.

The whole point of an inspection is to make the inspector like you. If the inspector likes you, you’re golden. Otherwise… standby.

I guess that there were only 5 or 6 inspecting officers from the different voices. The inspections were lasting 10 to 15 minutes a person, and I was one of the last to go. I stood at attention for what seemed like an eternity, just listening to some people get destroyed and some people squeezing by. There were few inspections going well from what I could hear. One inspector was destroying EVERYONE he came to, and the rest were just being ‘normally’ brutal except for one I could hear going relatively easy on everyone. About a half hour in, an officer finally squared off in front of my roommate Faulkner, and they proceeded inside the room for the inspection. Now ORLP is an inspection of the desk and the person with huge emphasis on bearing and knowledge. Obviously we cleared out everything visible from the room so it was just our desk display, desk, bed, locker and nothing else. Unfortunately, Faulkner’s inspector looked BEHIND his locker and saw his large chart from our navigation class behind it. Even though he wasn’t supposed to be looking back there, the inspector went ballistic. He pulled the locker away from the wall, and apparently there was a paperclip and a sock beneath it (from a class long-gone I’m sure). More anger, more scolding, it was NOT pretty. He took one point away for each item. 8 hits to failure and the inspection hadn’t even began. The inspector CLEARLY did not like Faulkner. Even in the face of it, Faulkner’s inspection went surprisingly well. He had studied all of the Navy’s aircraft, ships and subs before coming to OCS just because it interested him, so he had a very large advantage with his study time. He passed at what we guess was 9 or 10 hits (hard to keep track under pressure).

This is where things got bad. The inspector comes out, faces me (but doesn’t square off so he’s not about to inspect me), and says “Listen, you, you tell your inspector that you’ve taken 3 hits for contraband when he gets here.” Oh man, I was getting punished for it too. It IS my room as well, so it’s fair game to call me on it, but what a bummer. I only had 8 points to work with.

About a half hour of panic later an inspector finally squares off in front of me. To my incredible luck, it was the voice of the easy inspector! I was SO relieved, I felt like I was on even ground again. Sure I only had 8 points to lose but with the easy inspector I figured it was like having all 11 with a normal inspector. Still, with as many gaps in knowledge as I had, I was pretty nervous. The inspection starts, I nail the greeting, he tells me to post inside my hatch facing the door. I do so, my back is now to the inspector as he is going over my desk. Normally this is where the barrage of questions start, and as you answer the inspector will make you do obscure things to make you mess up the knowledge you’re trying to recite. But in this case, nothing happened. I stood there, facing the door, and there was silence. I thought he was just trying to see if I’d break bearing and try to sneak a peek at him, but it soon looked like the guy was just sick of inspections after more than an hour and was just trying to finish up. I WAS one of the very last ones, probably his last one. A good five minutes passed before he finally started asking me questions. Nailed the questions from chain of command, general orders of a sentry, articles of the code of conduct, rank structure and emblems of the Navy and Marine Corps, and phonetic alphabet. First lucky break comes here: I’m shaky on the warfare stuff and he asks me the ONE warfare definition and one of the four warfare pins that I know by heart. Such luck! Nailed both of them. Leadership traits went very well, instead of having me define one of them he just asked me to list them all. I listed them very clearly and quickly, it seemed to surprise him that I knew them so well and he had me stop about three quarters of the way through. FANTASTIC! Another really lucky break! Now this guy thinks I’m really on top of my game! Now we get to ships, missiles, guns, and aircraft. My worst by far, and AGAIN I get lucky. This guy thinks I’m golden, so instead of asking me specifics he looks at me and says “Name a ship, an airplane, a gun and a missile used by the Navy.” So I did exactly that, it was so easy it was unfair. I said “CVN Nimitz-class Aircraft Carrier, EA-6B Prowler, MK 15 CIWS Defense system, and Harpoon Missile.” Obviously I picked these based on the fact that I knew more about them than any other from their category. He says “How many different types of aircraft can the carrier hold?” I assumed this was a trick question, so I said “Sir, this Officer Candidate does not know how many different types of aircraft the carrier can hold, but DOES know that it can hold up to 85 aircraft at once.” The inspector looks at me and says “Oh, yes, that’s what I was after. Very well. Recover.” Recover is the sign of inspection over. Another lucky break, he messes up and I get to correct him, so he ends the inspection without asking me about all the other things. I only took three hits! The luck of it all… the easy inspector, the lateness of my inspection causing his apathy, the questions that fell so well in line with my strengths, it’s just unbelievable. I was so blessed today.

Of course, not everyone was as lucky. We had six failures, all of them are in panic. They’ll get to re-inspect on Thursday with our class officer (who is known as a rough inspector). Fail again and they roll.

The class average was high enough that we got the Inspection streamer. Three down, we need two more to be an honor class.

Well I really got into that story and wrote for waaaay too long, navigation final and out-PFA tomorrow and NOS final Friday. Gotta go study until bedtime. Goodnight.


November 9

Out PFA was a mixed bag. It was good for me personally, all of the other DIs were busy with their classes so only our DI was monitoring the PFA. Our DI wants us to score high for the PT streamer so he’s not going to rip on our form. I did these pathetic little three-quarter pushups like everyone else, and sure enough didn’t get called out on them even though the DI stood right by me a couple of times. How bad was my form you ask? Well, I went from 47 pushups last time to 71 this time. That bad. 109 sit ups (impossible to cheat on those) and my 1.5 mile run was 9:46. Somehow, miraculously, it was AGAIN a new personal record in every area.

The bad news is that even those numbers only got me an overall score of 85 (though if I had run in 9:45, 1 SECOND faster, it would have been an 87). The class average needs to be 90 or higher for the PT streamer. Well, our class average came back as 89.5, and there’s no rounding. No streamer. The disappointment and fear was so thick you could almost see it emanating from each of us.

Afterwards, we went to class for the navigation final. Scored a 92 on it, so it went very well for me, but navigation is notorious for being easy. The class average was 91 which brought our overall academic average up.

Of the five streamers, you need four to be an honor class. We have the first 3: RLP, Drill, and Inspection. Missed PT. The only one left is Academics. For the academic streamer we need a class average of 88, our average is 87 and some change. We’ve done the math, we need an 89 class average on the NOS final. The truth is nobody thinks we’ll pull that off. NOS is too difficult and too many of us just don’t get it (it’s all charts and relative motion and “what course and speed would you have to turn to if you were ordered to intercept this target moving this direction and speed at this exact time?”). Here’s hoping we pull it off, if we don’t get honor class I’d hate to be me…

We spent the evening studying and preparing for PT tomorrow, where we were supposed to be doing our first UI (under instruction) meaning we’d follow the candiOs around and learn how to run it. As it turns out, the candiO class is busy tomorrow morning so we’ll just be running it without having been taught how. Trial by fire. Probably gonna get beat… Anyhow, this all means a 0400 wakeup so I’m off to bed. Goodnight.


November 10

After considering my options carefully, I decided to elbow my way into being a medical liaison as my PT job. Every morning, those who fall out for medical line up and get marched to chow, then get marched to the King Hall quarterdeck to wait for the clinic to open. When it does, they go in and take care of their business. Usually there are two candiO liaisons to escort them through this, so I took that job. I really just didn’t want to be out on the field running something while my class inevitably screws up and gets us all killed. This was the safe job. It was so strange escorting lower class members around. Instead of being locked up all the time, I was the one making sure everyone else was locked up. Every time I’d give a correction they’d respond “AYE SIR” to which I had to say “I’m NOT a sir yet, you have to refer to me as Officer Candidate.” It was a glimpse of life on the other side of the fence. It will feel so good to finally have that status out here, but I still just feel disgusted by the prospect of it. I hate it here so much that I don’t want anything to do with it at all…

Bad news about the test, they made it damn hard. I was sitting smug in my chair after turning it in thinking I had high 90’s for sure, got an 84. Class average was lower than that. 6 failures, they’ll retake on Monday and roll if they fail again. All this means we missed the academic streamer. We are not an honor class.

Maybe it’s the fear, maybe it’s the disappointment, maybe it’s something else entirely, but everyone is dragging their feet and hanging their heads. Apathy is setting in, I’m hearing a lot of “well, at least I passed” and “at least we survived the last rollable event”. That sort of talk was never around before.

Today is bittersweet in that aspect. We have made it. At long last, it’s over. No more sitting in class all day, no more anxiety about memorizing gouge or processes, no more inspections to fear, no more morning beatdowns. We have made it to the end of officer candidate phase, but we didn’t reach the goal. Granted, it wasn’t OUR goal to begin with, it was our DI’s, but it was forced onto us and we adopted it. I should be very happy now, knowing that OCS life is about to change drastically, but I’m not. It’s not about failing to get honor class, it’s just that I’m so beat down that I’m apathetic about it all too. The ones who failed the test are in a hell of a panic, I’m going to go help out. Goodnight.


November 11, 12, 13

Prison. That’s what they set us up for these past 3 days. Here I’ve had to combine all 3 days into one entry, let me explain why:

The holiday weekend means days off for us and for class team. While a “day off” is something people would normally look forward to, it’s HELL out here. We still have to be at OCS, and all of the normal life restrictions apply. That means we wake up, eat, then come back to the p-way until lunch, then back to our p-way till dinner, then back to our p-way till taps. We cannot go anywhere but our rooms or the bathroom, we cannot stay busy because we have no classes to study for, we are not allowed to use the computers in our rooms, we are NOT allowed to sleep (they’d seawall you), etc… Basically we get to sit and stare, and do NOTHING ELSE! We get to chit-chat, but for a guy like me that’s only good for a couple of hours of entertainment at best.

Three damn days, about 15 hours a day of whitespace. This was just cruel.

There is certainly good news though, it’s now week 9 which means my cell phone was returned to me! I’m LOVING it. Obviously we are NOT allowed to use them, but since class team is gone and we’re all so bored, EVERYONE did. My signal out here is between zero and one bars, barely good enough for internet. Failblog wouldn’t load L. I think I would have gone crazy if it hadn’t been for my phone. Probably dropped 50 calls between home and Amanda, but it was still so nice!

Here’s the breakdown:

Friday: Bored and miserable. Nothing happened.
Saturday: CELL PHONE! Otherwise, nothing happened.
Sunday: Hour-long practice for the grad run. Otherwise, nothing happened.

I’m finally at the end of Sunday. Lord I hope I never have to repeat that crap. All the time in the world to sit and dwell on the misery… SO glad it’s over. Tomorrow will be another PT UI day where we learn how to run it (with instruction this time), then all day learning how to run the regiment. Tuesday will be similar, and Wednesday will be our victory run. Tomorrow we’ll find out what our billets are (job within the regiment). Honestly, I’m hoping for mediocrity. I DON’T want a job with a ton of stress and responsibility. No point being that miserable and continuing to get beat by class team for a month, I get the same commission being a peon. (class team stops beating you up once you’re a candiO, for the most part) I’m hoping to work with H-class. The H-class staff is usually the tactful people who can help the poor guys in H deal with being there and help them along to get back to OCS. Anyhow, we have no say in our billets, they’re all chosen by class team.

Bedtime after a LONG weekend of misery. It was so weird having downtime, being able to think about how life is going to change, being glad that we’re so close to that victory run, but then realizing that we still have days to sit around before getting there. Goodnight all.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Oct. 31 - Nov. 6

October 31

Oh man, just bad news. This morning we had someone fall out of the run, and disappear. That’s about the worst thing that can happen to us, nobody knew where she was, and nobody noticed until we were trying to go to chow. We got called out in chow, absolutely ripped apart by the DIs, and still we’re not sure what happened to her but they found her in medical. Amid the chaos of 06-12 arriving at the chow hall and constantly being screamed at because they still do everything wrong we had DI’s running around FURIOUS trying to juggle screaming at 06-12, screaming at us, and trying to figure out what happened. She’ll probably be rolled, and we will surely get what may be the worst beating anyone’s seen in a long time. Nobody ever goes missing, it’s exceedingly rare because usually nobody here is stupid enough to do something on their own. She was one of the three that the DI threatened to roll last week for falling out of the run. I still stand by them not being rolled, as long as they can pass the Navy’s PFA standards, but falling out and walking away is NEVER ok. I’ve almost fallen out quite a few times. Even today, during the run (I run with the medium speed group) I was anywhere from 5 to 20 feet behind where I should have been because I couldn’t keep up. Most of us were. A few were as far as a hundred feet back, it’s just the nature of the run, they knowingly push us faster than we can run.

Breakfast was supposed to be the most exciting meal we’ve had in weeks because we finally got permission to use those condiments on the table, but we had to stop eating constantly because it was so noisy in the chow hall between the screaming at us and at 06-12 that nobody could hear the section leader, and the DIs kept calling us to attention or telling us to “LOOK AT ME RIGHT NOW” or “STOP CHEWING”, etc… to try to figure out what the hell happened so we got very little time to actually eat. I did get -some- hotsauce, it was so weird to have that tingly hot feeling in my mouth again. I am very familiar with the brand of hotsauce they provide so I knew what it would taste like, but it’s certainly hotter now that it was back home. Still, so good to have it.

New classes started today. Charts and plotting and navigation and whatnot, so far it’s all very straightforward. Some aren’t getting it at all though.

Had my Rover UI (under instruction) today so now I can start standing Rover watches. BOOD stays in the BOOD office and only patrols every now and then, Rover spends the whole 4 hour shift patrolling. It’ll be nice to NOT have to stand still.

Some good news, I finally got a chance to talk to my detailer. He told me about my options, I can go to HI, GA or MA because Texas is more or less doing away with its IWOs. The tough part is picking what I am going to DO at my station after I get my qualifications. Four options: national, which means working with both the Navy and the NSA while staying on shore, or DIRSUP air, DIRSUP surface ships, or DIRSUP subsurface. I don’t want to be on a sub, so that’s out. I had initially thought air would be my choice, I love flying and doing intel work in the air just sounds incredible, but the way the detailer described it just made me want to stay away. He just kept shooting it down, telling me how the intel planes are all converted 1950’s bombers and how they fly over active war zones. NOT at all where I want to be. That only leaves surface ships, also something I thought I would want to do but OCS has convinced me otherwise. I’ll request national for sure, but if I don’t get it (and I probably won’t, those jobs are very rare) then I just don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll want to fly but won’t want to be that close to danger, so I’ll want ships for the relative safety but not want to live on a ship.

A lot to think about, going to bed now. Goodnight.


November 1

It feels GREAT to type November. That much closer to freedom, that much closer to being human again. It’s weird, today I saw some candiOs eating breakfast. They are allowed to eat like normal people again, yet many of them still sit on the first third of the chair or grip everything with knife hands or never move their left hand off their lap. The robotic scars are deep, apparently.

PT today was surprisingly less brutal than the previous few days. It almost actually felt like a workout rather than a beatdown. I don’t like it, it makes me worry about what our DI is planning for us.

Our platoon stood by the flag for colors this morning to watch the procedures. It was so cold that I had a hard time curling my fingers by the time we got back inside.

Anyhow, let’s talk food. Only 5 bananas today. I’m starting to get worried about my precious hot sauce. As much as I love it and now find myself really looking forward to meal time, I’m afraid I’ll overdo it and wind up hating it. If OCS makes me hate hot sauce I’ll never forgive them.

I am having major problems staying awake in class now. I think I actually fell asleep standing up for a second and snapped back up by hitting the wall behind me (I was only standing a couple of inches from it so I don’t think anyone else noticed). Thank God I was leaning backwards slightly… I need to fix it before I start falling behind in academics. I missed a lot of lecture because I just couldn’t bring my self to retain anything that was going on. Classes took up about 9 hours of our day today.

We were given the opportunity to tour a destroyer, I jumped at it. Destroyers only have one or two IWOs, but still its an opportunity to see a possible career path. This ship was SO much smaller than I had expected a destroyer to be. Aside from the normal “can’t stand up straight anywhere” complaints, I could only marvel at how incredibly small the rooms and hallways and workspaces were. Officer rooms were SMALLER than here, if you can believe it. The crew all looked rather a lot like zombies, and just like we’ve been hearing at OCS, all they tell us about is just how much it sucks to be on a ship. Both officers and enlisted had the same complaints. Impossible tasks, high stress, 5 hours of sleep is a good night, living like this constantly for 6 to 9 months at a time, etc, etc, etc. I’m just dumbfounded by it all. If it’s really that bad, how the hell does the Navy even operate? Who (other than us BDCP kids who are STUCK here) on Earth would work here? It just doesn’t make sense.

Bedtime now, I need to get every minute of sleep that I can. I pray for the stamina to keep my head in the game.


November 4

November 2nd was one of the worst days of my life. I’ve really just got nothing else to say about it. November 3rd was all fallout from the 2nd. The letters I wrote on those two days are terrible. So terrible that I can’t send them home. They’re just too painful and too personal to put out to everyone. I’m sorry, you can ask me what happened next time we meet and I’ll tell you as much as I can, but for now that’s all I can give you from those two days.

Let’s get back to the 4th. Section leader day is finally over. Had no time to write during the day, I was so busy all day it was just exhausting. Fell asleep sitting at attention which is even less comfortable than standing up, but again I was in the back so nobody noticed. I’m glad I don’t have to be section leader again!

The day started by reporting to the DIs office and screaming my head off, but I nailed all of the procedures and he let me go. The candidate behind me on the other hand got RPT’d hard. Section leader runs the class, and since all of OCS is an intricate military dance of commands and executions, it’s a lot of memorization. The worst part is running chow hall procedures. A million opportunities to mess up, and since I’m leading it I get less time to actually eat so I spend the day hungry.

I only messed up once during morning PT, I gave the command “CLASS 04-12, COUNT OFF”, used to count off inside and to count off outside in formation in certain situations, instead of “FROM FRONT TO REAR, COUNT OFF” which is the correct command for counting off in PT formation post-warm up but pre-stretch. Yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous, but it was wrong none the less and we were put on our faces for it. Only cost us about 15 pushups though, a very light punishment relative to normal. Other than that, zero mistakes all day. The class was very impressed and I was pretty happy with myself. Most section leaders get nervous and screw up all day. It is VERY easy to screw up, though. Only one mistake is extremely good, I’m fairly certain that NO section leader has ever made it a whole day with zero mistakes.

My new claim to fame is that our class got through all 3 chows with NO mistakes (on my part or on theirs). That’s never happened to us before. The DI for the new class 06-12 had his class stop eating to watch us. Very high-pressure situation for me, but again, zero mistakes. I got a lot of congrats after that one.

Classes are high stress again. Got a 90% on my NOS quiz, but a damn 55% on my navigation quiz. I answered every question correctly on the navigation quiz, but made a single plotting mistake in the opening part of a 9-part question, so instantly 9/20 wrong. The question said to plot a contact dead off the starboard BOW (45 degrees), and I plotted it dead off the starboard BEAM (90 degrees). We’ve never been asked to plot relative to the ship before, so most people read that and assumed it was 90 degrees to the right. Just under half of the class made that mistake so the class average was failing. Still, the quiz is 10% of the overall grade so I’ve lost a hard 5% on my final score. Never an ok thing.

Also, we moved into a new p-way yesterday. Now 05-12 lives in our old p-way. There’s only one more move left, into the candiO p-way. We can smell the coffee in the morning, it’s killer. I managed to dump Deighan finally, rooming with Faulkner now. He’s a roll-out from 03-12, his designator is Naval Flight Officer. He’s about 6’5” and his posture is similar to mine, we make a good pair. Deighan is rooming alone now, nobody wanted to live with him (shocking? No.) He seems happy about it though so I guess it worked out well for everyone.

Tomorrow class 06-12 finishes indoc week and will be welcomed into the regiment, just like 05-12 was welcomed in 3 weeks ago and just like we were welcomed in 6 weeks ago. This time we’re the senior class on deck though, so we get to give them a speech and sing them the traditional song about OCS that each class writes. Ours is actually pretty funny, but Lord help us if someone laughs. It’s risky. Anyway, that all goes down at 0430 so I need to get to bed ASAP. Goodnight.


November 5

Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the gunpowder, treason and plot…

V for Vendetta. Outstanding movie.

Anyhow, today was pretty terrible, as per always. PT was indoors this morning, had to run 3 miles in the gym (around two basketball courts). My knees and ankles are killing me. We got another round of haircuts today, actually got to keep the little bit of regrowth on the top. I may look like an individual again in a few more weeks!

The rest of the day was spent studying. My body is sore from the last few days of beating, and now my head is sore too. You just can’t win.

Fantastic news for us though, they let us sleep 7 hours on Saturday nights, so because of the time rollback we actually get 8 hours of sleep! It’s like a once-a-year gift from OCS that we’re lucky enough to be around to get. I’m sure it’ll be weird to sleep that much.

Nothing else to report today, it was surprisingly relaxed since all of class team left early for the weekend and the candiOs tend to leave the senior class on deck alone. Someone fell asleep in his hatch earlier, so 4 of us snuck up on him and screamed ATTENTION ON DECK STANDBY like a DI had just walked in, poor kid almost shat himself.

Looks like tomorrow will be all studying too. I’m feeling much better about the material, but still have so much to study that I don’t like thinking about it. The pile is stacked high…

Goodnight


November 6

Week 8, day 1. Feels good to say that.

Today was different. Having all that sleep made me even sleepier during the day. The section leader of the day was Wardlow, a roll-in from med hold. Wardlow is an interesting guy, it’s very hard to describe, but he’s quite different. Some people just don’t understand certain things, it’s natural. He doesn’t understand vocal inflection. Everything he says sounds rather a lot like he’s trying to make fun of you or like he’s being sarcastic, but that’s just his normal speaking voice. He’s a perfectly smart guy, he has a degree in civil engineering, he just can’t talk normally. His command voice is just awful. His voice gets incredibly raspy and deep, and the inflection is so drastic it’s just comical. We made him do his section leader day on Sunday for a reason, we’d have been destroyed if class team was around.

As he called out his commands all day most of the class couldn’t keep a straight face. I didn’t have a problem with it, I feel sorry for the guy who’s up there giving it his best but can’t pull it off. Others just straight up laughed. The candiOs were sharking us much harder than normal, trying to get Wardlow to say something else or trying to use him to break our bearing. It was something that would have gotten people rolled if a DI were around.

Aside from that the day was spent studying, and I’m still behind. It’s ridiculous how much I have to know for the inspection on Tuesday, and then even more for the two upcoming finals. This week will be brutal.

I’m going to fall out for medical tomorrow to have them look at my feet, which are doing a bit worse now. The good news about that is missing PT, any day where you miss PT is a great day. Interestingly, tomorrow may be the last day of normal PT! Tuesday we won’t have PT due to the morning inspection, Wednesday will be the PFA (no PT), Thursday we’ll do UI because candiOs run PT so we need to learn how to run it, and Fri/Sat are holidays (no PT). Next week, Monday will be the second UI day (two UIs are required), and Tuesday we’ll take over PT since we become candiOs on Wednesday. It’s hard to think about how far ahead all of that is, but OH MAN, what a relief to think that PT is over! PT is far and away the worst part of OCS. PT is NOT a workout, it’s a beating. We work out on our own time in the evenings. PT destroys knees and backs and shoulders, it does not help. Anyhow, if indeed tomorrow is the last normal PT (which I’ll miss), that means I’m DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!! with PT. Couldn’t describe what a wonderful thought that is!