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!

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