goosegagnon2
Member
Its been almost 2 weeks since I got back from OCS in Quantico, and I'm still suffering and "enjoying" the effects of it. I can't even begin to explain how difficult it was. It was probably the hardest thing I've done in my entire life; if not close to or harder than wrestling. Wrestling was tough phyiscally having to out my body through that pain day in and day out was hard. The stress from myself and to be successful was immense. I think there was more pressure from myself because I hate to lose.
When I went to OCS, the first thing they did was put us in a big auditorium and told us that everyone person here is not used to losing or being told that they are wrong. Then they told us that we will fail here, no matter what we do, but its how we will react to the stress that matters. It was mentally challenging. Its one of those things where you look back on all of the people you have met in your entire life and say 85% would not be able to do this. Inprocessing was the first introduction to the mind games they give you. Sitting in a huge formation with 200 or so candidates you don't know, they line you up like cattle and stick 6 shots in each arm. Then they go over your entire medical history; broken bones, tore ligaments, surgeries everything. I had to prove to them that my knee was good to go for like an hour before they released me. You sit around for 7-8 hours doing nothing, reading candidate regs, no talking, no eating, no moving unless you ask, and you have to sit with your back straight, feet at a 45 degree angle and your hands on your legs. When we were all done with that we got back to the new squadbay at 1100 at night. We had to set up, clean everything, make racks, get in alphabetical order (seems simple, but try doing it with 67 other confused idoits) and finally get to sleep. By this time its 0200 in the morning. Reveille is at 0500...3 hours of sleep.
In the first 2-3 weeks its constant battering and mentally destroying candidates. Everything you do is watched, observed, and analyzed. The first thing we did was grab all of our gear and throw it outside on the parade deck; everything we had including civilian gear, military issue, anything you brought with you. They checked for contraband, tabacco, candy, magazines, basically anything that you would enjoy. Its like 95 degrees out and you are on asphalt parade deck, your sweat starts to go through your shirt. This is the first time it happens, but the rest of the time your there, your shirt or cammie blouse is ALWAYS soaked in sweat. The sense of urgency is distinct, doing everything as fast as possible to perfection is key. You get less than 10seconds for pretty much everything your told to do. You get a footlocker and wall locker to put your gear in, but its not really your gear because by the time you dump everything out and get up there and start "organizing" your crap you'll have some other guys stuff. Whenever we left the squadbay, you ALWAYS locked your lockers...because if you don't they'd go through the bay and dump it out and throw **** everywhere, sun tan lotion, toothpaster....anything was fair game. It would go everywhere, on the beds, walls, floor. The worst part was you had to clean up after it the moron who left it unlocked, AFTER you told him to lock it. Whenever we fell out into formation on the deck, you always ran. You don't walk, we kinda cheated though and did a thing called the "shuffle" kinda looks like your running, but your really not...its more like a jog. Everyday is something new, wake at 0430 on line at 0500, count off and then PT. Our lowest run was 3 miles, and it only went up from there at a faster pace. My intial 3 miler was 20:52, it went from there to 19:19 by the time I left. There were so many PT sessions they all kinda blend together. One time we had to get a no **** telephone pole and carry it around as a squad while doing PT. One course was called the fartlek, its a big ass maze in the woods loaded with obstacles, and PT events, like pushups, crunches, sit-ups, ply-jumps, or mountian climbers. The hardest one was the Stamina Course which was like a mile and a half course loaded down with wall climbs, rope climbs, these metal tubes we had to crawl through, big open pits of water we had to get through, and we're doing all of this in boots, utility trousers, and our skivie shirts. Anytime you did something wrong, didn't sound off, lost your bearing, didn't do something correctly..for even the small things they'd make you write an essay on it. Instead of doing pushups or something like that we would get a "special" format to write eassys in. Handwritten, caps lock, atleast 300 words, but you can only count the words with more than 4 letters, all underlined, number from beginning to end right above the word. So what really would have taken 30 minutes to write now takes an hour and a half due to the format. It also has to be in standard NATO format. With the "to", "from", "subject" lines, code 1500 or something like that at the top right. etc. It pretty much sucked. One time I did 6 essays in three days. So 72 hours in three days, 24 hours of total sleep time, (8 hours a day) 9 hours to write 6 essays, 24-9=15 hours of sleep in 72 hours...oh and I forgot firewatch, usually I get one firewatch every other night, so it's more like 14 or 13 hours of sleep. It kinda sucked.
The Last three weeks were easier than the first three. Mainly because you got into a rountine by then and figured it out. The road marches still sucked though. The body adjusts to the stressful enviroment and things become somewhat easier. You still fall asleep in class occassionally but by this time your fellow candidates wake you up and make you stand up in the back of class. Chow becomes more relaxed, sort of. You would still eat at the position of attention, feet at a 45 degree angle, back straight, eat with one hand, don't look at your food, eat square, eyes straight forward. Forget about peeling a banana by yourself, teamwork is what its all about, stick the banana out in front of you and the candidate and yourself will peel the banana together. Because if you do decide to peel it by yourself, you can expect an essay and a$$ whooping instaneously. By the fourth or fifth week though most of this has cooled down and its not so bad. Naval Terms become standard, there are so many to list its not even funny, it can become another language at times and if you said the civilian term your a$$ was grass. Like saying "floor" which is called a deck, or saying "pen" which is called an inkstick, the most common one I jacked up was stairs...its called a ladderwell. There are tons more to rattle off but you get the picture. The 4th and 5th weeks were the hardest phyiscally, 4th week was the 6 mile hump and the stamina course. The 5th week was the 9 mile hump and the small unit leadership evaluation (SULE). Both sucked balls. During the course we had our M-16A2s loaded with blanks, they are horrible when you get dirt and water inside them...pretty much worthless, because at the end of those courses you have to use them, but if they're all jammed with crap, you can't. We eventually figured out...NOT to get water inside them. The road marches were horrible, 50-60 lbs packs loaded down with the most useless crap, socks, old shirts, kevlar, e-tool, foot powder, and your tent. The tent was the only real thing you needed. Your crap better have been secured, the SIs would come through and rip your pack apart if it was sticking out, and throw it into the woods whenever they wanted too. Tent pools and e-tools were the most common vitcims.This one candidate (think Jimmy Neutron type of kid) constantly falling out of formation. One time the SIs actually took the kid and threw him into the dirt. Don't be a weakling or your going to be a target on those marches. That kid learned the hard way...literally. Do not straggle on those humps.
Towards the end everyone starts thinking about the first thing they are going to do when they get back. Remeber most guys haven't seen a good looking girl in well over a month, haven't ate Mcdonalds or Burger King, haven't read the newspaper or watched mtv. We're pretty much seperated from the world for a month and a half. We didn't find out about what was going on in Lebanon and Israel until 2 weeks after it all went down, we didn't find out about what happened in England with the liquids until we got to the airport to get on our planes home. The thing I looked forward to most was eating at Arby's, I would have killed for a market fresh roast beef and swiss during OCS. Once we got liberty we went out and did normal things like everyone else. Except it was kinda of weird ordering a Big Mac at McDonalds without having some SI screaming in your ear and spitting on your face. I didn't really know how to order McDonald's, it was almost like I forgot, stuttering and everything, kind of embrassing but you get over it.
Graduation week was one of the worst weeks of all...not because it was intense, beacuse all of that crap stopped. It was because we were all done and had absolutely nothing to do. Standing in formation for graduation practice for 3 hours at a time killed your legs and knees. One of the hardest things to do was to not get laid back and easy going because you would get ripped apart by the SIs. It was all pretty anti-climatic because us Juniors are not really done yet, we still have another 6 weeks of harder more intense training to go through. So graduation was pretty much a vain experience because well have to prove ourselves all over again for another 6 weeks of hell before my senior year.
Coming back to college and living a normal life again puts meaning into that phrase "You don't appreciate things until you don't have them anymore" OCS took everything away from us, nothing about it was fun except bull****ting with all the guys in the unit. Seeing people everyday complaining about getting up, doing paperwork in an AC office, signing people in, making copies, going to soccer or volleyball practice, walking to the gas station because they don't have a car...or little things that don't even matter kinda makes you think...they have no idea about how worse it could be. Even the frats and sororities on campus irk me, hearing about how they're best friends because they get together every weekend and drink beer and pay a fee every month. Half of those guys would sell each other out in a heartbeat if something better came along. Nothing I have ever done can compare to what I went through this summer, and its a pretty good feeling that out of the 67 or so guys in my platoon that started only 39 graduated. 11 candidates dropped on the first day, many more followed. 2 were dropped about 2 or 3 days before graduation. Now back to normal life, where I'll get to hear people complain about getting up at 7am and being tired everyday.
I guess thats my take on OCS, there is alot more to it than that, just kind wondering if anyone else had the same experience. It was only juniors, so it wasn't extremely bad. It sure has made me PT a heck of alot more now though due to the fact Seniors will be alot harder.
When I went to OCS, the first thing they did was put us in a big auditorium and told us that everyone person here is not used to losing or being told that they are wrong. Then they told us that we will fail here, no matter what we do, but its how we will react to the stress that matters. It was mentally challenging. Its one of those things where you look back on all of the people you have met in your entire life and say 85% would not be able to do this. Inprocessing was the first introduction to the mind games they give you. Sitting in a huge formation with 200 or so candidates you don't know, they line you up like cattle and stick 6 shots in each arm. Then they go over your entire medical history; broken bones, tore ligaments, surgeries everything. I had to prove to them that my knee was good to go for like an hour before they released me. You sit around for 7-8 hours doing nothing, reading candidate regs, no talking, no eating, no moving unless you ask, and you have to sit with your back straight, feet at a 45 degree angle and your hands on your legs. When we were all done with that we got back to the new squadbay at 1100 at night. We had to set up, clean everything, make racks, get in alphabetical order (seems simple, but try doing it with 67 other confused idoits) and finally get to sleep. By this time its 0200 in the morning. Reveille is at 0500...3 hours of sleep.
In the first 2-3 weeks its constant battering and mentally destroying candidates. Everything you do is watched, observed, and analyzed. The first thing we did was grab all of our gear and throw it outside on the parade deck; everything we had including civilian gear, military issue, anything you brought with you. They checked for contraband, tabacco, candy, magazines, basically anything that you would enjoy. Its like 95 degrees out and you are on asphalt parade deck, your sweat starts to go through your shirt. This is the first time it happens, but the rest of the time your there, your shirt or cammie blouse is ALWAYS soaked in sweat. The sense of urgency is distinct, doing everything as fast as possible to perfection is key. You get less than 10seconds for pretty much everything your told to do. You get a footlocker and wall locker to put your gear in, but its not really your gear because by the time you dump everything out and get up there and start "organizing" your crap you'll have some other guys stuff. Whenever we left the squadbay, you ALWAYS locked your lockers...because if you don't they'd go through the bay and dump it out and throw **** everywhere, sun tan lotion, toothpaster....anything was fair game. It would go everywhere, on the beds, walls, floor. The worst part was you had to clean up after it the moron who left it unlocked, AFTER you told him to lock it. Whenever we fell out into formation on the deck, you always ran. You don't walk, we kinda cheated though and did a thing called the "shuffle" kinda looks like your running, but your really not...its more like a jog. Everyday is something new, wake at 0430 on line at 0500, count off and then PT. Our lowest run was 3 miles, and it only went up from there at a faster pace. My intial 3 miler was 20:52, it went from there to 19:19 by the time I left. There were so many PT sessions they all kinda blend together. One time we had to get a no **** telephone pole and carry it around as a squad while doing PT. One course was called the fartlek, its a big ass maze in the woods loaded with obstacles, and PT events, like pushups, crunches, sit-ups, ply-jumps, or mountian climbers. The hardest one was the Stamina Course which was like a mile and a half course loaded down with wall climbs, rope climbs, these metal tubes we had to crawl through, big open pits of water we had to get through, and we're doing all of this in boots, utility trousers, and our skivie shirts. Anytime you did something wrong, didn't sound off, lost your bearing, didn't do something correctly..for even the small things they'd make you write an essay on it. Instead of doing pushups or something like that we would get a "special" format to write eassys in. Handwritten, caps lock, atleast 300 words, but you can only count the words with more than 4 letters, all underlined, number from beginning to end right above the word. So what really would have taken 30 minutes to write now takes an hour and a half due to the format. It also has to be in standard NATO format. With the "to", "from", "subject" lines, code 1500 or something like that at the top right. etc. It pretty much sucked. One time I did 6 essays in three days. So 72 hours in three days, 24 hours of total sleep time, (8 hours a day) 9 hours to write 6 essays, 24-9=15 hours of sleep in 72 hours...oh and I forgot firewatch, usually I get one firewatch every other night, so it's more like 14 or 13 hours of sleep. It kinda sucked.
The Last three weeks were easier than the first three. Mainly because you got into a rountine by then and figured it out. The road marches still sucked though. The body adjusts to the stressful enviroment and things become somewhat easier. You still fall asleep in class occassionally but by this time your fellow candidates wake you up and make you stand up in the back of class. Chow becomes more relaxed, sort of. You would still eat at the position of attention, feet at a 45 degree angle, back straight, eat with one hand, don't look at your food, eat square, eyes straight forward. Forget about peeling a banana by yourself, teamwork is what its all about, stick the banana out in front of you and the candidate and yourself will peel the banana together. Because if you do decide to peel it by yourself, you can expect an essay and a$$ whooping instaneously. By the fourth or fifth week though most of this has cooled down and its not so bad. Naval Terms become standard, there are so many to list its not even funny, it can become another language at times and if you said the civilian term your a$$ was grass. Like saying "floor" which is called a deck, or saying "pen" which is called an inkstick, the most common one I jacked up was stairs...its called a ladderwell. There are tons more to rattle off but you get the picture. The 4th and 5th weeks were the hardest phyiscally, 4th week was the 6 mile hump and the stamina course. The 5th week was the 9 mile hump and the small unit leadership evaluation (SULE). Both sucked balls. During the course we had our M-16A2s loaded with blanks, they are horrible when you get dirt and water inside them...pretty much worthless, because at the end of those courses you have to use them, but if they're all jammed with crap, you can't. We eventually figured out...NOT to get water inside them. The road marches were horrible, 50-60 lbs packs loaded down with the most useless crap, socks, old shirts, kevlar, e-tool, foot powder, and your tent. The tent was the only real thing you needed. Your crap better have been secured, the SIs would come through and rip your pack apart if it was sticking out, and throw it into the woods whenever they wanted too. Tent pools and e-tools were the most common vitcims.This one candidate (think Jimmy Neutron type of kid) constantly falling out of formation. One time the SIs actually took the kid and threw him into the dirt. Don't be a weakling or your going to be a target on those marches. That kid learned the hard way...literally. Do not straggle on those humps.
Towards the end everyone starts thinking about the first thing they are going to do when they get back. Remeber most guys haven't seen a good looking girl in well over a month, haven't ate Mcdonalds or Burger King, haven't read the newspaper or watched mtv. We're pretty much seperated from the world for a month and a half. We didn't find out about what was going on in Lebanon and Israel until 2 weeks after it all went down, we didn't find out about what happened in England with the liquids until we got to the airport to get on our planes home. The thing I looked forward to most was eating at Arby's, I would have killed for a market fresh roast beef and swiss during OCS. Once we got liberty we went out and did normal things like everyone else. Except it was kinda of weird ordering a Big Mac at McDonalds without having some SI screaming in your ear and spitting on your face. I didn't really know how to order McDonald's, it was almost like I forgot, stuttering and everything, kind of embrassing but you get over it.
Graduation week was one of the worst weeks of all...not because it was intense, beacuse all of that crap stopped. It was because we were all done and had absolutely nothing to do. Standing in formation for graduation practice for 3 hours at a time killed your legs and knees. One of the hardest things to do was to not get laid back and easy going because you would get ripped apart by the SIs. It was all pretty anti-climatic because us Juniors are not really done yet, we still have another 6 weeks of harder more intense training to go through. So graduation was pretty much a vain experience because well have to prove ourselves all over again for another 6 weeks of hell before my senior year.
Coming back to college and living a normal life again puts meaning into that phrase "You don't appreciate things until you don't have them anymore" OCS took everything away from us, nothing about it was fun except bull****ting with all the guys in the unit. Seeing people everyday complaining about getting up, doing paperwork in an AC office, signing people in, making copies, going to soccer or volleyball practice, walking to the gas station because they don't have a car...or little things that don't even matter kinda makes you think...they have no idea about how worse it could be. Even the frats and sororities on campus irk me, hearing about how they're best friends because they get together every weekend and drink beer and pay a fee every month. Half of those guys would sell each other out in a heartbeat if something better came along. Nothing I have ever done can compare to what I went through this summer, and its a pretty good feeling that out of the 67 or so guys in my platoon that started only 39 graduated. 11 candidates dropped on the first day, many more followed. 2 were dropped about 2 or 3 days before graduation. Now back to normal life, where I'll get to hear people complain about getting up at 7am and being tired everyday.
I guess thats my take on OCS, there is alot more to it than that, just kind wondering if anyone else had the same experience. It was only juniors, so it wasn't extremely bad. It sure has made me PT a heck of alot more now though due to the fact Seniors will be alot harder.
