Sleep depravation

[U_High_Warrior]

I've found a lot of great information on this forum. Curious – how much sleep do candidates receive on an average night at OCS? Is there any way to prepare your body to get use to the lack of sleep and does anybody know any other ways to prepare mentally for OCS?

 

[HueyCobra8151]

Prepare for sleep deprivation in the field the way we prepare for it in the fleet.

Stay up until 0100 getting trashed in the barracks, pass out on the floor.
Wake up at 0520, run to the parade deck, commence PT at 0530.
Stay at work until 1730 or so.

 

[SemperGumbi]

I didn't get much more than 4 hours a night for the first few weeks. Sometimes (much) less. But don't think about it. I didn't really feel the effects too much. It is funny, because I feel like if I tried to go a few weeks with only four hours of sleep a night now I think I would be a zombie.

 

[SemperGumbi]

Search for a thread titled "life at ocs".

There is more in depth info in there.

 

[craig0330]

Plenty of sleep is had at OCS. That's highly emphasized there now. We always had 6-7 hours of sleep unless you had fire watch. We were told that if we were caught out of our racks after taps, we were gone! Everyone still stayed up studying with those stupid headband lights. If you've finished high school, studying is not a factor. That was OCC 185 anywho. The only thing that still puzzles me about OCS is how we got hit for having crap in the crapper like every day??? Wierd

 

[DocT]

I've found a lot of great information on this forum. Curious – how much sleep do candidates receive on an average night at OCS? Is there any way to prepare your body to get use to the lack of sleep and does anybody know any other ways to prepare mentally for OCS?

Are you going OCC/Combined or PLC jr/sr route? This will make a difference. If you go to combined, it's possible that you'll get your 7 a night. If you go to jrs/srs you probably will be looking at about 5-6 if you're locked on. At seniors the schedule doesn't permit alotted time to perform the minutia of life as a candidate, seeing as how you're doing the ten week course in six. The staff would just tell you what needed to be done and they'd tell you to do it on your own time, i.e. when you'd normally be sleeping.

This also depends highly on your individual staff. Ours had us remark all of our gear every night for the first 3 weeks. That sucked.

 

[mmx1]

Are you going OCC/Combined or PLC jr/sr route? This will make a difference. If you go to combined, it's possible that you'll get your 7 a night. If you go to jrs/srs you probably will be looking at about 5-6 if you're locked on. At seniors the schedule doesn't permit alotted time to perform the minutia of life as a candidate, seeing as how you're doing the ten week course in six. The staff would just tell you what needed to be done and they'd tell you to do it on your own time, i.e. when you'd normally be sleeping.

This also depends highly on your individual staff. Ours had us remark all of our gear every night for the first 3 weeks. That sucked.

A lot depends on your Company and Platoon Staff. My combined platoon got 4-5 hours at the beginning, closer to 6 as we hit the halfway mark, just because people figured out what **** they had to do, and got fewer essays to write. I know our entire company was permitted out of our racks an hour after lights; we were expected to be up squaring our **** away for that time.

 

[usmcecho4]

Trick they used to play with us back in the "old" corps (2001&2003) was to have taps at 2200 then make us stay in the rack for 30min and only then could we move around and square our **** away (ie fresh tape on everything-that ****ing sucked). Then it was up at 0445 to be ready and in uniform by ondeck time. Ave about 5-6 a night for the first couple of weeks then 6-645 once you get your **** straight. In the "new" corps however lights out is at 2100 (so weak) and ondeck time is 0500 so add an hour to all the times I gave. It's amazing how soft everyone is getting. Sleep deprivation definitely makes OCS a lot more fun (halucinating and just general ridiculousness is greatly enhanced). You will have a lot of fun on the night humps I "saw" so much wierd crap (my dorm room, my house, random friends) in the tree line. One of my friends saw a homeless man at a bus stop. It really is insane. On the plus side you will fall asleep extremely quickly when you are there (literally less than a minute after hitting the rack). Firewatch does suck when I got it I would end up sleeping approx 4 hours but not continously (2hrs then 1.5 hrs watch then 2 hrs). That **** def sucked but it all depends on the size of your platoon (small platoons=more firewatch). Anyway.

s/f,
usmcecho4

 

[mmx1]

Trick they used to play with us back in the "old" corps (2001&2003) was to have taps at 2200 then make us stay in the rack for 30min and only then could we move around and square our **** away (ie fresh tape on everything-that ****ing sucked). Then it was up at 0445 to be ready and in uniform by ondeck time. Ave about 5-6 a night for the first couple of weeks then 6-645 once you get your **** straight. In the "new" corps however lights out is at 2100 (so weak) and ondeck time is 0500 so add an hour to all the times I gave. It's amazing how soft everyone is getting. Sleep deprivation definitely makes OCS a lot more fun (halucinating and just general ridiculousness is greatly enhanced). You will have a lot of fun on the night humps I "saw" so much wierd crap (my dorm room, my house, random friends) in the tree line. One of my friends saw a homeless man at a bus stop. It really is insane. On the plus side you will fall asleep extremely quickly when you are there (literally less than a minute after hitting the rack). Firewatch does suck when I got it I would end up sleeping approx 4 hours but not continously (2hrs then 1.5 hrs watch then 2 hrs). That **** def sucked but it all depends on the size of your platoon (small platoons=more firewatch). Anyway.

s/f,
usmcecho4

Yea, they played that **** with us this summer, too. No talking for 15 minutes after lights, nobody out of their racks until an hour after. Then we had the gung-ho billet holders that'd wake everyone up at 0400 to check their gear. I tried to sleep out that first hour, but usually ended up crashing until 0300 or 0400 and using those last hours for prep work.

Those middle shift firewatches suck, too.

 

[Malice 1]

I went to Juniors in 2002 and we got little sleep. We had to square away our gear at night. Taps was 2200, revile at 0500.

Seniors in 2004 was totally different. Taps was at 2100, and we had more time to square away our gear during the day. I got more sleep in seniors than I did in Juniors. It was Ass-backwards, but it didn't bother me.

Week 4 of seniors is ball breaker. I got like 8 hours of sleep from libbo to libbo that week. One night, for example, we had taps at 2100, everyone got up at 2130 to square away gear, and reville was at 1200. (Yes, I do mean 3 hours after taps) I had firewatch from 2200 to 2300. I deserved it, due to a screw up on my behalf, but I was still wore out by the time the week was over.

 

[PSno23]

and reville was at 1200. (Yes, I do mean 3 hours after taps)

That would be 2400 or 0000. :icon_wink

It's amazing how soft everyone is getting. Sleep deprivation definitely makes OCS a lot more fun (halucinating and just general ridiculousness is greatly enhanced). You will have a lot of fun on the night humps I "saw" so much wierd crap (my dorm room, my house, random friends) in the tree line. One of my friends saw a homeless man at a bus stop. It really is insane.

I remember my squad bay hallucinations as well. I swear I would wake up and see Sergeant Instructors roaming up and down the highway like ghosts. At other times I would wake up at 0130 and start putting my cammies on to get ready for the day, only to have fire watch come shake me and tell me to get back in the rack. On my night hump? I'm pretty sure I saw a bunch of monkeys playing football in the treeline....no lie!

 

[SemperGumbi]

Trick they used to play with us back in the "old" corps (2001&2003) was to have taps at 2200 then make us stay in the rack for 30min and only then could we move around and square our **** away (ie fresh tape on everything-that ****ing sucked). Then it was up at 0445 to be ready and in uniform by ondeck time. Ave about 5-6 a night for the first couple of weeks then 6-645 once you get your **** straight. In the "new" corps however lights out is at 2100 (so weak) and ondeck time is 0500 so add an hour to all the times I gave. It's amazing how soft everyone is getting.

Sounds like the "old" corps allowed you to get more sleep despite the "extra" hour.
Even witht he supposed 8 hours of sleep I don't know anyone who was sleeping that much for the first few weeks.

I am glad I never had to iron cammies, though. I am really bad at ironing. Even when I worked in the civilian world I would always just fork over the 1:10 and have my shirts done professionally.

I am totally with you about seeing things. It was really only bad for me at night. I would wake up and have NO idea what was going on. And I know just about all of you can relate to seeing firewatch walking around, thinking it is someone on line (or just thinking you see someone online....or some other cand thinking it is time and getting on line) and hopping out of bed to get online. I don't even know how many times that happened to me. I certainly felt a lot dummer when I was upper bunk and hopped all the way down before realizing I still had like 3 hours to sleep.

 

[froghead1]

I went through last year and one of our sergeant instructors told us we weren't supposed to get out of the rack after lights out, but about thirty minutes after lights out he'd better see a bunch of little ninjas sneaking around.

 

[usmcecho4]

I almost forgot about ironing and starching cammies and polishing boots. That **** really did suck-especially waiting for the iron.

s/f,
usmcecho4

 

[corpsocgmu]

Then we had the gung-ho billet holders that'd wake everyone up at 0400 to check their gear. \

Haha, yes. Combine that with the windbag billet holders who want to talk to you for a few hours after lights out and you end up getting about 3 hours a night. I understand the need to give the platoon a briefing on the next days events, but the key word there is "brief".....