First few days of ODS

Any feelings of contentment I felt that first night quickly evaporated at 4:45 the next morning (yes, that’s not a typo – 4:45 AM) when we were awakened by someone in the hallway outside our rooms yelling to get up. I was warned by some of the members of my company with prior military experience that this may happen, yet wasn’t fully prepared to be woken up that early by being yelled at. Because it was our first day and we hadn’t been issued uniforms yet, we had to wear these smelly, blue, one-piece jumpsuits. Turns out, the guy who woke us up was a naval officer who was in charge of us just for that day. He was actually a fair, kind guy that I was sad to see go. I learned a few things quickly that morning. When anyone in a position of authority enters the area in which you’re occupying, be it a classroom, hallway of our barracks, whatever, the first member of the company to notice the authority figure shouted loudly, “Attention on deck!” This meant to stop whatever you’re doing and stand completely still awaiting instruction. Now, if no one noticed a person of authority and we carried on doing our business, this was a bad thing – as in, you’ll do push-ups until you cry if someone doesn’t notice quickly. This got so bad, that we started posting a lookout just to make sure and call, “Attention on deck!” whenever someone of authority entered. Soon after our instructions, we were taken to breakfast, or “chow” as they call it in the Navy. This seemed odd to me, as I always associated the word “chow” with animal food, like Purina Dog Chow. Little did I know, though should have had the foresight to see this, it turns out that “chow” is actually a very appropriate name for the food you receive in a Navy cafeteria. After a breakfast of runny, powdered eggs, “sausage” patties (they tasted vaguely like sausage, but were more like jerky than any sausage I’ve had before), “pancakes” (though, I never have had crispy pancakes) with syrup, and a tall glass of watery orange juice. Thankfully, they also had a fresh fruit/salad bar, which over the course of my 5 weeks would become the source of most of my meals. After morning chow, we were shuttled back to our barracks to weigh in and have our heights measured. Keep in mind, we still had these terrible jumpsuits on and had just eaten a fairly large breakfast. I weighed in at about 10 lbs more than I was expecting to. Nearly everyone was in the same situation, with heavy jumpsuits and full belly’s. It soon became apparent that this was their way of padding the statistics – if they showed that our company lost a good amount of weight during our time there, they could declare their fitness regimen a success. What a better way than start with inflated weights of each company member. The first day was a blur, we went through a lot of administrative stuff, started our classroom studies, were issued two sets of Navy physical training (PT) gear, some Navy sweats (the old-fashioned kind that your dad wore in the mid 80s to go jogging in), and a blue water bottle. These PT clothes would be our sole uniforms for the first week, as our real uniforms weren’t going to be ready until the next weekend. This meant two things; first, we could ditch the stinky jumpsuits. Second, we had two t-shirts and two pairs of shorts to wear for the remainder of the first week. That didn’t really hit me until day three when I had nothing but smelly clothes to wear. In addition, we were instructed that our water bottles always needed to be at least half-way full and we must carry them with us at all times. There was no exception to this rule, unless we enjoyed push-ups until tears, as we found out when someone didn’t take their water bottle into the bathroom with them. The afternoon was also spent in class and we went straight to evening chow. Evening chow was consistently disappointing, even by cafeteria standards. I would stomach a few bites, choke it down with some salad, and drink a lot of water, our only allowed beverage except blue Powerade. After dinner as was the case every evening, we were free, though free is a very relative term. Not free to call home. Not free to go off base for a decent meal. Not free to visit any of the restaurants on base. Not free to even work out. We were instructed to study for our classes, under no circumstance change out of our PT clothes, and drink at least 4 bottles full of water, as we had urinalysis the next morning. Now, that’s 4 liters of water right before bed (which is just more than a gallon). I must have gotten up to pee 5-6 times that night. We were woken up the next morning at 3:45. Yes, that is 3:45 AM. I don’t think I have ever seen the clock say that until this morning. We had to stand in huge line and receive our pee bottles, then enter the bathroom 3 at a time and fill them up. Not too difficult a task normally, but as this was essentially our drug test, we had to be supervised as to not swap urine or whatever. And supervise they did. They physically had to see the urine exiting your body and entering the bottle. This meant I had a guy staring at my penis while I was attempting to pee into a tiny bottle. This may sound humorous, and looking back it is, but at the time I got stage fright so bad that I could not pee. I had to pee. Badly. 1 gallon of water before bed will do that to you. But I couldn’t. I stood there for nearly 15 minutes, the entire time having this guy staring at me. I was pushing so hard I thought I was going to tear something. I finally relaxed when I thought about what a ridiculous situation I was in and how funny it would be later. I started laughing to myself and finally, I started to pee. I filled up my bottle and got out of there quick. That day, we did the physical readiness test (PRT), which includes push-ups (max in 2 minutes), sit-ups (max in 2 minutes) and a 1.5-mile run. I got through it and managed to pass. Surprisingly, nearly a quarter of our class didn’t. At first, this made me happy, as we would get to do more PT. Once again, this place had a way of disappointing me. After more classroom time, we were done with another day. We were told that those who didn’t pass the PRT were required to go and workout at the gym every night, while the rest of us had to stay in the barracks and study. So, if I would have slacked off during the test, I could have gone to the gym every night? Instead, I busted my butt and my reward is study time in the barracks? This place blows. Little did I know what was coming next.

Reporting to Officer Development School

Part of me has always been intrigued with the military. I consider myself quite patriotic and am internally filled with pride whenever I see someone in military uniform or hear songs that celebrate our great nation. I never really considered actually joining the military until recently, mainly because I don't deal well with what I like to call Idiots In Charge (IIC). It's hard enough to work for someone who you can mentally run circles around, but when that person also screams in your face and will make you do push-ups until you puke, let's just say that I would not have handled this well. I've never attended military bootcamp (well, until recently, but I'll get to that in a moment), so I had no personal experiences from which to draw, but all accounts I've received have been similar to my fears, that is some IIC screaming at you for whatever he/she felt like. So, instead of joining the military, as some of my friends did, to take advantage of things like the GI bill to attend college and so forth, I put myself through undergraduate and graduate school, along the way having amassed enough student debt to fund a small nation, and set out to find a job. And I did. I found a great job - doing something I enjoy, good pay, excellent benefits, even paying down some of this student debt. The thing was, I had to join the military. The Navy to be specific. This frightened me at first, not because I may be called upon to give my life in the service of our nation or move to various locations around the world, but I really didn't know how I would handle boot camp and IICs. I was assured that since I have an advanced degree and would be starting off my bootcamp as a high-ranking junior officer, I would have nothing to worry about. My recruiter even went so far as to call what I had to go through, "Camp Cupcake." As non-manly as this may sound to many, I was perfectly okay with this, but in the back of my mind, having IICs screaming at me scared me to death. Not because they are particularly scary, but because I had heard that the military doesn't take too kindly to recruitees who tell the IICs to "shut the hell up" or say "I'd be pissed too if I spent the last 10 years sanding the deck of a ship and I spent mine getting an education and you outranked me" things of that nature. I tend to not hold my temper or my tongue, especially with IICs. This has gotten me in trouble on several occasions in my life, and I didn't think it would mix well with the military. I looked at what bootcamp entailed - first off, for someone with an advanced degree like me, they called it Officer Development School. It was a 5-week indoctrination program in Newport, RI. We were to be schooled in military history, etiquette, bearing, uniforms, etc....also, an intense physical fitness regimen (this actually sounded great) 5-weeks? I can probably bite my tongue for 5 weeks. So I did it. I actually signed on the dotted line 11 Sept, something unplanned but very fitting. I reported to training, without my wife and kids, on 14 Sept and checked into this dreary old place called King Hall. For the first time in many years, I had a roommate who wasn't my wife. We were given a whole list of things - things we couldn't do and things we had to do. Couldn't do - cell phones, go off base, wear civilian clothes, hands in pockets, speak during meals, eat dessert, talk in class, talk while marching, etc.... Had to do - rooms spotless with beds made just perfectly at all times, march to class, march to meals, eat only during meal times (yes, I lost like 15 lbs. in 5 weeks), stay with a buddy at all times, stay on base. Uh-oh. This was going to tougher than I thought. I'm 33 years old, have a PhD, three children, and you're going to treat me like a 5-year-old? When we're finished at night with everything you're telling me I can't my kids and say good night? Who do you think you are? And then, I reminded myself, it's only 5 weeks. If you're going to get all worked up the first day over these petty rules, you're not going to last 1 day, let alone 5 weeks. So I bit my tongue and pressed onward. There were 36 of us assigned to my company, and from what I could tell, most of the people were great individuals. We had a get to know you session on the first night and I went to bed feeling like I just may be able to make it.