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.