57 days in AlabamaI am going to start off topic for a second and say that the last year has been really good for me. I went from being depressed, hopeless, and obese to motivated, excited, and fit. A year ago I weighed about 220 pounds, could barely run a 10 minute mile, and was weak. Right now I weigh 185, I run 2 miles in 13 minutes, and I am in the best shape of my life (and that shape is not round at all). I used to have a 40 inch waist; it is now a 32, the same size I was in middle school (15 years ago).My confidence and self-esteem are also at an all-time high. I am ready to face anything the world (military or civilian) could possibly throw at me. I think if you saw me from a year ago and me today standing next to each other, you wouldn't know we were the same person. It feels good to see people (specifically the opposite sex) feed off of your confidence and positive attitude, it almost reflects off of them and boosts your own confidence and attitude more. But I digress... The Alabama Accelerated OCS program was hard, to put it plainly. I didn't struggle, or think that I couldn't make it through, but it was hard. They cram, and I mean cram, 12 weeks of training into 8. I think we had a total of 4 "down" days and 2 of those were in preparation of graduation and exodus. The other 2 days we were in between phases and we spent that time reorganizing ourselves into new platoons and moving into new barracks. I wish I could give you a better picture of an average day, but we had so much going on that most days weren't the same until phase two when we spent a lot of time in the classroom. Wake up was at 0400. We would either have PT or just go straight to breakfast at 0500. Times after that would depend on what we were doing that day, either classroom instruction, squad tactical exercises (STX), warrior task battle drill classes (WTBD), or field lane exercises (FLX). If we were in the field, lunch was an MRE and you ate whenever you could sneak it into your schedule. Otherwise we would run, literally, back to the chow hall to eat and then head back to the classroom for more instruction. Once the afternoon activities were over, we would again run back to the chow hall for dinner and would have yet another period of classroom instruction or we would watch 2 episodes of Band of Brothers with a writing assignment due 2 days later. Most classes consisted of 4 to 6 hours worth of information presented via PowerPoint, the classes that were shorter than that were usually on material that was untested. We spent a week on Land Navigation (day and night) with most of that time spent in the field. For the last 3 weeks we were primarily in the field demonstrating all of the things we had learned in the previous 5. I think we slept in barracks 4 or 5 nights throughout that period, until coming in finally to prepare for graduation. We started in the field leading just a squad of 10 people, and then moved on to leading a platoon of 45 people. I made a lot of progress between the two and my instructors said that I had the best platoon lane they had seen this cycle, needless to say it was a big boost in my confidence as a soon to be new lieutenant. This journal is long, I forget what I was trying to say completely...ask questions if you want to know more... |
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