Just how intense is Navy OCS nowadays?

[LFCFan]

Yeah, I was laundry body back in Old Nimitz, life sucked. "Why are my skivvies still damp?" "Because friggin' Charlie company is hogging the dryers and I barely had time to get them in and out by Taps! Just hang 'em in your war locker and hope they dry out overnight."

HA! I was in Charlie company while you were there, and no matter how late our laundry body stayed up they were still damp. So really, it didn't matter.

 

[Renegade One]

I was still shocked when you originally posted that. One of my classmates had many sleepless nights trying doing laundry for us. I think an outsider would expect the ensigns to say "yeah, we just payed someone to do it" and the retirees to talk about sleepless nights doing laundry than vice versa.

Shocked? Wow…sorry for that. Not sure I'm all that broken up about your classmate…I guess it's just a different time.

Uh…if you can replace "Ensigns" with "Candidates" …part of it might be true. I doubt any retirees (at least of my generation…) have night-sweats about having had to do laundry. I could be wrong, of course.

Yeah…I'm sure the BN sand pits where we all sweated were originally the clothes-line farms for whatever…but it was a different time.

 

[LFCFan]

Shocked? Wow…sorry for that. Not sure I'm all that broken up about your classmate…I guess it's just a different time.

Uh…if you can replace "Ensigns" with "Candidates" …part of it might be true. I doubt any retirees (at least of my generation…) have night-sweats about having had to do laundry. I could be wrong, of course.

Nah, the night sweats are from other things that the OP will just have to learn about when he gets there. The laundry thing is just surprising in that it seems like the kind of luxury that wouldn't be permitted.

 

[Flash]

True enough, but as the OP noted in his opener, and you regarding the obstacle course, there have been real changes that on balance have made (A)OCS easier over the years. It seems the trend is always to the easier. Will it ever abate? I know the AOCS guys years before me had it harder than me. It has been touched on before in other threads, but one has to wonder why? Have the demands of serving changed that much? Is the raw material a DI has to work with that much different? Were the guys of my generation who attended AOCS treated so much more harshly for no good reason or are today's officer candidates being short changed? It is always pointed out that regardless of the difficulty of OCS today's OCS sourced officers are prepared for duty and serve more than adequately. So did the Navy have it all wrong back in my day and earlier?

I think "easier" is a tough term to quantify.....If everything has truly been getting easier for the last 30 years, it seems like by now the whole thing would have degenerated to a 2 week cruise vacation......I don't think getting my ass kicked by a DI would have made me a better officer than I am now.....

We had this debate at my school and it will continue long after my class has had its final muster. The whole argument about whether things were tougher/harder 'back in the day' compared to my time was constant, especially when compared to what the guys in the 60's and 70's had to endure at my school (their treatment was often brutal). Things for me were put in perspective though after sitting down and talking several times to a grad from not one but two generations before mine, he had graduated in '49 after serving in the USMC in WWII as a Drill Instructor. His experience as a cadet back then was much different as was his boot camp experience, it was tough but didn't have a lot of the brutality or other stupid crap that the folks the generation after him had to endure.

The same was true of a lot of his generation, coming out of the huge number of boot camps or from the countless OCS's as real 90-day wonders trained by folks with not much more experience than they had. The old grad from my school became a drill instructor after graduating from boot camp and attending some training in between without ever going overseas or even to the 'fleet' and apparently that was standard at the time for many DIs. From several other accounts from that time I have read and heard it wasn't nearly as 'tough' an experience for many who served in WWII than what folks of Wink and R1's generation experienced. Some folks had it really tough, paratrooper infantry training for example, yet most didn't and these are the folks that went on to defeat the Nazi and Japanese hordes and made the world safe for democracy. If it was tough enough to get the job done back then why did it need to become 'harder' for subsequent generations? Maybe a better question would be did the Navy get it wrong by making it tougher in the 60's and 70's versus the 40's?

So where is the right balance? The services have to constantly make sure they strike it in their intitial training for officer and enlisted. What was acceptable 20, 30 or 60 years ago is often not acceptable now. Physical abuse, tolerated years ago, has no place today and is rightfully banned. There is also less tolerance on the part of civilians for some of the practices and resultant abuses in the system that years ago did not get attention except in extreme circumstances, especially now when information flows so freely without the filters that we had in the past. And since we ultimately answer to the people we have to cognizant of such things.

 

[Gunfyter]

Prior enlisted Marine commissioned through the Marine Corps PLC program, I was favorably impressed with what I saw of AOCS in 1982 at NAS Pensacola. Looked like a good commissioning program. Very curious as to how current Newport OCS compares with that old program and why it was changed?

 

[xmid]

Definitely a different school from a few years ago. Probably more so from decades ago. We graduated 7 of an original 59 person class with ought rolling back. Most of those were roll backs from previous classes. Overall my impression was were you willing to deal with 13 or X number of weeks to be an officer? I learned nothing at OCS, other than to persevere.

 

[OCSgrad]

I wouldn't say that it's cakewalk. Read this before you go: http://bizrazzi.com/A_Sea_Story_Navy_OCS.php

 

[MambaJamba1124]

I wouldn't say that it's cakewalk. Read this before you go: http://bizrazzi.com/A_Sea_Story_Navy_OCS.php

I'm a little hesitant to buy that book, mainly because every website I have looked on, that has this book, has the same amount of reviews ( which is 1), and is the same review word for word.

 

[MambaJamba1124]

Mind you I have not been selected/ have not gone to OCS, but I would say the best way to prepare for OCS is to study the information here on this site and what your OR gives you. For the physical portion I would workout as much as possible focusing on Running, push-ups, and sit-ups ( strength and endurance wise).

Above all else I know this seems like a crazy thought but OCS is going to be one of the most rewarding times in your life when your done with it, be excited about it, let it be something you prepared for, but above else let it be a surprising experience. ( like the ASTB!) Prepare for the worst and hope for the best!

 

[Gunfyter]

Besides running ... I agree with someone who said the INSANITY workout. I haven't done that but I have P90X and P90X -3. Don't hurt yourself though.

 

[Sonog]

If you train hard for OCS and get yourself used to the physical pains of working out and pushing your conditioning to the max, then the 10 minute 'beat downs' will be like nice little workouts sprinkled throughout your day. Honestly, if you embrace the suckiness of it and put out everything you got in every beat down (its very easy to just go 70-80% and 'get by'), not only will your DI's notice and probably pick on you less but also you will have nothing to fear at OCS. If you're not worried about beat downs then the worst part of OCS is the boredom and isolation.

 

[AllYourBass]

If you're not worried about beat downs then the worst part of OCS is the boredom and isolation.

And peanut butter farts when everyone starts chugging Jif cups.

 

[Renegade One]

Definitely a different school from a few years ago. We graduated 7 of an original 59 person class with ought rolling back. Most of those were roll backs from previous classes.

Wow…that's one hell of an attrition/roll-back rate...

Overall my impression was were you willing to deal with 13 or X number of weeks to be an officer? I learned nothing at OCS, other than to persevere.

Yes…much of it is a "rite of passage". I do think I learned a LOT at AOCS that I didn't know before, but the whole thing about being able to "persevere" surely resonates.

 

[Tycho_Brohe]

And peanut butter farts when everyone starts chugging Jif cups.

As you were! They were Smuckers.

 

[AllYourBass]

As you were! They were Smuckers.

That's right. Those little rat bastards. People barely took the plastic cover off before fisting their faces with them. And I, measuring in at a bold 5'6", got to march behind everybody on the way back from each peanut butter eating competition.