USMC Marine Reservist time commitment

[PatrickOfSteele]

Currently, I'm putting together my packet for the March Selection board to hopefully get selected for OCS 222. I am submitting an OCC-R, and coming from a prior service national guard background.

My question(s) are the following: If i'm lucky enough to pass OCS, graduate TBS and finish my job training, will I be reporting directly to a guard unit or do most reserve officers have a 1 year active duty commitment/full training cycle commitment? I've read a few different things where reservists would be forced to do a year active before settling down at their reserve station.

My second question: I highly doubt that a marine officer actually does 1 weekend a month, 2 weeks in the summer. Considering this is a leadership position, My suspicion is that I may be drilling a saturday/sunday, but given everything that needs to happen for drill weekend, I'll probably be there a day early and probably have spent a good few hours on phone meetings with higher leadership personnel and adjunct staff, doing a lot of paperwork on my off time and so fourth. But I would assume that having a normal 9-5 job isn't difficult as a marine reservist?

Just curious on anyone's insight. I literally know no marine reservists that can enlighten me on the situation, so I figure this would be my best bet.

 

[Philly@9]

Hi Patrick,

I served as a reservist in the Marine Corps for 8 years and the whole time I was in I went to college taking 16+ units every semester. It's not a full-time job ofcourse but you know how busy that can be. Especially since it seemed like when the midterms or finals were happening I had extensive 3-4 day ops. You will for sure be making phone calls but I doubt you will be required to serve extra days. Majority of reservist activities are designed around mandatory training such as medical, physical fitness, swim qual, rifle range, etc. these things are set in stone. As for the 2 weeks per year for Annual Training, it depends on the unit you are with and their mission. I was with a medical unit that supported Navy Corpsmen so we trained extensively in medical work and got Combat Lifesaver Certified as a unit. Then when I was transferred to an infantry unit, we trained for warfare doing battalion wide training ops. Long story short, you will be fine. I saw many officers that were doctors that were also reservists and enlisted personnel that were cops and such and they were just fine.

Oooh rah

 

[PatrickOfSteele]

Awesome. I'm pretty stoked, and can only hope that I'll make the selection board.

Have you (or has anyone) heard of mandatory active duty assignments after their specialty school? I'll ask my OSO and OS NCO but I figure it would be good to hear it from someone who doesn't have a specific vested interest in signing me up.

 

[Philly@9]

The only obligations after Specialty school are the drill weekends and the Annual Training periods. Other than that the only other obligations are either deployments, optional community service, etc. There are things you can volunteer for but as far as obligations it will be drill weekends and Annual Trainings.