Best at OCS

[Msams]

Aloha all,

I have a few questions about OCS. I understand that you won't get through OCS unless your team helps. I am a prior army medic. (Save the jokes..) I want to be the best. I supplicate that at minimum I will get a department/platoon. I want them to be the best. Winning undeniably has its benefits. How do I accomplish this? I have found that in my many years with the army "blending in" held me back (unless is was camouflage and concealment), I would like to set the standard.

I would venture to say that a few universal principles apply:

Be early
Have you uniform on correctly
Yell louder than everyone
Get everywhere faster than everyone else
Clean it till you wouldn't mind eating off it
Live the Navy(army) values
Treat every march as if you were on display for your grandma and the president
Hit the target with a kill shot so you don't have to waste supplies saving them.... (some things are hard to shake)

Know every line of Officer Candidate Regulations (quick reference guide) verbatim

Hopefully I'm on the right track here. Any more insight would be appreciated.

Mahalo

 

[Picaroon]

I supplicate that at minimum I will get a department/platoon. I want them to be the best. Winning undeniably has its benefits.

Very true. No one will ever forget you if your class wins something like the PT award.

 

[LFCFan]

Know every line of Officer Candidate Regulations (quick reference guide) verbatim

The whole 'rote memorize the OCR' thing doesn't happen at OCS anymore. Ditto for the quick reference guide - know the gouge verbatim, but don't worry about being able to recite something like say, the entire section going over chow hall procedures. You just have to know them and know exactly what to say, but not every word on the paragraphs, like "then the section leader will stand here..." or whatever it says.

I supplicate that at minimum I will get a department/platoon.

Run for class president (yes, they use lame non-military sounding titles like that prior to candio phase) and step up right away. Don't assume that you'll get a 'good' candio phase billet, sometimes they might as well have thrown darts at a list.

Generally speaking you seem to get it. Just don't be that leader that nukes everything.

 

[Tycho_Brohe]

I would venture to say that a few universal principles apply:

Be early
Have you uniform on correctly
Yell louder than everyone
Get everywhere faster than everyone else
Clean it till you wouldn't mind eating off it
Live the Navy(army) values
Treat every march as if you were on display for your grandma and the president

All of these. If you're not fifteen minutes early, you're late. Beat your sister company to chow even if they're scheduled before you (but be prepared to get on your face). Act like somebody's watching all the time, even when nobody is.

Hit the target with a kill shot so you don't have to waste supplies saving them.... (some things are hard to shake)

They use the old sniper phrase at OCS: One shot, one kill. You'll see it in action when you get to the salad bar in indoc week (GRAB GO, GRAB GO, GRAB GO! THIS AIN'T GOLDEN CORRAL!)

Know every line of Officer Candidate Regulations (quick reference guide) verbatim

Ehh, not so much. There are much better ways of spending your time than knowing the regs word for word. Only part you'll need verbatim is Appendix B. Everything else, there's simply not enough time. But you should definitely read through the regs as much as you can, and then if your RDC or DI asks about something obscure and you happen to know it, you'll stand out. But as for memorizing it, you'll be busy enough as it is.

Hopefully I'm on the right track here. Any more insight would be appreciated.

I think you're going into it with a good mindset. There were a few in my class who wanted to do the bare minimum to just squeak by. Their rationale was that regardless of the amount of effort they put in beyond the minimum, the end result would be the same: butterbars. And right around the end of OC phase, I started to follow the same line of thinking. It's not like you get a meritorious promotion to JG for being an honors class, doesn't even show up in your records if I understand correctly. And don't be the guy that leaves OCS and brags at his next command about getting the banners or being an honors class.
Anyway, my point being, the problem with minimum effort is essentially not making the most of your time there. It's meant to provide some actual leadership scenarios to develop your skills before setting you loose in the fleet. So you're definitely right to want to go in there and do everything you can. So look for a billet with high exposure like pres/VP or, God forbid, drill body (I was 13-13H drill body. Lots of face time with your DI and everyone in your class will hate you. "Oh man, more drill practice?" But if you win drill comp, smooth sailing).
One last thing. Closest gator to the boat. Focus on RLP first, then drill comp, then all those inspections (6th week, 8th week, 9th week), and academics throughout. No point in drilling four hours a day if you then fail ENG/WEPS. Priorities.

 

[Sheepdip]

Sound like a douche

 

[Msams]

Sound like a douche

Its not lost on me that most people don't come in this high strung. Until you've suffered under poor leadership, you will never fully appreciate how important it is to have fully competent people in the CoC. I have to be there, so why wouldn't a person take everything you could from it?

 

[cfam]

@Msams: I caveat this by saying that I'm not an OCS grad, but that seems like a decent list to start with. I wouldn't worry about the useless comments (Sheepdip). Keep that motivation up and you'll do fine.

 

[ea6bflyr]

One thing that I learned a long time ago at Aircrew school was have a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA), and you can get through anything. This will get you far if you live it.

 

[EODDave]

Just be careful not to go so far to impress the OCS " leadership " that you end up alienating yourself from the guys and gals in your class. Use your prior experience to help get others through OCS when they are having a hard time. You will see your OCS classmates in the fleet, sometimes even working at the same command. Ones reputation is hard to change once you have been labeled " that guy ".

 

[jmcquate]

Remain as anonymous as possible. The longer the staff doesn’t know your name……..for good or bad….the better. The longer I flew under the Sgt. Instructor’s radar the better my life was.

 

[Silhouette]

Hopefully I'm on the right track here. Any more insight would be appreciated.

Mahalo

Msams,
It sounds like you have great motivation and high expectations for OCS, which is awesome. I have a similar mentality of "why not take/learn everything I can?" from any experience. That being said, I have to tell you that you might end up being disappointed and possibly extremely frustrated at OCS. You will probably find that most of your fellow candidates have the mentality mentioned above: that your record and performance at OCS won't follow you, so there's no need to put the effort in to excel, etc. To me -- and it sounds from your post like you feel the same -- that didn't really matter. My personal standards were what pushed me to do the best I could there. And I did learn a lot.

I am also prior enlisted, in a different service. As someone else commented, help your non-prior candidates out. There are some things you'll know no better than them regarding the Navy specifically, but you can help in general military matters like uniform prep and customs and courtesies. Some will listen, some won't. Some will piss you off for various reasons. I don't know how long you were in or what your rank was, but before you report in take a moment to swallow your pride with respect to your class teams. If you don't, the drill instructors in particular will do it for you. You don't know everything; you simply know more than some.

If you really want to be in a leadership position (and I'd really think seriously about it) then do as LFCFan said. Step up right away, as in when the candi-os say 'who's going to be the section leader?' on Day 1, it's you. Then when you pick billets a few days later everyone will know who you are. I was president, drill body, and then regimental commander when I went through. I didn't volunteer or ask for any of those billets. Except kinda drill body. Drill instructor knew I could drill. As a matter of fact, I didn't nominate myself for president at all. My class knew about my military experience, so they all nominated me. There wasn't even a vote. I didn't dislike being president too much, because my company had a lot of good people in it. Drill body was enjoyable because I like drill. Reg comm was not fun.

You get candi-o billets in the last few weeks of OCS, when your companies enter 'candidate officer phase.' This is arguably the hardest part of OCS in which to be a leader, because everyone is now fairly secure/not scared about OCS any more. And they see the finish line (aka, drop the pack). People who have never been in the military, and some who have, just can't stand being told what to do by their peers. So they don't. Or they do, complaining and whining all the way. The attitude gets infectious and by the end you just want to punch people in the face. The motivators and hard workers get crapped on with all the work, the slackers generally hide from duties and (*#& off. Everyone gets the commission in the end. It's frustrating to no end not necessarily because they don't listen to you, but because they're going to be officers and leaders when they graduate and they just don't get it. Or they don't care. Just take a deep breath and let it all go. They're going to learn, they're going to get it. I'm sure the same thing has been happening at OCS for decades and the Navy isn't falling apart. Come to think of it, candidate officer phase seems like pretty much a microcosm of big Navy (speaking solely from my experience in the Marine Corps and working alongside the Navy as enlisted, and my limited training side experience as an officer in the Navy).

If you think lack of discipline and pride/arrogance is getting beat out of candidates, it isn't. Laziness isn't really either. Make peace with it for the sake of your blood pressure is what I'm saying, I guess. Long story short, if you want a leadership position, nominate yourself for one. You might not get it. If you do, try your best to 'elevate' your company, as you said. If you don't get a billet, you'll still learn from watching those that did struggle with peer leadership. I hope you'll do your part to help them out.

 

[jg54170]

Silhouette.. well said. I think each of us has a different plan going in. I don't necessarily see myself as jumping into a leadership position while at OCS. Not for lack of caring but the fact that there are others that need a lot more experience in this than myself. As you mentioned, I think us priors have a lot to share with the non-priors that can really make life better for everyone while at OCS.

Most things will just work themselves out, there will be leaders nominated, some will volunteer, others will naturally float to the top....most folks will be trying to survive.

Having not been through OCS myself I would assume if you learn the gouge pack from the OCS site and the DEP guide from your recruiter than you will be well on track to success. The RDC and DI boots will find their way to the ass of the folks who didn't care enough to learn it.

 

[Silhouette]

jg, I didn't see myself jumping into a leadership position either. Then I made the mistake of volunteering when nobody else would and that was it. Also there was some Marine pride pressure going in. You mentioned others needing the experience. I wholeheartedly agree with you. I even had a bit of an argument with my class team regarding that when they said I was going to be reg comm. I think that non-priors need to hold all the billets in OCS, but that just isn't the way it's done.

And I totally forgot to mention, yes, it's good to know the gouge pack prior to arriving. At least general orders, code of conduct, and the upper part of the chain of command. It's one less thing to memorize while you're there, because even though they'll give you a crapload of time standing up staring at your little gouge booklet in the first few weeks, you probably won't be memorizing very effectively when it feels like your feet are going to explode and then fall off. The hardest gouge for me personally was the crap we had to know for ORLP later on in training (appendix C I think it is?) about all the ships and weapons and aircraft and crew and dimensions and blah, blah, blah. That was tough because I had a lot of other stuff to worry about at the time too. Easier for prior Navy, though.

 

[Tycho_Brohe]

Well,

when the candi-os say 'who's going to be the section leader?' on Day 1, it's

usually someone who rolled in from H-Class, since they'd been working on those procedures for three weeks (or more, God forbid) before you even get there. Not always the case, of course. I figured I'd be section leader for a week when I rolled back in, but it didn't happen. Candios decreed that we would each take turns being section leader, alphabetically. Poor resource management, if you ask me. But I digress. Everyone has some sort of skills or knowledge that can help those who don't. As one of the RDCs loves to say, "One team, one fight."

 

[jg54170]

What is this appendix C I have seen mentioned here and there? I have a pretty good knack for memorizing things so will be needing some new stuff once I get the chain of command down....which may take a bit, it's the worst ughhh

Is there any interest from folks for a scanned copy of the OCS Delayed Entry Program Guide? I grabbed my portable scanner from the office this morning and am thinking about scanning it since I have not seen it anywhere online and I know those folks without recruiters won't be able to grab them. If you have already found it online, please let me know and save me the time lol.