I just got home on Saturday from OCS. I was NPQ'd at the end of week 7 for what will probably end up being a stress fracture in my right foot. Instead of continuing my self-pitying cycle of dessert eating and sleep I've decided to put my thoughts on paper and try and help out those who are planning on going to OCS, as well as recording them for myself when I hopefully return to OCS next summer.
So I know before I shipped for OCS a lot of the nervousness I was feeling was because I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I just got home from the PLC-Combined 10 week course, I made it to the end of week 7 but was sent home due to an injury to my right foot that was preventing me from being able to walk without a limp. While everything is fresh in my mind I’m going to try and give a basic idea of what to expect at OCS as well as a lot of the aspects of it that I felt I could’ve been better prepared for. For the sake of keeping my thoughts somewhat organized I’m going to divide this into the three categories that OCS uses to calculate your GPA, Physical Fitness, Academics, and Leadership.
Before I delve into all this I’ll give a basic rundown of the structure of OCS so I’m not using any foreign terminology. Upon arrival at OCS each candidate is assigned a Company and Platoon. The companies are generally Alpha and Bravo for PLC-10 weekers, Charlie is the OCCers, and Echo, Golf, and India are six weekers. Each company starts out with around 200 candidates or so and they are all distinct units with their own company staff and their own way of interpreting the rules. Within your company you generally have 4-5 Platoons. Your platoon is the group of guys that you do everything with. Each platoon starts out with around 60 guys and again has its own staff and its own way of doing things. You have a Platoon sergeant who pretty much runs the platoon, you have 3 sergeant instructors who deal with you as a platoon on a day to day basis, taking you to class, to PT, etc etc (screaming at you, making you do stupid things over and over again). Then you have a platoon commander, he’s an officer (usually a captain) and his job is to oversee everything that goes on in your platoon and ensure everything is running smoothly. The corner of the barracks that your platoon sleeps in is referred to as the squad bay, at the end of your squad bay there’s a little room with a few offices and a bed where your platoon staff does paperwork, sleeps, etc, this is referred to as the duty hut. The biggest thing I want to emphasize here is how staff dependent your experience is going to be. OCS has rules that cover every company but there is a lot of room for interpretation on the part of the staff. Just to give you an example- For the first 6 weeks lights out was at 2100 and generally speaking no one actually went to sleep right at 2100. You would get up right after lights, put on your headlamp, and work on either marking your gear (everything is marked with white tape and it gets messed up within a day or two so marking and remarking is a never-ending process), studying, organizing your stuff, etc etc. Usually this wasn’t really an option because the staff would specifically tell you that you have to have x y and z done by the next morning. Ultimately this meant that depending on when you had fire watch (exactly what it sounds like, every hour from 2100-0500 two candidates are assigned to keep watch over the squad bay while everyone else is asleep) you were only going to get around 4-6 hours of sleep. On week 6 though our company staff, seemingly out of the blue, made a decision that we needed more sleep and established a whole new SOP where we were no longer allowed out of the racks after lights to mark gear or anything like that. After that almost everyone was getting 6 to damn near 8 hours of sleep every night. Just goes to show you that things can be majorly different from company to company even though they all abide by the same overarching rules- so with that in mind, take everything I have to say with a grain of salt as your experience will undoubtedly be a bit different than mine.
So I know before I shipped for OCS a lot of the nervousness I was feeling was because I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I just got home from the PLC-Combined 10 week course, I made it to the end of week 7 but was sent home due to an injury to my right foot that was preventing me from being able to walk without a limp. While everything is fresh in my mind I’m going to try and give a basic idea of what to expect at OCS as well as a lot of the aspects of it that I felt I could’ve been better prepared for. For the sake of keeping my thoughts somewhat organized I’m going to divide this into the three categories that OCS uses to calculate your GPA, Physical Fitness, Academics, and Leadership.
Before I delve into all this I’ll give a basic rundown of the structure of OCS so I’m not using any foreign terminology. Upon arrival at OCS each candidate is assigned a Company and Platoon. The companies are generally Alpha and Bravo for PLC-10 weekers, Charlie is the OCCers, and Echo, Golf, and India are six weekers. Each company starts out with around 200 candidates or so and they are all distinct units with their own company staff and their own way of interpreting the rules. Within your company you generally have 4-5 Platoons. Your platoon is the group of guys that you do everything with. Each platoon starts out with around 60 guys and again has its own staff and its own way of doing things. You have a Platoon sergeant who pretty much runs the platoon, you have 3 sergeant instructors who deal with you as a platoon on a day to day basis, taking you to class, to PT, etc etc (screaming at you, making you do stupid things over and over again). Then you have a platoon commander, he’s an officer (usually a captain) and his job is to oversee everything that goes on in your platoon and ensure everything is running smoothly. The corner of the barracks that your platoon sleeps in is referred to as the squad bay, at the end of your squad bay there’s a little room with a few offices and a bed where your platoon staff does paperwork, sleeps, etc, this is referred to as the duty hut. The biggest thing I want to emphasize here is how staff dependent your experience is going to be. OCS has rules that cover every company but there is a lot of room for interpretation on the part of the staff. Just to give you an example- For the first 6 weeks lights out was at 2100 and generally speaking no one actually went to sleep right at 2100. You would get up right after lights, put on your headlamp, and work on either marking your gear (everything is marked with white tape and it gets messed up within a day or two so marking and remarking is a never-ending process), studying, organizing your stuff, etc etc. Usually this wasn’t really an option because the staff would specifically tell you that you have to have x y and z done by the next morning. Ultimately this meant that depending on when you had fire watch (exactly what it sounds like, every hour from 2100-0500 two candidates are assigned to keep watch over the squad bay while everyone else is asleep) you were only going to get around 4-6 hours of sleep. On week 6 though our company staff, seemingly out of the blue, made a decision that we needed more sleep and established a whole new SOP where we were no longer allowed out of the racks after lights to mark gear or anything like that. After that almost everyone was getting 6 to damn near 8 hours of sleep every night. Just goes to show you that things can be majorly different from company to company even though they all abide by the same overarching rules- so with that in mind, take everything I have to say with a grain of salt as your experience will undoubtedly be a bit different than mine.
