Urban Adventures & More

Up until about 7 am this morning, my school year was going pretty terribly. My plane flight was 2 and a half hours late, I got bad jet-lag and woke up at 4:30, and then locked myself out of my suite, earning a $22 key-in fee. I pretended to sleep for another hour or so, and then used the internet for a little while, which brings us to 7 o’clock.

The Facilities office opens at 8 am, so at 7 I felt that if I managed to lock myself out a second time, I could wait the remainder of the hour to get my room key. So, I spent a half hour moving all my boxes–a dozen of them (I’m a real pack rat, apparently)–into my room, and then another couple hours unpacking. I’m satisfied with the result, which has my desk facing the door, with my bed behind it near the balcony. It’s real cozy. Pictures may ensue if I feel the need.

Eventually, I picked up my absolutely filthy car from the storage place where I left it over the summer. I need to get it inspected, so I might as well just wait on a wash, and let the dealership clean it. Other than that, I’ve been pretty bored.

Silence is killing me, since I can’t have a meaningful conversation with anyone, even if I’m the only one they’re talking to, let alone if there’s a few people around. Of course, I still feel the lump in my throat that brought me to the doctor in the first place, so I’ll have to stick it out, avoiding talking as much as possible. Thank goodness for the internet?

In case you weren’t told already, I shouted a lot at OCS. In fact, I shouted so damn much that my voice was still hoarse a month after I left, which caused me to go to the doctor. He told me that my vocal cords need a rest from talking, so I’m not allowed to talk for a month, at which point I’ll go back for a checkup.

Being mute isn’t so bad; most people don’t talk to you anyway. It’s a little hard to say anything quickly or complicated, even writing it down on a pad. Actually, Little Miss Sunshine has been brought up repeatedly because I’ve been writing instead of talking. I also do hand gestures, though. Sometimes I don’t bother being mute, because it’s just too damn complicated, like when I saw (a different) doctor today, I just talked softly. No big stick, though.

To help me communicate with hand gestures, I thought learning some sign language would help; I’d stick to intuitive gestures that other people could figure out easily. I found a website with sign language videos which was perfect. I wanted to put the videos on my MP3 player so I could study them on -the-go, and also so I could show other people what they needed to know. Unfortunately, all the videos had useless names (e.g. M1543.MOV), so I had to cook up a couple of scripts to download the videos, extract the information (movie, meaning, description), and put it in a readable format, and then rename the videos accordingly (I have the descriptions, too, which will probably go on the player wholesale for reference). Then came the converting part. My MP3 player plays videos in a specific format and size, which this wasn’t. I went through a half-dozen programs to find one that did the conversion how I wanted (between these two formats, and in batch-mode), finally settling on the lovely open-source iriverter for my needs. Sadly, my player still won’t decode the files, even with it’s own converter program, which is a problem I’m stillworking on.

Since I seem to get the occasional search engine hit for “OCS,” I thought I’d share my advice on the Marine Corps Officer Candidate School: come prepared. Physically, you should be in very good all-around shape. Psychologically, be prepared to block out negativity, because it’s the only thing that will come from the staff, and, at least in my platoon, it’ll come from all the other candidates, too. If you can arrive knowing some of the knowledge, specifically rank structure and general orders, you’ll be ahead in the first week. Most of all, keep your head out of your ass, have situational awareness, and remember the big picture.

PT at OCS is all about endurance, so do circuit training. As for strength, I always suffered on the push/pulls, which is pull-ups, push-ups, pull, push, pull, push (that’s three sets) in quantities around 12 and 30, respectively (they do go higher, though). Also do some tricep dips, abs, and dorsals.

Don’t pack much crap, because you won’t need it (except for 1 inch cloth medical tape; bring about 300 rolls of that). The only things that I really needed for a while were cloth medical tape and ziplock bags. Anything beyond that wasn’t necessary before liberty, or at least the first PX call, at which point you’ll figure out what you need.

Probably the biggest lesson you’ll learn at OCS is “integrity,” or “Doing the right thing not because you’re told to.” That’s remarking your gear, or standing at attention indefinitely, or fessing up to your mistake without anyone having to ask twice, or at all. You’ll realize that the cover-up is always worse than the crime, and that you have to come clean, and sometimes you have to stand up for yourself, too, even when it’s not easy to do.