Graduation!

The time for graduation is almost here. The last two weeks have been nothing but inspections, out processing and paperwork.

Some of the interesting highlights:

We have to get discharged from the Army before we become commissioned officers, so there will be a period of time where we are civilians between our discharge and new swearing in.

The student led inspections are not to bad if they keep their head. The cadre don't make them go crazy but sometimes the students will just to make sure that they get a good grade, even at the expense of their peers (or sometimes just so they are not seen as soft).

I got less sleep during the 'recovery' week where we were prepping for our inspections than I did during any week prior. 3-4 hours a night was normal, going to bed past midnight and since our platoon had CQ I would have duty at some point every night.

Oh and I finally got my branch. It took until week 11 and I was almost afraid I would be graduating without one (there are several who are still without a branch and will likely not have one for a week or so after graduation). It ended up being my first real choice: Engineer. Oddly enough we had quite a few engineers come out of our class. So the truth be told I have been spending much of my time online doing further research into the branch.

I called the branch manager for Lt's and today we all received the list of where we could go and were asked to put in our top 4-5 choices. There was nothing on the list on the east coast at all, in the end I put Hawaii, Germany, Washington (state), and Alaska....some of the ones I skipped on for choices were NM, KS, MO, LA. Now I am just waiting on orders to come down for which one and report dates etc...

I am not sure how many more posts I will get since this is wrapping up quickly. My next stop is BOLC II here at Ft. Benning, then off to Engineer Basic Officer Course at Ft. Leonard Wood MO for 14 weeks.

Recycles!!

Today we found out that there are 7 more people leaving our company. This is the largest batch of people getting recycled since our class formed up. They are all getting recycled for something that happened in the field, one from our platoon is because of land navigation while many others are because of leadership failures from the field. Almost all of them are being sent back to day 1, which means they will have to go through the whole course again....the other option though is to go back to the regular Army as enlisted. Two of those people are leaving all together, one because he does not want to start over, and the other because he was here since May (an injury prevented joining the first class I believe).

We have our big inspection comming up and rumors are (like normal) running rampart. The weapons (rifles and machine guns) must all be spotless, if one is bad everyone gets checked again. The rooms must likewise be spotless and all be uniform. The rumor is that there is no possible way to get everything passed in time for the weekend but we'll see.

Everyone seems worried more about the upcomming history test on Friday. That test can fail you out of the course and make you recycle...not passing an inspection is just a pain in the ass.

Speaking of which, time to buff some floors.