Offical Class

We are now officially OCS class 304-08. Today we implemented the student chain of command and uncased our colors. The objective of the classes are different than they were 5 years ago. Now they depend on many of the prior service students (those who were enlisted in the military before) to teach many of the classes and to lead us in many of the exercises. This all makes a lot of sense since we are being assessed on our leadership ability.


The day started off a bit later since we had a good turn out for the blood drive previously, and it started with chow instead of PT.

After chow we got to listen to Col. Nett, a medal of honor winner from WWII. This guy is impressive and full of great advice for new Lt. He is getting on in age and some of conversation tended to wander but he is still an impressive man even in his wheel chair. Some people just have a commanding presence that you can almost see when they walk (or wheel) into a room.


SWIMMING

We took a nice dip in a heated indoor pool today. Of course nothing is that simple though. First we got hosed down with cold water in 40 degree weather outside while in full uniform (including boots) then went inside where we got instruction on what we were expected to do. The first event was a 25m swim with full gear including a rifle, this wasn't too for me, but for those who cannot swim it was impossible. The next event was jumping from the high-dive (10m) with full equipment and rifle while blindfolded. I got a lot of snot out of my nose on that one. On the last one we jumped backwards from the edge of the pool and had to remove all the equipment while underwater, if you break the surface with any part of your body before all the equipment is off you have to go again. This was a bit more difficult since I have a tendency to float.

Finally the Commander did an end of the week assessment. It was interesting, our class is only 20% college op's (straight from college) while the rest of us are prior service. One piece of advice he did give us is that as a Lt. we are not allowed any mistakes. One minor mess up gets you noticed as a screw up, a second will generally get you put into a job where you cannot do any harm (i.e. where you are not really in charge of anyone or anything). At that point you will be stuck in those type of positions for the rest of your career, that is until you dead end. In todays army you can still stay in, but you will not ever get fast tracked to anything.