Summer Vacation? What Vacation?!

This summer I reported for duty to the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in Quantico, VA.  This was my second cycle of OCS. While I understood what to expect, nothing can prepare you for the stress and sleep deprivation each person deals with during training. 

The mission of Officer Candidate School is to screen, train and evaluate candidates for their leadership potential in the Marine Corps as a 2^nd Lieutenant.  To sum it all up, OCS is a round the clock job interview. We were always being evaluated; always being watched. 

 

There are three main grading areas at OCS physical, academic and leadership.  The physical part involves the obstacle course, forced marches, the endurance course, and a host of other physical training. We had classes on the Law of War, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, suicide prevention, military tactics and others as well. We had an entire semesters worth of academic courses in a span of about four and a half weeks.  Leadership involved, among other events, successfully leading formations of 4-13 other candidates through training exercises with explosions and gun fire.

A normal day would consist of getting up at 4AM before the lights come on. When the lights come on in the squad bay you have about 90 seconds to get dressed in your uniform boots and gear. During the day, we would have physical training, academic classes, hand to hand combat training and so much more in the course of the day.  The food was great, but we had no more than 10 minutes to eat all we could, so we didn’t taste very much of it. The lights would go out at 9PM to give us a “full eight hours of sleep”.  J  But we had tasks to get done for the next day, gear to get ready, studying to do for the next test and fire watch to stand for an hour too.  The majority of the time there I had about three hours of sleep a night.

We spent time in the field going on patrols as well as time in the swamp.  We dealt with leaches, snakes, ticks, spiders and swarms of mosquitoes. We had candidates going to the hospital for fevers of 107 and 108 degrees. They say at 109 degrees you begin to have brain damage. 

Through it all I did ok, I had good days and bad days too.  I learned that your body can take a great deal of punishment and still be able to perform.  Your mind can handle a great deal of stress and still to make decisions and accomplish the mission.  You just have to be mentally tough enough.  Now the goal is to graduate OSU and earn my Commission as a 2^nd Lt. in the United States Marine Corps.

It’s good to be back at OSU,

Jack McBride

P.S. You are all invited to the Commissioning Ceremony!