OBLC- Week 1

Yes, I'm still alive and made it through week 1!! The phrase to sum up this first week is "death by Power Point"! There are about 160 folks in OBLC Class 902. It's a mixed bag of backgrounds, but most students can be broken into one (or multiple) of a few categories. The first are "direct commissions". These are folks either right out of college or who have been practicing in their professional field for various numbers of years and who have no previous military experience. These folks literally went from a college setting or from going to an office everyday in the civilian world to putting on a uniform with a rank that requires them to be leaders in the U.S. Army. Quite the culture shock to most. Another group is people who are either in the Army Reserves, Army National Guard or who are already on active duty but just didn't have this course yet or were in ROTC in school. These folks are already familiar with Army uniforms, protocols and customs. The last group are prior service. These soldiers were previously enlisted or commissioned officers from any of the Armed Services. Some went straight from being an enlisted soldier to an officer or had left the military for the civilian work force for varying lengths of time. There are several people like me who fall into two categories- prior service and direct commission.

Ages and ranks vary greatly. The rank at which an individual is commissioned into the Army Medical Dept is based upon education, years of experience in their field and specialties. Folks right out of school or without much professional experience are brought in at the rank of 2LT (Second Lieutenant/O-1 grade) or 1LT (First Lieutenant/O-2). Advanced degrees and/or several years experience will earn you CPT bars (Captain/O-3), which is what I was brought in as. Many years experience and specialists in their professions are brought in as MAJ (Major/O-4) or LTC (Lieutenant Colonel/O-5). There's a dentist in our class brought in as a LTC. From what I've heard since getting here, the Medical Dept. is the only section of the Army who will commission civilians straight into higher ranks. Obviously, rank comes with responsibilities as well privileges so there are pitfalls to commissioning a non-militarily experienced individual into a rank that demands advanced management and leadership skills. The fact that the program continues this way and brings into the Army some of the brightest professionals in their fields however, indicate that the acquisition of specialized skills must outweigh the downside of inexperienced military officers.

AMEDD (Army Medical Department) is comprised of 6 different branches. OBLC Class 902 is made up of professionals (now officers) from each of the branches.
1) Medical Corp (Physicians)
2) Dental Corp (Dentists)
3) Veterinary Corp (Veterinarians)
4) Nurse Corp (Nurses)
5) Medical Specialist Corp (Dietitians, Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists & Physician Assistants)
6) Medical Service Corp (Healthcare Administrators, Entomologists, Environmental Scientists, Microbiologists, Biochemists, Social Workers, Clinical & Research Psychologists, Pharmacists, Optometrists, Podiatrists, etc.)

As you can see, we've got quite a mixed-bag of professions covering the full spectrum of medical specialties!

One of the major concerns of the first week are uniforms. We were all sent an email with a list of minimal uniform items with which we were expected to report. Easier said than done! Now, I'm a person with approximately 11 years of experience wearing military uniforms (Navy & Air National Guard). I'm pretty confident looking up uniform regulations and making it happen, but being a direct commission certainly made it hard to comply with requirements. Coming from San Diego where there are a ton of Navy & Marine Corp bases, I was able to find many non-Army specific items, but only with the help of a military ID holder to get me on base (thanks Ed!). Those which I could not find I ordered through civilian retail websites online. Sounds like a good plan, right? It was until one of the most crucial items needed was not in stock and had to be back ordered- BOOTS! At this point you might be thinking to yourself "but Marines wear desert uniforms, why couldn't you just get them at one of the Marine bases in San Diego?" Well, although not obvious to the non-service-specific eye there are subtle differences in uniform items, specifically boots, between each service. All the tan boots that fit my feet in uniform stores throughout bases in San Diego where stamped with the USMC emblem on the side. Not so appropriate for wear in an Army uniform! Luckily, the military clothing store here at Ft Sam Houston was open last Sunday and had boots in my size, so I was able to show up Monday morning in the appropriate uniform. Anyone who has ever worn a new pair of boots can appreciate how suboptimal it is to purchase new boots the day before they are to be worn everyday! A handful of folks were not so lucky though and showed up in various degrees of uniform faux-pas or civilian clothes.

With specialty patches, rank and name tapes all velcroed into the proper positions on the ACUs, my final challenge was the beret. The Navy had gone to berets as I was getting out, so I never had to deal with them. I don't understand the military's desire to put everyone into berets since tradition had dictated that this head gear be reserved for a select group of warriors. Nonetheless, I purchased my perfectly flat, thick felt disc and struggled to make it droop over my right eye and ear like the crusty SGTs I saw around base. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you a whole course could be taught on how to shape a beret! Nothing screams "newbie" more than walking around with a pizza-man-making looking beret. In order to achieve proper fit, you have to shave (yep, with razors) as much of the felt fuzz off as possible, drench it in hot water and wear it on your head multiple times (wet). I repeated this process several times during the week but still could not achieve the proper fit and appearance. Finally, I was informed of a place off base that sold them already shaved and shaped and succumbed to this shortcut in order to get squared-away!

Our week of paperwork, classroom instruction and uniform experiences ended with an APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test) early Friday morning. The tests of push-ups, sit-ups and 2-mile run are scored and recorded in your service record. Successful completion of OBLC is contingent upon passing height-weight/body fat standards and scoring a minimum score on the APFT. Click here to see the standards. A maximum score is 300 with a possible 100 points in each event (push-ups, sit-ups, 2 mile-run) and are age & gender specific. A score of 60 in each event is considered minimal scores required to pass. As you can imagine with a group of people coming right out of the civilian world, there were quite a few new officers who did not meet the minimum standard and will be participating in "special populations" physical training 5 days per week at 5:30 am. Although I didn't achieve the 300 I was shooting for, I was pleased with my score for the most part and will try to improve it on the exit APFT in Feb.

Words of wisdom for future OBLC participants:

• push your recruiter to sponsor you for an AKO account BEFORE you get here
• have name tapes made BEFORE you get here. You can obtain most uniform items once you get here, but name tapes must be custom made and take time (order online).
• have a full PT uniform BEFORE you get here. The military clothing store here on base was out of most sizes and many folks had to PT in random civilian workout attire (a definite no-go)
• have every piece (and MULTIPLE COPIES of) ALL the paperwork you were told to bring (orders, oath of office, birth certificates, marriage licenses, adoption papers, DD-214 discharge papers, direct deposit authorization, etc.) Did I mention to have MULTIPLE COPIES???!!!! Do not show up to any session with only one copy (especially not just the original).
• if you are fortunate enough to live near an Army base or university with an ROTC program, get someone to help you put an ACU uniform together and show you how to wear it. There's something to be said for putting on the uniform and being looked over by an experienced eye in order to get familiar with proper wear and feel comfortable in it. You should look proud to be wearing it, not intimidated or unsure.
• show up in shape! The instructors can appreciate the fact that you are coming straight from civilianhood, but you WILL NOT pass OBLC and move on to your first duty station until you are able to meet minimum body fat and physical fitness standards. Don't just assume you can meet the standards. Many people were caught off guard because their home bathroom scale told them they were a certain bodyfat or because they could do so many push-ups or sit-ups the "normal way". There is a specific way the push-ups and sit-ups must be performed or else they do not count so look up the proper procedures on the internet and make sure you can do them (e.g. fingers interlocked behind head and all the way up in 2 minutes for sit ups, NO "girl" push-ups on knees, elbows much break horizontal plane in 2 minutes, the run was on a 1/2 mile track and not a 1/4 mile track, etc.)
• bring a positive attitude! The military will not do things the way you might have done them in the civilian world. There's a lot of "hurry up and wait" that will happen. Get used to it, this will continue throughout your military career. Complaining doesn't help anyone and only spreads negativity. Remember that you VOLUNTEERED to come here for whatever reason, so stay positive and don't become the cancer of bad attitude in the group. Sage advice my dad gave me before I left for Navy boot camp 20 years ago still applies- the military has been doing this for a couple of hundred years before you got here, so don't automatically assume you could do it all better!
  

That's all I have for now. I'm laying low for my day off (can you believe there's a day off in any military "basic" training?!!!) and catching up on things that fell by the wayside during my relocation and job transition. As hectic & chaotic as this whole process has been, I know I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. As I was making my way to formation one morning this week, I was overcome with an absolute sense of joy and the thought that I was exactly where I wanted to be at that moment- in a uniform and preparing to make a contribution to something so much bigger than myself. HOOAH!