Thank you to a recent candidate who shared his advice after attending OCS this past summer, 2020.
Finding the Why at OCS Makes it Bearable
Everything at OCS has a purpose, from the discipline to PT to how you eat chow.
Find the “why” (IOT) in everything and OCS goes from a drag to really meaningful quickly.
My Experience
It was like the end of week 3, which is the point where you really start saying to yourself, “oh god, how much longer can I keep it up?” Our platoon sergeant, GySgt Harvell—everyone’s favorite whose gone through in the past couple years—just out of the blue called us all up to the front of the quarterdeck and reminded us that everything at OCS has a purpose, from drill to eating chow all funny to reporting in for accountability to crazy games in the squad bay.
At first I was like, “yeah right, I had to put on my right sock five times for a reason” but ultimately as the days went on I thought more and more about all that, and before I knew it, OCS made sense. Suddenly, OCS felt a lot more like training and a lot less like a break-off, and then the motivation kickstarted itself.
It’s the most important part of five paragraph orders—IN ORDER TO—as long as you have the IOT you can muscle through with some grit or use some ingenuity to get through everything else.
Good luck!
Recommended Resource
TED Talk: How to Make Stress Your Friend at OCS
Hear a top psychologist explain how to take the stress of situations like OCS and use it as fuel!