Blue Thunder

Blog Post – Blue Thunder

BLUE THUNDER!

Not sure why they called it that…but this week  we went to blue thunder. It’s a weekend of FUN STUFF in the HOT SUN, basically.

We were supposed to leaved Wednesday night but they ended up splitting our class in half and half went Wednesday night, left Thursday and came back Friday, while my half left Thursday morning and stayed through Friday.  We woke up to leave at 4:30 and marched for way too long with giant filled duffel bags strapped to our backs. Serious disadvantage for the short people who can’t get the bag high enough to rest on my back where I wanted it. But the motto for the weekend was “embrace the suck” (which really applies to all of COT but especially this weekend) So we arrived and ate our MREs for breakfast…yum. I had something called “maple sausage” for breakfast and I had heard that it was super nasty, and it was. So I ate the peanut butter and crackers and trail mix that came with it and threw the sausage away. The whole pack is like 3000 calories anyway so it was all good.

Then we did the most awesome thing ever – the high ropes course! We strapped on helmets and harnesses and ropes and climbed progressively higher up poles and along ropes until we got to a suspension bridge we had to jump across (AAH!) and then we zip-lined down to the ground. Then came a 50-ft rock climbing wall, followed by walking out on a limb (literally) they call “the toothpick” and then rappelling down the side of the tower. It. Was. Awesome.

Then ,y flight all sat together in the gravel and did NOTHING for like 2 hours while we waited for everyone else to go through the course. Sounds boring but it was actually pretty awesome. We don’t have very much downtime so sitting and doing nothing in the morning before the sun got hot, throwing rocks at each other’s’ boots and sharing cheese spread, “osmotic cranberries” (dried cranberries) and crackers some people saved from breakfast was one of the most fun things I’ve done all week (sad) but I really liked just hanging out.

After everyone was done we did a little more sitting and then went to get our lunch MREs. I had beef ravioli (one of the better MREs but obviously not good quality ravioli…). Next it was time for the EMRIC (emergency medical something something) which was where we setup a field clinic (the tents were already set up) and assign people to run each department, some to be patients, some to be insurgents trying to infiltrate, and run the clinic for an hour. I was assigned to be a patient. They asked who wanted to “get messy” and pretend to be a trauma patient so of course I volunteered. I put on an old pair of ABU pants they had and we cut up the leg, splattered fake blood on it, and put on a rubber open tibia fracture thing. They had a BUNCH of fake wounds and stage makeup so we kind of went all out. It was aaaawesome. So we ran outside and threw ourselves on the ground and pretended to be people who’d been in an explosion and they came and put us on stretchers and ran us through the clinic and it was pretty fun stuff!

After about an hour of that we reset and faked a mass casualty incident where I was again in an explosion and ran through the whole thing again.

Then the dfac brought us a hot meal and we ate it in the bleachers, and we basically had nothing to do so we took showers and went to bed. We slept in pretty nice acocmodations, especially considering. They had several huge, permanent-ish tents that were air conditioned, with a bunch of plywood bunk beds. Uncomfortable, but better than the other option of sleeping on the ground. They had issued us foam pads and sleeping bags so that’s what we slept on.

In the morning we ate more MRE breakfast (Asian beef strips!) and then did a litter carry course. They taught us the different carries for 4 people, 2 people, uphill, downhill, rough terrain, and low crawl. We got in groups of 5 to practice and since I am of course the shortest person in any random group of 5 people, I was the patient. I’m not sure I learned anything from being carried around but it was fun to bounce around and it was basically a nice nap. Then we did some more very nice sitting around before returning to campus in a BUS this time, thankfully. Then we all scrambled to get to the laundry machines before everyone else and took some showers and we are back!

Tonight we had very little to do, just a meeting for the HPSP students and then dinner, so I think when some people get back from the gym we’re going to watch a movie together.

This week is supposed to have a LOT of downtime so I’m looking forward to that. Flight bonding time and a LOT of dinners out next week. And then GRADUATION! And mY FAMILY IS COMING TO SEE MEEEEEEE I can’t wait! 

Consumption of Food at COT

Dining procedures

Are ridiculous.

I explained the process for getting the food but here’s how we get to eating it. And I use “eating “ lightly because it’s closer to inhaling.

These are referred to as "tight meals"

Get your tray, walk to the right side of the building. A staff member directs you to which table you should sit at. You have to walk down the aisle to the right of that table. All of them are 4-person tables that are diagonal to the direction you’re walking. Person 1 sits in the far left spot, person 2 the far right, person 3 the close left, person four the close right. Everyone arrives and puts their tray down, then stands at attention until person 4 arrives and says “be seated”. And everyone sits. IF person 4 takes too long to arrive then person 3 can say “be seated” and the table is “closed” the next person has to sit at the next table. Then positions 1 and 4 take napkins and hand them to their right to positions 3 and 2. Everyone gives a few seconds for whoever wants to pray to do so, and then you start eating as fast as you possibly can. No talking. No looking around. No smiling. Feet are on the floor, at 45 degrees. You are sitting up straight. Shovel, shovel, shovel. But not too fast, because you don’t want to finish too early and be sitting there awkwardly while everyone else does…but fast enough that you’re not too far behind everyone and be sitting there shoveling food while everyone is waiting for you. If your whole table isn't fast enough and the table that sat down after you leaves while you're still not done, you will probably get yelled at for "holding up the air force" or something. 

Then once everyone is done and puts their napkin in their plate, positions 2 and 3 pass everything on their trays to positions 1 and 4, and then stack the trays. Everyone stands up, comes to attention, and position 1 leaves. 4 picks up the tray, 3 picks up the napkin holder and 2 wipes down the table and puts the napkin in 4’s tray and everyone leaves, once again walking down the right aisle and over to the tray carts and then outside. You line up outside and once 4 people arrive you have a “detail” and you can march around the corner to where each flight lines up to march back to their flight rooms before heading back to class or back to the dorms if that was dinner.

We ate every meal like that for the first 2 weeks. Week 3 we got “phase 2” privileges which allowed us to talk at dinner, and this past week we got phase 3 privileges and that allows us to talk at all meals. We also started looking around and discovering ice cream machines and rotating circles of cake and a counter with condiments on it and all sorts of things we were too scared to look at before, because an angry captain might yell at us and give us a demerit. :-P

It sounds not-that-hard to do but it is surprisingly difficult to figure out which position is 1 because of the way the tables are turned. It wouldn’t be that bad except the pressure is ON when the drill sergeants are hovering over watching your every move.

They don’t really yell at us any more but those first few days were cray-zee! 

A Day At COT

Well.

It’s been a while! Blog posting takes lots of time and I have not had a lot of time until tonight!

If you are my facebook friend you may have seen lots of pictures of all the craziness that’s been going on.  It’s now training day 15 and I haven’t blogged since day 0. So a lot has happened!

We had 3 written exams. One was all questions from the OTSMAN. One was 2 weeks later of questions from our many, many hours of lecture on the Air Force, leadership, teambuilding, professionalism, etc. and then the next one was a week later from more lecture.

The first 2 weeks of class were insane. Here’s a typical day:

0430 – official wake up time. There may or may not be someone in the hallway screaming at you to wake up. We’re officially not allowed to wake up before that time but I will leave it to your imagination whether people actually got up before or not.

0435 – line up outside your door, fully dressed (Either in PT gear or ABUs) and ready to go (so you might imagine that people would want to give themselves more than 5 minutes)

0440 – leave the dorms, line up outside, and march to the drill pad to learn how to march or to do PT (usually it’s PT. Drill was only the first couple of days)

0500 – start PT/Drill

0600: finish PT/drill, kill time marching while we wait for the flights before us to go to the dfac for breakfast

0635: march over to the Dfac, the flight leader has to report in “Sir/Ma’am, November Flight reports with a dining priority of 0635. We arrived at 0635”. If we were on time, we go in. If we’re late, technically they can send us away with MREs, but I’ve never seen it happen. Usually there’s enough of a backup to get in the dfac that even if you were 10 minutes late you could still enter the building with the rest of the people with the same dining priority as you.

0700: get back to the dorm to shower and change

0745: line up outside our rooms with our flight to go to class

0800-1300 – lecture either in the flight room or the auditorium. Struggle to stay awake while taking notes in class, struggle even more to stay awake in the auditorium. If people are falling asleep they’re supposed to get up and go stand in the back. It’s funny to watch the numbers go up as the day goes on.

1305: lunch. We line up outside in 2 columns, then file in one by one. We wait along one wall and two-by-two go up to get a tray. Then we turn and grab plates and salad bar stuff, moving down the line side-stepping and looking  straight ahead. (Hence it took a week to discover a rack of cereal at breakfast, a big rotating display of grapes and yogurt and milk at breakfast, and an assortment of cakes at lunch and dinner) Every time you step, you have to bring your heels back together, feet at 90 degrees. You slide down the line and get to the meal where someone puts way too much of some way too cooked meat or vegetable on your plate (there are always a few different meats and a few different vegetables and starches but there is a high rate of repetition) or you can skip that part and make yourself a sandwich. There’s a metal box that supposedly has corn bread in it but never does, a cookie stand, multiple freezers of ice cream, drink machines, coffee machine, milk machine, and if you were brave enough to look around, there was a soft-serve ice cream machine behind you (there is a lot of ice cream in this place. And the meal costs the same regardless of what you get so….). so then you pay and go eat.

I’m going to write a separate post on dining procedure but eventually (and by that I mean really quickly) the food gets in.

Then we go re-line up outside and once our whole flight is out, we march back over to the academic building.

1400-1800: more lecture. In the flight room or in the auditorium. Some days we have an hour set aside for our Flight Commander to deal with logistical isssues, and/or for our flight members to do the various extra jobs we were assigned (every flight has a logistical officer, finance, academic, photo, administrative, safety, standardization, etc)

1815: dinner. Same deal as lunch, exactly.

1900: get back to the dorm. Think “yey I have 4 hours until lights out to get classwork done” and then realize you need to spend 3 hours doing a million other things – writing reports, filling out paperwork, making lists of this and emailing them to that person, going to a meeting, going outside and practicing drill, etc. until a week goes by and you still haven’t studied a thing.

2300: lights out. Hope that tomorrow I’ll get something done.

Training Day Zero

That’s right. Zero. As in…this day doesn’t count towards anything.

So we started the day with brunch that was supposed to be at the waffle house, with a bunch of people from the facebook group. Turns out the waffle house was really tiny and there was no room so we went across the street to the “Country Pride” restaurant. Whatever that is.

We sat around and gulped our last coffee and ate our last normal meal and talked about how miserable we thought we would or wouldn’t be, what we were afraid of, etc. It was really nice to spend those last few hours with people so that I didn’t become a giant stress ball. We eventually decided it was time to go, drove back to bas, crammed our suitcases into everyone’s car, and they drove over to in-processing. We walked over to the cars and got all the suitcases out, did a final shoelaces tucked in, shirt tucked in, hair up, smile gone check and walked over to “in-processing” A drill sergeant told us to put our suitcases down on one of a bunch of picnic tables and then get in line with our paperwork. We handed n the paperwork, got name tags and a folder that has gone literally everywhere with me since, including most trips to the bathroom. We were then instructed to “go over there, drink 2 cups of water, and get in line” where a drill sergeant taught us how to stand at attention properly, and a few basic marching commands. We were then filed inside where we stopped at different tables to get our room key, our flight assignments (small group of 16 people we do everything with) computer password, reflective belt, poncho, OTSMAN, and a water bottle.  Along the way we were yelled at, mostly right in our faces, for stepping over, or not close enough to, the blue line on the floor. Or looking around. Or down. Or up. Or anything not straight ahead. It wasn’t really that bad…mostly the officers just sounded annoyed.

The female officers are ridiculous. I’m pretty sure they’re all insecure, because they are cray-zee when they yell. The males stand there and yell in a stern voice. The female officers scream like they are frantic and wave their arms around and get really shrill. Like they have something to prove. Someone should tell them that they would get more respect for being loud and in control than they do for being frantic.

So the OTSMAN. The OTSMAN is the Officer Training School Manual, which we have to read literally any second that we are not actively doing something else. We were rushed through the line to go stand in the hallway for 30 minutes, so we read the OTSMAN, silently, in lines. We were waiting in between lines for 3 minutes, and we were told to “Get smart!” AKA Read the OTSMAN. It has ALL of the rules for this month including how/when to salute, how/when to walk anywhere, procedure for opening and closing lecture, what we can and can’t do, curfew hours, dining procedures (a whole other adventure…)…everything. So we read it. ALL. THE. TIME. If I had a dollar for every time an officer or drill sergeant said “You should be reading your OTSMAN”, I wouldn’t need the Air Force to pay for medical school.

Anyway. Eventually we got our suitcases and were given an hour to go put stuff away in our rooms. My roommate, thank you God, has been in the air force as an enlisted member since she was 18 and is now 30something. Awesome resource!

Then we went back downstairs and lines up. There are 320 people here, broken up into 3 Squadrons (Falcons, Guardians, Griffins. I’m a Guardia) and a bunch of flights (alpha, bravo, Charlie, etc. down the military alphabet. I am November flight, and so is everyone who lives in my section of the hallway) So they broke us up into squadrons and marched us to the clothing store, where everyone bought all the stuff we would need for our uniforms and random other things (flashlight with yellow cone, batteries, blab la bla) and got things altered if need be. Then we marched back to our dorms and put stuff away until Dinner.

We lined up again outside, and after much re-arranging and calling people with prior service out of the group to be the heads of the lines, we marched over to the DFac (Dining facility) where we stood in line for a long time, reading the OTSMAN. I’m not even going to bother explaining dining procedures. There are a bazillion rules, and you get screamed at for breaking any of them. The gist is, you don’t look at anyone or anything but your food, you eat as fast as you can, you don’t talk.  Non-enjoyable.

Then we filed out and to the auditorium for some briefings that I don’t even remember what they were about. Ha!  I think that’s all for that day….it’s starting to all blur together.

Apparently we have ALL of Friday off for the 4^th of July, (despite it being the 5^th) and hopefully I’ll catch up then.

But I’m still alive and I don’t hate it yet so I guess that’s good! It’s super humid and hot and gross, but we are constantly “hydrating” out of the camebacks we have so we probably won’t die at least. :-P

I gotta go do some homework. Ciao!

Arrived!

So after a potential catastrophe (in which I had not gotten any emails from Delta about my flight, so I called the military's travel agency who had "booked" my flight, and found out that somehow they had not finalized my flight, so the airline cancelled the reservation after 72 hours.....and then thankfully they re-booked it and all was well) I got on a plane and off I went to Atlanta, caught a connection to Montgomery. I almost dind't make that flight because we were delayed a bit because of too much traffic around Atlanta. I was terrified I was going to have to sprint across terminals to get to my next flight. I asked the flight attendant if she knew what the liklihood of my connection being in the same terminal was, and she checked the delta app on her phone and told me it was like 2 gates over. Thank. You. God. So I made that flight.

I found someone from our COT class facebook group on my flight, and we met another girl in the airport, and took a cab over to base, then met again in the lobby of our on-base hotel to see if we could find some FOOD because it was almost 9 by then. A large group of people from the facebook group had already been out to dinner but that was hours ago. We were asking the lady at the front desk where we might eat, and a woman overheard us and offered to drive us over to the Subway that was just off base. It wasn't that far but apparently Montgomery is NOT a safe place to walk by yourself...pretty much ever, and especially at night. So we were like umm....wow, thanks! So we find out she is an E9 (E = enlisted, 9 = the number that comes after 8, and 7, and 6..) which means she is the highest enlisted rank in the Air Force. And she's picking up a bunch of absolute nobodies and bringing us to McDonalds (Subway was closed). Clearly, we are not in New York. This be the south.

On that note, I am having a major language barrier issue here. I couldn't understand half of what our cab driver was saying, or 90% of what the girl at McDonald's was saying, and half of what the front desk hotel people were saying. It's really bad. I have to say "I'm sorry?" a million times per conversation. I feel really bad...but i really just have no idea what you are saying, could you please repeat yourself 50 times? Welcome to the deep south. Thanks.

Anyway. So we got our food and brought it back to the hotel and ate in the lobby waiting for our other facebook friends to arrive, which a few did, and 7 of us sat around and hung out for a while. Good times.


Tomorrow morning we're going to to go Waffle House at 10 and plan to report in at 12 (we are supposed to go between 9 and 3. We don't want to be overachievers or slackers, so we are going at the exact middle).
So that's it! I'm off to sleep my last sleep that doesn't end with someone kicking on my door at 4:30 for a while. Good night!

Going to USAF COT

As if the med school acronyms weren't enough, I now get to deal with all the military ones. There might even be more military acronyms than med school ones.

So obviously I've been slacking the med school blogging...suffice it to say that I finished first year and I was very happy with my grades and wahoo wahoo finally done.

Anyway.
On Sunday I'll be heading to Montgomery, Alabama, to Maxwell Air Force Base to go through 4 weeks of Commissioned Officer Training.  Did I mention that it's going to be 100000 degrees and 99% humidity like the entire time? This is made worse only by the fact that I will be wearing long pants, combat boots, and a long-sleeved "blouse" ( = camo jacket) the entire time.

COT a lot of classroom stuff, where they teach us about the Air Force, a lot of leadership training, working in teams, problem solving, obstacle courses, sort of stuff, learning how to march and parade, and some PT (physical training).

If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page http://www.afoats.af.mil/OTS/COT-RCOT/admin_items.asp
then you can see what a typical day's schedule looks like.

I'm going to try to blog through the whole thing, but as you can see we are up rather early in the morning and not so early to sleep as to make up for the 4:30 wakeup time. So I'll do my best but no guarantees.

I'm excited to finally start this Air Force journey and finally go and get a clue what on earth I'm doing!
I've already connected with several people who will be in my class, and it looks like it's going to be a fun group!

So right now I have printed out a million copies of all the paperwork an documentation I'll need, bought and had altered (about $200 worth of alterations...that's how short I am!) lots of uniform, obsessively read blogs and official documents about COT and the AF, memorized some random creeds/songs/lists of words, so hopefully I'm as ready as I can be. No matter what I do It'll be a culture-shock experience I'm sure. But I'm ready!