Posts tagged hurdles and victories
Well, it’s official, folks. I woke up this morning and headed up to Navy Officer Recruiting Station (NORS) Hyattsville. There, I signed three copies of my enlistment contract, three copies of my service agreement, and about an inch of other assorted paperwork. And so as of about three hours ago, I am a United States Sailor. Feels damned good.
So, I’m totally pumped. In five days and a wake-up, I’m going to walk into the Hyattsville office where, 11 months ago, I first met my Officer Recruiter. I’m going to raise my hand, and swear to support and defend the Constitution. I’m going to sign my name to a piece of paper (DD-0004) that says I’m no longer a civilian, but am instead a member of the Armed Forces of the United States, subject to the regulations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
And I’m so pumped. I really can’t stop smiling. I’m driving around town with my arm out the window, soaking up the incredible Florida February sunshine, and I can’t wipe the smile off my face.
Thirty days after I enlist, I’m going to roll up to the sea wall at Naval Station Newport, and start OCS. Ninety days later, God-willing, I’ll raise my hand one more time, swear a new oath, and become a commissioned officer. Incredible.
It’s been a long 11 months, and I can already tell that this last month of waiting is going to lead to some serious restless leg syndrome (not clinically, of course). I’m trying to avoid the urge to start packing (because then what would I do in 3 weeks, when it’s actually time to start packing??), and also trying to avoid the urge to double up my gym time to pass the time, because I know that would only lead to overtraining and injury.
Time to clean the house, clearly..
Lots of sailors choose creative venues for their re-enlistment ceremonies, but this one’s hard to top: Breaking the sound barrier in the back seat of an F/A-18 Hornet, five miles above the Atlantic Ocean.
The pilot, Cmdr. Mitchell Conover, administered the oath midflight and even gave [Aviation Machinist’s Mate 3rd Class Alfonso] Tulavillanueva a surprise as he recited the final words, pulling back on the stick and putting the aircraft into a climb.
Now that’s the way to swear an oath.
I’ll be taking care of mine at some point in March, it looks like, in a ceremony much less dramatic. Just me and the folks from the recruiting office up in Hyattsville, MD.
Last week, I received my “final select” letter, which indicated my first day at OCS will be SUN 3 APR 2011, 97 days from today. I can officially enlist once my orders are cut, which apparently takes some time, hence the March ceremony. I’ll keep you posted, though.
In the next 97 days, I’ll be ratcheting up my PT routine — adding runs back in (it’s been a few months), as well as some targeted strength and muscle endurance exercises for the things I know are popular with the Drill Instructors at OCS — push-ups, planks, sit-ups, flutter-kicks, etc.
It’s a relief to have that deadline looming. The countdown is extraordinary motivation to crawl out of bed on cold(-ish) mornings, and reminds me to push myself to complete that one last rep. And it makes every moment a little brighter — I guess that might sound trite or contrived, but it’s true. In just a few weeks I’ll become the property of my country, and I’d be damned if I didn’t squeeze every last moment of joy out of the days I’ve got left as a free citizen.
Ah, the unglamorous waiting continues. It’s been more than a month since I’ve had anything legitimately new to report. It was September when I found out I was accepted by the SWO community, October when my background investigation really got cooking, and now, at the tail-end of November, I’m still simply waiting. Though, as of today, I sort of have vague inklings of news.
I found out that I’ve gone from “pro-rec“ status to a quasi-“Final Select” status, which means that my medical paperwork has all been signed off on. What is holding up the true, written-in-stone FS is apparently some combination of two things:
1) a budgetary snafu in which they accepted more people for the SWO program than they could accommodate this fiscal year (though this is mere scuttlebutt, and may be totally false) and
2) a technicality in my paperwork, in which SWO (the program I was accepted to) was listed as a 3rd choice, and SWO-IW — that “IW” stands for “Information Warfare” — (a program which hasn’t met yet to look at my application) was listed as my 1st choice, and so they won’t release the FS on SWO until SWO-IW has a chance to look over my application and make an offer of their own, if they choose to.
The first of these I can’t do anything about, other than to make it explicit to my recruiter that I’d like for them to be aggressive about sneaking me into a spot as they open. Which I’ve done.
The second of these will be solved (hopefully) by a letter I just sent off to my recruiter, which effectively removes SWO-IW from my list of preferences, which ought to remove the hold on processing my FS for SWO. Hopefully.
So, having done all that I can do to help move things along, I’m back to waiting. Hooyah.
Okay, background check time. I got the call from a special investigator today letting me know that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is starting the process, which is exciting, because it means that yet another section of paperwork has made it successfully from my recruiter’s desk to the proper authorities. As the SF-86 is not a form I’d like to have to fill out again, this development is a big relief. It took more than 20 hours to complete way back in June (wow, has it been so long??) between digging through my old records (read: intensive Gmail searching, scrounging through photo albums, and rummaging in old stacks of paper) and dealing with intermittent and inexplicable browser incompatibility.
At any rate, if you know me personally, you may get a call from a special investigator. Please be nice to him or her, answering all questions honestly and to the utmost of your ability. Carry on.
You may remember that a little more than a week ago, I got the good news that I’d been pro-rec’d. My next step was getting in touch with a recruiter closer to home who could administer my Physical Readiness Test, or PRT. It’s a three-part test: 2 minutes of push-ups, 2 minutes of sit-ups, and a 1.5-mile run. Complete all three within the standards for your age group and gender, and you keep moving through the process.
So, I scrounged around to get contact information for the right person at the local Naval Recruiting District office, and managed to get an appointment for tomorrow at 0900 to take my PRT.
I’m not worried about passing it — I’ve been training for the three events in particular since, well…June. But you still want to do as best you can, to shoot for the A instead of the C. So you watch your sleep patterns and strategically rest key muscle groups, mentally and physically preparing for test day.
And then, just hours before the test is due to commence, you get the call: no PRTs will be conducted until further notice, no further explanation available.
The scuttlebutt’s flying around the applicant community — did a recruit get hurt, or worse, while taking the exam?
My recruiter maintains that the hold on PRTs won’t affect “Final Select” letters, which you get when the paperwork’s all done and the Navy has figured out when they want you to show up to training. Which is good news — theoretically no undue delay — but it’s also disconcerting. Tomorrow, do I train for a PRT, with the understanding that the ban could be lifted at any time and I could be asked to take it after all, or do I skip ahead and train for training itself, which ultimately will test a totally different set of physical skills?
It’s almost worse than a traditional “hurry up and wait” — when you rush to do something only to wait around for anyone to care you’ve done it. It’s more like, “hurry up and practice and wait and yeah you didn’t need to do that at all, so wait more, and oh wait, yeah after all, go ahead and hurry up again, ok great wait…”
Only thing to do, really, is to keep on keeping on with the assumptions both that I won’t have to take it and that I will — i.e. train for both possibilities — and to smile happily regardless. I know I’m lucky to even have the dilemma. Just another day in the Navy’s officer applicant pipeline.
pro-rec’d swo (prɵ-rɛkt swɵ), adj. 1. given preliminary approval by members of the Surface Warfare Community to join said community following completion of officer training.
Heard the amazingly fantastic news about two hours ago from my recruiter! This is a huge hurdle overcome. A few things are still ahead — I need to pass my physical readiness test, get fingerprinted, and get a security clearance — but those all just take time, really. They’re otherwise pretty well guaranteed. Which means I’m in. And so excited I’m practically jumping off the walls.
Folks have been asking about timing — it’s still unknown, but still in the range of months before I head up to Newport to start OCS. Likely closer to 3 months than to 9 months, but could be anywhere in between. Every step of the way involves nearly unimaginable layers of bureaucratic process.
Personally, my next step is getting someone in the recruiting office down home to return my calls and set up a time to take the physical fitness test — something tells me it’ll be a hurdle all its own.
