End of Week 1

Now that the weekend is here, I finally have time to sit down and type out the week's events.  Each day this week has been long and tedious, and by its end you pretty much just have time to eat and get ready for tomorrow before it's time to hit the hay.

Tuesday:

The day started out with an intro to combatives - a brief history, and some basic ground dominant body positions.  Tuesday was the first part of our physical, to include urinalysis, blood work, hearing and vision checks, and vitals.  Once finished, we picked up our books - bring a large bag.  They gave me more manuals/books than I ever had in college.  Afterwards we had a small amount of time to grab food or take care of other things, and then we did CWST.  The CWST is already easy to begin with, but this one even more so - you simply have to ditch your gear underwater, and swim 15 meters without a rifle.  No 5 meter drop, no swim with weapon, and no water tread.  After that was a urinalysis, and we were cut for the day.

Wednesday:

Wednesday started out with the APFT.  I know the perennial question everyone will have is - "will they have hard graders?"  to which I say, there's no point in answering the question.  It will all be subjective - you may have a company with easy graders, you may not.  The best thing to do is not practice perfect pushups, but practice pushups beyond perfect - hit the ground with you chest.  That way, you know for sure you're prepared, regardless of the grader.  The run will be on a one mile track, and you won't start at a distance marker - this makes it difficult to pace, if you're used to running on a 400 meter track, or having people call out times to you.  You'll only have one call-out, and that's at the one mile point.  Learn your pace before you show up; better yet, find a buddy with a similar run time, and pace each other - even when you feel miserable, you're not gonna want to quit and lose face when you have a running buddy.  Following this, we took care of pantographic x-rays and anyone with CAC card issues got them taken care of at SRC.  This was followed  by our gear issue at CIF.  A lot of stuff here, but you won't need you own barracks bags, as they'll issue you two.  You'll be required to have you name and cat eyes sewn on the corresponding gear - you can get this done at Ranger Joe's for around 30 dollars, give or take a couple.  Afterwards we were free to do as we pleased until an evening informal social at the Officer's Club.  You'll have the opportunity to talk to many senior officers and meet your fellow LTs, if you haven't already.  For those of you not socially inclined, there's booze there to keep you occupied.  Obviously, don't make an ass of yourself.

Thursday:

Not a hard day in the least.  PT was tough - for those of you familiar with Crossfit, we did a double Murph workout, but we were not allowed to break up the exercises - you had to complete all of one exercise before starting on the next.  Needless to say, most people did not finish.  We completed the second part of the physical, and had more dental x-rays, and an exam if necessary.  You'll probably be finished by late morning, at which point you're free.  At 1600, we had an anti-terrorism brief, took a quiz on some basic military knowledge, and got our safety brief.


Misc:

A couple of random things.  First of all, spot reports:  spot reports can be positive or negative, and can add/subtract either two or five points from your final grade.  Watch yourself, as you may get negative spot reports for very minor things, and positive ones are supposedly hard to come by.  Second, although you turn in your medical and dental records on Monday, keep copies of you physicals - if you've had an exam within a year, you don't have to get another one, which will give you some time to do whatever you need to do.