Commissioned Officer Training

5 weeks in Montgomery Alabama. Hot Hot Hot! Intense military training, sleep deprivation, hours of classes and lectures, physical conditioning, MREs, marching, studying, room inspections, obstacle courses, and so much more. Many of us were counting down the days to go home, I on the other hand enjoyed the experience. This was my opportunity to learn what it means to be an Air Force Officer. After this, I would be on my own out in the “real AF.” I have so many stories to tell and there’s no way I can fit them all in one little post. Please call me and I will tell you more about my time at COT. Here are some pictures!

Anthony and I drove to AL from CO. About 22 hours with a overnight stay in Little Rock, AR.

Dinner with some other MSCs the night before.

Let the fun begin. We were “greeted” by TIs that yelled at us to cup our hands and stand at attention. Day one was all in processing. Shuffling us from station to station. In between we stood in line and read our OTS manual…at attention.

Our room

Training Day 1: We were woken up by the TIs kicking and banging on our doors to wake up at 4:00 in the morning. I have to admit that everything was a complete blur.

Later that week we finally met our Flight Commander , Capt Everage. We were broken into classes/flights of 15 people at the beginning and the flt/cc is essentially our teacher for the entire program. I had the honor of being chosen as the flight officer in charge (FOIC), second in command when the flt/cc was not there. THIS WAS THE HARDEST THING I HAVE EVER DONE. I ran our meetings, made sure everyone in the flt knew what they needed to do, had what they needed to do their jobs, and made sure things were done on time. I didn’t get much sleep in the beginning and on average only slept 3-4 hrs/night.

Typical Schedule:
4:30 Wake Up (although many of us were up by 4:10)
5:00 PT
7:00 Breakfast
8:00 – 12:00 Inspection class/Lectures
12:00 Lunch
1:00 – 6:00 More classes and lectures
6:00 Dinner
7:00 Finally back in our dorms with 2-4 hrs of studying, uniform prep, getting our room ready for inspection, meetings, etc.

There were days when we had blocks of time for drill practice, obstacle courses, etc.

Here’s week 2 at a glance

Getting ready for room inspections

Fire Drill. The OTS manual says to grab a blanket and yell fire down the hall while you evacuate. Our flight was the only one with blankets!

Low crawling in the dorms. Measuring how many crawls in takes to get to 25 yrds.

First real food in weeks…PIZZA

Marching

Leadership course called WELPS

Classroom time

The flight sleeping in between lectures in the Big Red Bed/Coma Dome/Boyd Auditorium

What do you do when you’re falling asleep in class…chicken dance!

Flt talent show. We taught the class how to Dougie!

Falcon Squadron

Blue Thunder

Pushup competition. I came in 5th for the females in the entire group! Amazing since I could only do 7 pushups 5 months ago. Now I can knock out 53 in a minute.