Officer Development School

Whew! What a summer it's been (and I'm the Dad, not the Sailor!). It's time to catch you all up on the last seven weeks since my daughter, Audrey, reported for duty at Officer Development School in Newport, RI. In my last post, I said that Audrey had confidently gone off to Newport, reporting for duty on June 21.

Officer Development School is different from Officer Candidate School, though for the Navy, both are located in Newport. As I understand it, OCS is longer (12 weeks? vs. 5 weeks for ODS) and is the process by which candidates from the enlisted ranks are vetted for the officer corps. In contrast, Officer Development School is where new personnel just commissioned into an officer rank in the Navy (without prior service) learn the traditions, customs and procedures of the Navy and how to be an officer. Many (most?) of the students at ODS are in professions or professional schools (for example: physicians, nurses, optometrists, pharmacists, and some advanced-degree engineers or scientists). There’s also an increased emphasis on physical training in the last few years. While ODS is shorter than boot camp at Great Lakes, newly commissioned officers are expected to achieve the same levels of physical readiness that Navy sailors achieve at any rank (scaled by age and gender). ODS students tend to be older (mid- to late-20s or early 30s) and there is a higher percentage of women than in the Navy as a whole.

Audrey’s mother and I spent the first week as many of you have – wondering how things were going. ODS students can keep more personal effects than sailors at Great Lakes, and Audrey was allowed to keep her Blackberry phone (ostensibly to use as an alarm clock, but of course, it came in handy for other things as well ). The first weekend she was allowed to call home on Saturday and we were ecstatic after that first call… she sounded subdued but grounded and fairly confident. She had expected the 4am routines and her company as a whole anticipated the rousting and got up the first morning at 3:30, made up their bunks, placed everything in military precision, and sat on the floor waiting for the wakeup… needless to say, the Sr. Chief in charge of their training was a bit surprised. (He got back at them later in the School when they weren’t expecting it, so she wasn’t deprived of the “rude-awakening” tradition!) We heard about their trip to the sand pit for “corrective” PT when two people from the company (not her) left their lockers unsecured (a rule violation).

Her first PRT went well except for the 1.5 mile run… Audrey has completed half marathon races, but is not a fast runner and her speed on the runs needed improvement. By the middle of ODS, though, she had trimmed 3 minutes off her 1.5 mile run (16:30 to 13:30), coming in much better than the standard for women her age. Officers purchase their uniforms and gear, and she gradually acquired the uniforms of an Ensign over the course of the School, with the exception of her BDUs, which she has since purchased at her current duty station (more later).

Classroom studies in Navy history, traditions and customs were interspersed with fire-fighting drills, abandon-ship simulations, and the ever-present PT (5am standard PT and “remedial” afternoon PT before her running time improved). She and her company were granted weekend liberty beginning in the training command the first weekend, expanding to include the officers’ club the second weekend and to off-base liberty the final weekend before graduation. Through it all, we got occasional text messages from her (not sure if that was a rule violation, but they didn’t find out) and phone calls when she was allowed to do so. She’s a pretty mature young woman in her mid-twenties, but I know this experience deepened her connection to the Navy, her fellow sailors, and to what I’ve started referring to as her “calling” – Navy medicine.

More in my next post - graduation!