EPTI went down to grab my things and inventoried some of my surroundings. Again, there were still people being loud as fuck and running around the dorm like maniac children. People sitting against the wall with their computers plopped open in their lap. The computer room was packed and looked more like a hangout spot than a internet hotspot. CQ was not paying attention, despite being in the middle of it all.
I let it all soak in as I went to talk to my mom. We briefly exchanged goodbyes and thank yous, and she was off. The 2 of us lugged our bags up to the room and I plopped down on the bed. My mind was racing as to what could possibly happen here. DLI had been pretty quiet, as most people were either studying, or going out to relax. Not much partying was to be had there, as there was no real time for it, or if you did, you fell behind (as I had).
But this was a completely different atmosphere. Although the dorm itself was nicer than DLI's dorms, the populace made me question the maturity level of them. As time went on, I heard footsteps and chatter in the hallway as my roommate eventually went to bed. I stayed up for a bit longer to think some more.
The room itself was accomodating, about the size of your normal hotel room. It had a fridge, a bathroom, your beds and each of us had a desk. I peered around for a LAN connection, but couldn't find one. I figured I'd be able to find it tomorrow, as I had the time to, and I went to bed.
A couple days pass. In that time, I discovered there was no LAN connection, and the hotspot downstairs was the only place to get internet, at a pretty hefty fee. I did it anyways, and the connection was shoddy at best. I just forum hopped and downloaded some crap while I was there. It was a pain in the ass just to get downstairs, and an even bigger pain in the ass to find a place to sit down and use the shit.
I still had no idea where the chow hall was, so I had to go over to the Shoppette to buy snacks and some BK. It wasn't healthy, but I wasn't at the state of mind to really give 2 shits about my heath.
Also, about 8-9ish, there was a scramble outside. Someone at one point came to knock on my door and tell me to get into our team formation (which we didn't even know what the hell he was talking about at the time), to get ready for details. I looked at him like he was crazy, and he got all defensive.
"Just trying to help you out, asshole"
Apparently details was every night or something. This would not change as I went through the course, when I finally got into my team.
When Monday rolled around, the 2 of us woke up and finally closed the door without anyone in there. We took whatever identifying information we could to ensure that we'd be able to get in again after a sergeant gives us whatever key we needed to get back in there.
Wander downstairs to a meeting room of sorts and find we're the first ones there, just a couple of people sorting folders for the coming briefing. We exchange small talk. They were people that were injured during training and would when I ask where everyone else is.
Apparently, I was going to get stuck with a bunch of people who had just graduated Basic. It didn't occur to me at the time, but I already stood out. In the time that I was in DLI, the USAF went through a uniform swap, from BDUs to the current ABUs. I didn't have any ABUs, I didn't have the capability (nor willingness) to buy them. My roommate and I were clearly standing out.
Suddenly they filed in. What would be known as Team 4. Everyone was looking around nervously as I stared blankly into the crowd. Like basic, it was a mishmash of colors and races, except everyone was in uniform this time, and everyone was dead quiet. I could feel the eyes of the new trainees looking at the 2 jokers in BDUs. What were they doing here and what are they wearing? A few moments of silence pass by when a sergeant walks in and gives us the low down of what would come to pass in the next 13 weeks.
Essentially, combat training, and security training. Security Forces is a mishmash of the guy at the gate checking ID's, law enforcement, and outside the wire missions (this is really rare). We'd fire weapons and practice squad movements, as a general idea of what would happen. In the last half of training before graduation, we would go to Camp Bullis (a little NW of San Antonio) to conduct field training, and (heavy) weapons training. Something like that. Most of it was classroom, death by powerpoint, and meager attempts to be funny.
What he didn't mention, was our lives outside of class. I would find this to be the most stressful part of the tech school.
The sergeant eventually introduced us to our Blue Rope. This was a sergeant that would be assigned exclusively to us (and one other team, out of 13, one for each week). He would take care of any administrative issues that we would have, as well as punishments, if need be. He gave us the usual shpeal of don't do stupid shit, consequences of sexual harassment, blah blah blah, shit that I had heard a million times, having it briefed to me almost every month. He also gave us our phase cards. Us reclasses were instantly bumped to phase 3 (which was a big deal or something. To me, someone who had been phase graduated, was essentially demoted a phase), and everyone else went to phase 1.
Some more briefings on the stuff that would go on, and we were sent to lunch. This week was essentially a 0 week, where we had holdovers show us around. The holdovers were the people who had graduated, and passed, the training, but for whatever reason, they weren't allowed to actually go to their first duty station. Most of it was because they had no orders to go anywhere yet, but there were some other circumstances as well.
Anyways, these guys know that us reclasses had been in a while, and knew a ton of the briefings we would be going to, we had already gone over a lot. Even though they said they'd try to get us out of briefings, it never happened. I sat through all the crap over and over again, almost to the point of being able to recite the briefings. Blah blah blah. Most of the holdovers felt sympathy for the reclasses. After all, I did just blow about a year and a half of my life for almost nothing. One of them straight up didn't like us, and essentially called me a disgrace to the uniform for failing out of something. Me, who had been in for almost a year longer than this joker. I didn't say a word. This would be a recurring theme throughout the course, I would be dead silent. People noticed it, apparently.
Chow was a good walk away, but we still had to march. I hadn't marched in a year. DLI was on a hill and was on a "marching waiver" (at least that's what they told us), so it was a little rusty to me. I knew the basics, and that got me by. However, watching some of these new kids completely fuck it up, and they just got done learning it, what, not even a week ago?
On the way to chow, they showed us one of our many classroom settings, one of 3 possible dorms we could end up in (one was coed, one was males only, one was females only), and some other locations we had to meet up at. It didn't matter, I was hungry. I didn't pay much attention.
After a meager lunch (Pretty sure I ate something bad), we went on to more briefings and bullshit. At the end of the day, we were to retire to our rooms. All the guys ended up at what we would know as the Jailhouse (the male only dorm), the girls would end up in what we would know as G-Bay (female only dorm), and the 2 of us reclasses ended up in the Firehouse (coed dorm). The only history that I know of is the Firehouse, apparently someone tried to set it on fire in the short time that it even existed. What an appropriate name.
That first night, we scrambled outside for formation. I realized that I was only with the girls, and my roommate. (there were other team formations, this is just our team) All the guys were in the other building, which was a couple blocks away, they did their own thing. None of the girls were attractive, and most didn't like us anyways. We ran and did details, which was more or less cleaning up the dorm. As stated above, this would be recurrent throughout the 13 weeks I was there.
A week passes of us doing breakfast=>briefings=>lunch=>briefings=>dinner=>details=>bed. It was sickeningly boring, and my lack of entertainment wasn't helping me. I had my Wii with me, and a TV that I had split with my other roommate (I eventually won it in a coin flip when one of us had to move out), but not that many games were good for the Wii at the time. This routine would continue, with training replacing briefings for the next 10 weeks.
On Friday, getting back from briefings, the formation stops at our dorm to drop us off before the guys finish the march back to their dorms. I immediately notice somethings wrong, as it's about 5 PM, and there's a formation SITTING outside. The girls wander back to their dorm, and my roommate and I sit with the formation.
Apparently, it was a drug bust. Soon after that, the commander of the training squadron had something to tell us.
"You're all on lockdown for the shit that's happened this weekend".
Essentially, I was phase 1, again. What happened that weekend was a combination of DUIs, UADs, drug possession, and low morale (lol?). I would be in phase 1 for more than half my training, for shit that I didn't do. This was when I first identified the flaw behind One Team One Fight. Most of training was the bulk of the Team getting in trouble, for something stupid that someone did. It did not improve over time.
That was the gist of major stuff that happened in the early going. As time went on, nothing really changed. We went to training absurdly early (4 AM lol?), got yelled at for stupid shit the day before, go to training, got back around 7, got yelled at for new shit that's happened, details, and barely had time to do anything personal before going to sleep. It wasn't hard physically, as people were telling me it was gonna be (hell, the PT at DLI was harder than the pussy shit they were making us do), it was frustrating mentally, but being in a situation where I was supposed to set the example, I shut up.
Reclasses would slowly trickle into our Team during that week. In the end, we had about 6-7, and a few recycles came in during the training cycle. Because reclasses were in BDUs, and the rest of the flight in ABUs, we were told to march in the back to keep uniformity. Go figure, sit in the back of the bus huh.
In the next week, we would be introduced to our instructor team, as well as our prior service members. The instructor team told us the prior service members would be our team leads, and to treat them with the utmost respect. Um, duh, they outrank us? is what I was thinking. They also told us that they would stick with us throughout the course. This wasn't actually true, they swapped up depending on the course material, and they would eventually come back to us at the end of the course.
Then began the slow painful process of actually training. It was kinda like:
Wake up stupid early (3-4?)
March to breakfast
Get yelled at for stupid shit that happened last night
Go to training
March to Lunch
Get yelled at for stupid shit that happened at lunch
Go to training
March to dinner
Get yelled at for stupid shit that happenned during the training day.
Details
Sleep
So it got dull, fast. Here's some various highlights that happened during the course, that stood out in my mind.
-Arguments with other teams:
This didn't happen very much, but when it did, it got heated. Teams were generally around 50ish people, and even less as people recycled out for stupid shit. When one or 2 people get into an arguement over absolutely nothing, suddenly there's a ton of people backing each person up.
-Left, Right, Center, Hold:
This was one of the things that actually stood out in my mind for training. Left, Right, Center, Hold is the words they use to describe searching and handcuffing. Typically, after you handcuff someone, you search them to make sure they don't pull shit out on you after you take them into custody. However, it was extremely awkward, since we used ourselves as the suspects (this occured in hand to hand combat as well).
They way they taught it:
Left leg. Right leg. Center area (read: crotch). Hold it.
...
I really hope no one got a boner during that exercise. Watch some of the videos on youtube to see what I'm talking about.
-Camp Bullis:
Our field exercise was a 2-3 week (I can't remember), spread of excuses for us to get off of Lackland. It was in the middle of a pretty damn big wilderness, but even so, we were able to get cabs to go off the base and back into San Antonio (which I did, a couple of people I did get along with eventually went to a local Dave & Busters), and order pizza (which we ate an absurd amount of, due to the chow hall being at really sporadic hours).
We stayed at a dorm that happened to be over there, and I was roomed with 2 other guys from my team, one of which I didn't get along with at all (I lost my temper at one point and blew up at him after the first day). The nice part of the dorm was the rec area, which was wifi and TVs so you could play games on. It was nice, but the shit for getting in trouble over what other people did happened there too.
The highlights of the training was probably the heavy weapons training, and the wilderness wandering. I'm not into that kinda crap, but I was forced into it, so whatever. I can't really go into what exactly we did, but I will say that I got stuck with the heaviest weapon, and we carried the shit for about 14 hours for training (those days).
We moved into some huts at the last week, and this did a couple of things for us. We were back to community showers, and we were further away from our training area (which was near the dorm). The stuff that happened there, was probably documented on YouTube somewhere.
Also, I wrecked my car there. A couple of weeks after I got back to San Antonio, I visited my parents. It was a special case that I had to clear through leadership, but it was then he mentioned that he was selling his car. I'm not a car guy, but I mused that I could use it. Next thing you know, I had a car. However, I do fall under the bad Asian driver stereotype.
While at Bullis, I drove to visit my mom in Round Rock. It was quite a drive, and I had to do some stuff to map it out. Notably, I had to get back to Lackland to actually get the car to drive out there. Eventually, it happens, and I spend the weekend with my mom. However, the ride back, I stopped paying attention to the road as I was pulling up to Lackland. I rear ended the guy in front of me as he was stopped at a red light. Car was totaled. Less than pleased.
After we got back to Lackland for our final couple of weeks of training, we changed dorm rooms. I ended up in the Firehouse again, this time with a new roommate. At this point, I had hated the other reclass I came with. He was hopelessly oblivious to shit that was happening around him: including me trying to sleep.
There was a night that he kept me up for 3 hours because he had a disagreement with his bank over the phone. I wanted to rage so hard.
That's about all I really want to say about Bullis.
-Testing:
Oh my god the tests were a joke. Because of the simplicity of the content compared to learning a language, I didn't fail to score under a 90 or something. At points, I just didn't study and aced it anyways. People were struggling, and I couldn't figure out why.
I later heard some rumor that the ASVAB score required to get into Security Forces is damned low. Go figure.
-Getting our first duty station:
I had already gotten mine. Tucson, Arizona huh. I was meh about it. When everyone else got theirs, I found out I was the only one going there. People were given the chance to trade their stations, but reclasses were stuck with what they have.
Shame, I wanted to go to Japan.
Everyone else was also given a sponser to help show them around the area when they got to their duty station. I didn't get such help. Likely because I was a reclass, they didn't even know I was coming. I had to call them.
That didn't occur to me until the week of graduation. I didn't know who I was calling, but I was given a number that directed to the base I was going to. The sergeant on the other line eventually told me he didn't even know I was coming, but he'd come and pick me up and show me around anyways. I couldn't complain, he sounded nice.
-Graduation:
Meh. I got some distinguished graduate or something for my high scores and my ability to keep out of trouble. Apparently it's an achievement to keep out of trouble in my career field. I celebrated with my mom and stepdad. I honestly thought that you'd have to be mentally retarded NOT to pass the course, but it doesn't matter now.
In a week or 2, I was on the plane to Tucson, Arizona.
