Learnings at OCS

There are several things I learned at OCS, a few of them actually useful. I learned that if you can't stay awake, you can always stand up and drink coffee in the back of the classroom (although this one served me well during lawschool). I learned that excellent physical condition can actually be a detriment, after sitting in the bottom of the pool with my brother black shipmate during a ten-minute, so-called floating drill. I learned the official government designation "nurdle" designates the unsatisfactory collection of dust beneath one's rack (bed). I learned that one can actually figure out where one is, by merely knowing what time it is and by observing the azimuth and altitude of a particular celestial body, but that doesn't help when you're several hundred feet under water. We had liberty Wednesday and Saturday nights. One can actually navigate the elaborate form-up, march-in, salute and report-in process on the quarterdeck in a absolute drunken stupor.