Navy Officer Candidate School (OCS) Part 3

Navy Officer Candidate School

Candidate Officer Phase

These are the days that everyone in OCS looks forward to. Once you "dawn the brown" or put on those khakis you will be given more responsibility and more liberty. Basically candidate officer phase is the culmination of everything you have learned into a practical test of leadership. As a class you will be given the responsibility of running the regiment. Everything from being in charge of checking in the indocs and taking care of their every need, to making sure everyone has toilet paper. There are a variety of billets available that will be selected for you by your class team (sometimes with your input). I personally wanted to be on Indoc staff, I tried to get indoc sub commander but I wasn't selected for it. Either way I had a blast working as indoc staff. As indoc staff you do everything that your candios did for you when you were an indoc. I was in charge of mentoring and preparing the new class so that they would be ready for OCS and beyond. It was an honor to be working with them on their first days in the navy and helping them in any way I could. When you reach candio phase you have seen which classes lead the regiment well and which don't. So you can go into candio phase knowing how you want to be and who you want to emulate. It seems like each class goes back forth like a pendulum on how strict they are with everyone. When I was an indoc, our candios were very strict about everything. You were never allowed to sit against the bulkhead or ever ask a question without the proper procedure. Once they graduated the class that followed them were very lax, and had a chill attitude about them. They were approachable but they didnt do a very job of maintaining the regiment. So the class that followed them felt like they had to be strict again to make up for the laxness that the previous class left them. This class was very strict on greetings in particular. If you ever passed a candio and didnt give the proper greeting of the day, or opened a conversation with one then you were reprimanded. I still remember when every younger class was given a "stern talking to" by a candio that came around and told us we wernt giving them the proper respect because they felt they wernt being greeted properly all the time. So... we decided we would give them EVERY greeting we could. When entering through the doors on a weekend you go single file, so when a few candios walked out, every single one of us in the 63 person line, one by one, yelled as loud as they could "Good morning gentleman!"

In order to become a candidate officer you must pass all the classes, pass the mid-PFA, and then complete Capstone. There has been a lot of talk recently about changing what the capstone is, but in essense it is a bunch of team building exersices you would see at a camp, just a little more physically demanding sometimes. When my class did it we had a blast up until the end when we found out that were going to have to wait another day to be considered a Candio. This to us was a huge blow, we were a perfect class, probably the last honor class for a long time, had no failures on the first round of NAV and NOS and yet it felt like we were being punished. Normally you change into your khakis after capstone and go to lunch and eat normally after 9 weeks of being harped on. Instead we were given our bars in a ceremony and then immediatly told, "You haven't arrived" and we were still Officer candidates until the class ahead of us graduated friday morning.

Part of the Capstone

That Friday we put on the khakis and took over our billets in the regiment and that night we finially got to open our Candio boxes. Candio-Boxes are like the care package to celebrate finially becoming a candio. Since up to this point you couldnt eat or drink what you wanted normally they are filled with candy and snacks. The night of the candio box is typically filled with over eating.

An example Candio-Box

The rest of candio phase is really about managent of the regiment and doing your job even though no one told you to do it. It wall fall on the class to uphold everything and maintain the regiment and a good class will do it well. If you are lucky then you will receive liberty on the weekends to go out to town. I suggest dont drinking until after graduation, too many idiots have come back drunk and got kicked out of the navy or sometimes arrested for DUI's. Its not worth it, you have waited 9 weeks, 3 more wont kill you. In my time there I saw at least 4 incidents where people went in front of review boards for alcohol related incidents, and those are the ones they caught!

Hi-Moms, the night before gradation we celebrate with family

By time the last week comes around you will be counting the mintues until you can see your loved ones, and by time wednsday hits and the class below you has completed capstone you are free to leave and spend the rest of the time with your family on overnight liberty. This was definatly the best part of OCS, which was finially being done and seeing my wife again.

Now there is a lot I left out, and there is a lot that has changed since then but hopefully this has given you a basic overview. I didnt go into to much detail on fire training, damage control training, PT procedures or touring the USS Constitution, there are a lot of cool things you do but you will just have to go and experience them yourself!

The only time you smile is as a Candio (ok not totally true).