What Happens After Navy OCS?

You may be reading this post because you are looking into joining the navy through OCS, or maybe you already signed on and are wondering what happens after OCS, or maybe you are just reading this because you clicked random on the top and it brought you here. What ever the case, I am here to tell you that there is no set path after OCS. Blog post over? Well not quite ...

While there is no set path, there are some common stepping stones for people after OCS. Each person will follow their particular orders to where they need to go. This is largely based on what warfare community you joined. I don't know the specifics on everyone but the basic answer to the question is where do I go after OCS is: School!

That's right, you finished college, you finished OCS and now they are sending you back to school. Almost every warfare community will send you to a specific course or school to teach you the basics of your community. Aviators go down to Pensacola to fly a trainer plane, Surface Warfare Officers (SWO) go to Basic Division Officer Course (BDOC), Sub guys go to nuke school, Civil Engineering Corp go to their class out in California. The Navy doesn't want to send untrained Ensigns out into the field without at least a basic understanding of their warfare area. When I say basic... I mean basic. They do throw a lot of info at you but in the end the best training you will get is hands on at your future job.

Since I am writing this from a Surface Nuke perspective, I will tell you a quick little example of what happened to me and where I went after OCS. As I mentioned in my posts about OCS, just because you enter OCS in a certain community doesn't mean you cant get medically disqualified and leave as another one (most likely SWO). It seems that 50% of the Ensigns I know started in other communities. So there may be a chance you end up on the same path I did.

I received my orders while in student pool of OCS (The closest thing to purgatory on this planet), and like all good government work, they messed it up. It was a good thing I read my orders and asked about it because they had me ordered to go to Nuke school instead of going to BDOC or a ship as you are supposed to as a SWO(n). Well they rewrote my orders which took like 2 weeks and had me going to California for BDOC and then to Hawaii to a ship.

It's a good time to note that not all SWO's will go to BDOC first. Sometimes they will send you to your ship first, then in a couple months later go to BDOC, and then back to your ship. Normally this happens if your ship is home ported in San Diego. For those of us lucky enough to be home ported in Hawaii or Japan, we got a few months of being stashed in San Diego before class started for us. You see, it's cheaper for your Ship to keep you in San Diego for a couple months of doing nothing until you you start class then fly you out. As opposed to flying you to the ship, then flying you back to San Diego, then flying you back to the ship. Once you check aboard the ship, it comes out of their budget to fly you to school, until then its on "Big Navy's Dime."

BDOC is basically a class on all the basics of the Surface fleet. Classes include: Navigation, Engineering fundamentals, Damage Control, and other general stuff. Its supposed to count for all the 100-200 level signatures of your qualification notebook but rarely is it ever used.  I will discuss more about getting qualified in my next blog post, which will be about checking aboard you first ship. Anyways after you finish you BDOC you head to your ship and begin your life as Junior Officer aboard a Navy warship.

All pictures are from either the San Diego BDOC or Officer Training Command Newport's Facebook page