Best of luck and thank you for your service. Be safe.
Do your best. Don’t whine and don’t be an ass-kisser; just work hard and do your honest best to do your job as well as it can be done.
Remember that when they scream at you, they are screaming at your UNIFORM, not at the person inside it.
Being a soldier/airman/marine/sailor is a job. You have a job to do, which for the next X weeks will be to learn stuff. Your TIs have a job to do, which for the next X weeks will be to instruct you. They are going to place you under a considerable amount of stress not because they hate you, but because they’re A) trying to weed out non-hackers and B) trying to impress upon you the value of teamwork and relying on your buddies. So if you learn and work as a member of a team, you will be doing your job correctly. Remember that no matter what you have seen in movies, the most important things for a S/A/M/S to have are
- Intelligence,
- A positive, friendly attitude, and
- A willingness to do hard work, especially as a member of a team.
The only specific advice I will give you is this; Tempting though it may be, do not stay up late trying to get ready for the next day’s inspections. Never, never do this. If you have academic homework, do that first, then go on to preparing your shit for the next day. Pick a time (if it isn’t picked for you) when you will hit the sack every night and stick to it. Trust me; you need the sleep, and you will find that if you are committed to hitting the sack at the same time every night, your tasks will have a way of getting done by that time.
My little bit of advice is from long long ago (maybe, before your mother was born) I entered the USAF at Lackland AFB on January 15th 1965.
We arrived at 5 AM after a 2 year airplane ride, and a 6 month bus ride. When I say “we” I mean the 5 little girls the airplane and bus snatched from their safe, warm homes in various places along the west coast.
Our TI met us at the door, actually, I think she was the door. She had to have been 7 or 8 feet tall, and mean as a snake.
Since we’d been awake for 2 years and 6 months, she allowed us 2 hours to “rest,” after which we would have our first inspection.
Our bags were to be unpacked and stowed. There was, neatly folded on each bed, 2 sheets, one pillow and one wool blanket. The inspection would include how well we made our beds.
Needless to say, we didn’t get much rest in those 2 hours. I wanted to go home.
My advice concerns the immunizations you’ll receive while you’re there. You’ll get several, and while some tend to cause some pain at the injection site for a day or two, they aren’t life threatening, SO DON’T FAINT. They plan for at least one or two from every flight to toss their cookies, or take a header. They even bribe you. Ours was our first Coke break. If anyone faints or throws up on the way back to the barracks, no Coke for anyone.
Others who have had the pleasure more recently, may say otherwise, I hope so. They may have become more tolerant and humane, but I doubt it.
Good Luck and stay safe. We’re proud of you. 
I’m still up for having my class send you some mail if you want, Rand. :o)
Stupid smiley. 
When I enlisted in the Army in 1985 I got the following advice from Dad and it served me well:
“Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can sleep, NEVER!!! pass up a chance to use the bathroom and don’t volunteer for anything”
At ease, make way!
Unclviny
Yeah, I’m still totally up for it.
A friend of mine has that job; he’s been cycling back and forth between Georgia and Afghanistan for the past few years. He’s got some pretty exiting stories to tell.
Teach yourself to eat quickly and neatly, there isn’t anything worse than coming back from a long day, and not getting enough to eat.
As everyone else has said, don’t stand out.
Remember that you’re part of a flight, and work with the other members of your flight. Basic is not about how well you, by yourself, do; it’s about how well you work within a structured team enviroment.
If you are semi-intelligent you will have no problem with anything they teach you in basic. Remember its all a mind game. The quicker you get into the right mind set and stop thinking about how bad it sucks the better you’ll be. The anticipation of future sucky events was always worse than the actual event.
Don’t bitch.
Ivylad was in the Navy. He used to weightlift. He complained to his DI that the serving portions at meals were causing him to lose weight.
So, his DI told him he must eat twice as much in the same amount of time.
However, he did piss off his DI something awful, because for him, push-ups were not punishment. He would whip out 100 push-ups without breaking a sweat. They couldn’t break him on that one.
(For those in the military, do they purposefully search out sadists to be DIs? I’ve heard some stories that would curl your hair about what I perceive to be wanton cruelty and humiliation.)
I’ve been out for ten years now so I don’t know how much has changed. The advice you got about volunteering for laundry duty is a good one. Those guys had it easy; its a piece of cake and its hard to fuck up so you won’t hear any shit. My duty (along with other guy) was to clean the day room. That was also cake. It was a relatively small room and we basically just had to keep the floor clean and shine a few things up. We did this at night and sometimes locked ourselves in there and ate food we had hid in the ceiling. A long time passes between dinner and the next morning’s breakfeast, so you do get hungry.
Do not become the Latrine Queen! Definitely the worst duty. Unless you like scrubbing toilets, sinks,and faucets. Oh, and if you make any enemies, you'll constantly be re-cleaning and wiping piss off the floor. Your plan to stay invisible is a good one. Don't volunteer for anything unless it means by not volunteering you may end up doing something shittier. That means not being Dorm Chief, Element leader, row guard or chow runner. Chow runners definitely stress.
You won’t be able to stay away from getting yelled at. Its going to happen. Keep your “military bearing” and take it well. Keep your hands closed and at your sides and be a manequin. I’ve seen lots of guys act scared shitless when getting there asses reamed and it almost seems as if they were hamming it up a bit so they would get a break. Acting as if you can’t take it will not help you get a break! They can’t stand guys looking for sympathy.
If you do end up going to Keesler send me an e-mail. I was stationed there for almost two years so I’ll give you some tips. Hell, e-mail me either way; I’d like to see how everything went for you and hear about your experiences. You’re going to have alot of great times and meet some of the best buddies you’ll ever have. Good luck!
Advice from my son: even if you know your razor is clean because it has never been used, if the TI says it is dirty, it is dirty. Don’t argue, you will not win. If you use tobacco, quit now. Tobacco is not allowed and it’s a tough time to quit.
This is one I tell the kids I know are Christians: Remember you are a child of God, no matter what your TI/DI says about you.
It might help if you know how to iron clothes before you go. Just sayin’.
Some people have told me it helps to think of Basic as a 6 week jail term, but I have no experience of either so I can’t vouch for it. I will say that when we went to our son’s graduation in San Antonio, I have never met a finer, more polite group of young people in my life. Best of luck to youRandMcnally
Good luck at basic RandMcnally. My two pieces of advice: think teamwork and help out your fellow trainees when you can, and don’t shy away from a natural leadership opportunity (i.e. within the group). This definitely doesn’t mean volunteer for things, but sometimes someone needs to step forward in a group when the group needs to get something done. This should be a pretty exciting year for you - basic training, gunner school, SERE . . . work hard and good luck!
My advice is “never pass a water fountain without taking a drink”. No shit on that one. Having gone through basic at lackland, ROTC field training at McConnell, SERE at the academy (got lucky on that assignment) and OTS at Maxwell (long story on how I ended up there), dehydration was a constant threat. They are not kidding when they want you to drink 3 glasses of water at every meal (in addition to anything else you might want to drink) – do not waste your time on caffinated beverages unless you have firewatch duty. Newbies die every year because of dehydration, and it just makes life hell for everybody else.
Get in shape now. I thought I was ready for PT when I arrived at OTS (having gone through the other programs, knew what to expect, and was hitting my target scores consistantly in practice) and I STILL had problems.
Don’t expect to take a shit the 1st week you are there (I never figured out that one – I gained 30 pounds and 4 inches in height at basic). Q-tips in your ear will be the only sexual gratification you will experience, and you will be grateful for it.
Church is your friend – if for no other reason than the free cookies and the 2 hours away from the DI/FTO.
I was never good at paperwork, and I would volunteer for leadership. Getting yelled at was never a big deal for me. I actually thought going to MEPS was more stressful than actually being on base. Demerits, tours, and pushups are a fact of life – I personally don’t understand how McArthur allegedly got through 4 years at Point without a single demerit. I used to give demerits for just getting off the bus. I just accepted that, during my training tours, I was not going to be leaving the base (and in the case of Maxwell, who’d want to?).
Never address an NCO as sir/ma’am. NCOs are the most important people in the military, and deserve to be addressed by the rank they have earned.
Well, I don’t know if it’s true in the US military (but I assume it is), but in Canada, in regular old basic…
They can’t hit you.
It’s amazing what this little factoid did for my brother when he went through his training. It really helps put things into perspective when someone is screaming at you from 2" away - it almost makes it humourous. I would advise you not to laugh, however.
I had that too but it was sit-ups with me. What really got them pissed was that none of their yelling or headgames had any effect on me. It was all just variations of what I had already endured from my brother! I probably could have stayed in if I had explained that at my discharge hearing.
Pay no attention to Alan Sheets’ above post. You are not going to a death camp and “newbies” are not dying every year from dehydration. MEPS is not stressful at all. You WILL address NCOs with sir/ma’am and they are NOT the most “important” people in the military.
Hmm. Tail Gunner to teacher.
Well done! Excellent choice! 
(Language Arts Vet, 20 years on front lines)
God bless.
And thanks.
Pax
Same here. They can make your life miserable in lots of other ways, but they can’t hit you.
My brother was required to drink a ridiculous amount of water at basic. I think his main problem was getting it all down, not getting enough. They track it, they know about dehydration, especially in San Antonio. When our family went to graduation WE got a lecture about it, and this was in January!
And he was told that while he was in basic he was “allowed” to call NCOs sir or ma’am because they had to learn to do it. “Allowed” meaning “required or your head will be on this platter.”