Re: Dehydration
“Drink 1/2 to 3/4 canteen of water every hour, not to exceed 12 canteens.” “Drink three non-caffeinated, non-carbonated beverages at each and every meal.” And they mean it. Also, the only time you will have any caffeinated beverages is if you get a patio break/base liberty or on your town pass in sixth week.
Most of the girls, excuse me “AIRMEN” :D, lost several pounds each the first few weeks of basics, thanks to the “you must drink two full glasses of water at every meal” rule. Most of us were too full from the damn water to eat much when you added the odd hours, the stress etc into the mix.
That was until we figured out that if we put lots of napkins on our tray, we could pour some of the water out (they made sure we filled them up, but didn’t stand over each table watching to make sure we drank it all). This was midsummer, and none of us had any trouble with dehydration.
Anyway, the putting the napkins on your tray, pouring out some of the water so that you don’t have to drink so damn much might help (just make sure you do it when none of the TIs are looking).
Wow, they no longer have coffee and soda in the chow hall? I’d die, no doubt about it, 6 weeks without caffeine? Hell on earth.
Good advice so far.
You’ll have two drawers (unless things have changed a lot in 9 years…) one will be your personal stuff, the other will be for inspection. The inspection one will have your comb, razor, etc. You’ll want “display” items for the inspection drawer (that is, things you never use so that can’t get dirty - even though, yes, the TI will tell you it’s dirty). In your personal drawer, keep the comb, toothpaste, razor, etc. that you actually use.
My flight found tweezers to be a godsend. We would tweeze the ends of our inspection shirts and underwear to get them perfect, which is still never good enough. (Once you get your required number of shirts and underwear perfectly folded, never wear them. We hid our wearable clothes in the bottom of our laundry bags - whether they had dirty clothes in them or not. Yes, I know, “ewww” but you do what you have to.
Do go to church, no matter your religion or lack thereof. I learned that the hard way and was stuck doing a “GI Party” waxing the floor all day Sunday.
Best Wishes
Our mom took pictures of my brother’s inspection drawer for potential future blackmail purposes. g I’ll give him this, he can fold a t-shirt reallllllly well.
Just wanted to say best wishes and good luck! 
I can’t help you with any of the military stuff, but if you want to talk about being a teacher afterwards, I’ll be here.
I said that MEPS was more stressful “for me”. Mainly because Denver MEPS (where I always seemed to end up) has a higher proportion of Navy personnel than usual and for the life of me I can’t remember Navy rank (that and the fact that the CPO who runs the show there hates 2 things: (1) zoomies, and (2) officer candidates.)
No, Basic is not a death camp. People do get hurt, though, and dehydration is a huge concern. I don’t know when you went through, but hydration control was a HUGE deal when I went through 10 years ago. Maybe I was exagerating with the “deaths every year thing”, but the OTS class before mine had a death. The same year there were 3 Army basic deaths. An NFL player died that year for the same reasons. I remember the situation vividly because immediately after the lectures and classes on hydration, the fitration center at the Maxwell physical plant went offline for 2 days and the commendant was seriously thinking of moving both OTS and SOS off-base.
I’ll pull that stats and cites for dehydration casualties as soon as I have a moment.
Final note – ever hear of the saying “A good NCO is worth 5 butter-bars”? Having been a butter-bar, and having been trained properly by several good NCOs, I will live and die by that statement. And yes, there will be times (particularly inspections and training by the DI/FTO) where sir/ma’am is appropriate. However, I will NEVER forget the time one of my trainees addressed a CMS as sir, mainly because I never forget the HELL I took for it from my chain of command.
This cite has a month-by-month hydration casualty rate chart for the period between 1997 and 1999.
http://amsa.army.mil/1msmr/2000/v06_n03_article2.htm
This link refers to several military training dehydration deaths during the last 15 years:
http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/safety/h_s_rpts/spring_2000/hs_no1_pg8.html
This link indicates that military training injuries increase proportionally with temperature (kinda important if you are reporting for USAF training in September, and the major training facilities are in Texas, Missisippi, and Alabama):
http://annhyg.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/46/1/15
These are some general guideline and training links. Incidentally, the guidelines specifically mention that it is easy for a trainee to get dehydrated and not know it until major symptoms occur:
http://www.usariem.army.mil/heatill/mincasbt.htm
http://www.usariem.army.mil/heatill/prevenhi.htm
This post is not designed to frighten anybody out of service – only to make sure that unneccesary casualties do not occur. This stuff is easy to avoid. Again, my assertion is to (1) drink 3 glasses of water with every meal (a requirement every single time I reported for training), (2) never walk by a water fountain without taking a drink if the situation allows (to this day, I still can’t, it has become such a habit), and (3) never turn down liquids if they are offered to you (I have never known any instructor to deny somebody the use of their canteen or the opportunity to refill it).
Navy 1973 through 1977. Lots of good advice here. But this raises a question:
Basic is now only SIX WEEKS?!
I had nine weeks of basic! Did they come up with some radical short cuts?
Okay, my ex went through AF basic about 6 years ago. He kept talking about zero week? They tell you at the end of the first week that it’s zero week, and you still have six weeks after that. Anyone coroborate this?
Also, make sure you have really, really, good tennis shoes for running. Your feet will be screwed up, but anything that can help is a good thing.
One other thing they don’t tell you is that during your first six months is that if you really can’t handle it, you can go to your CO and say “I want out.” And they have to let you out. Again, this is all second hand, vaguely remembered. Oh, and I really hope you don’t get stationed in Grand Forks, ND. It sucks up here!
My son also graduated from basic this year. His goal was to try to keep a low profile and it worked for the most part but he did get yelled at a few times. He actually liked his TI but thought alot of the guys in his dorm were jerks. Remember, sometimes if just one person screws up everyone gets punished, you do not want to be the one to screw things up. Your life will not be pleasant. You can’t be friends with everyone but try to find a few, it makes down time (when you eventually get it) much more fun. The advice about volunteering for the laundry is good, that’s what my kid did and he was satisfied with it. He did learn not to sort the clothes and wash everything together because it’s a lot easier and faster. As enticing as it seems, do not bring food into your dorm. The TI’s know all the tricks and hiding it in the ceiling is the oldest and someone surely tries it in every group. Everybody pays and it still is quite hot in Texas in September. One last thing - let your mom give you a really long hug good-bye, you’ll both need it. Good Luck! Basic seems like a lifetime when you’re there but really it will be over soon and you’ll learn a lot about yourself.
Well, yes and no. Zero week is the first calendar week you get there. However, I think they only get new trainees in on Wednesdays, so it’s not a full week.
I thought of something today, which may put things in perspective. All through my elementary school and middle school, the teachers could hit me. Yes, it was with a paddle and it had quite a bit of paperwork to go with it, but the teachers could (and often did) hit me. Your TI can’t lay a hand on you. Unless, of course, you do the really stupid thing and hit them first, in which case I don’t doubt they’d pummel the shit out of you in self defense. But still, for all the verbal abuse and physical exercise they can put you through, they still don’t quite have the same authority as your 6th grade History teacher.
Good news! Texas is having a really mild summer - the temperature hasn’t even cracked 100 degrees, and we’ve had rain in August! (Hell, we’ve had days where the high was 91 degrees in August…) You’ve picked the right summer to enlist in. Usually we have entire months of 100+ degree weather.
BTW - the Air Force pronouces “Hoo-rah!” as “OOH-rah”. Learn it. Love it. Use it. Hoo-rah!
Hey, Good Luck and stay safe.
I kinda wonder why you would choose aerial gunner, though. You want to kill some people? I mean, I guess somebody has to do it. No judgement, just wondering?
The Air Force BMT course is 6 weeks.
Navy Boot Camp is 8 weeks
Marines Boot is 12 weeks
Army BCT (non-infantry) is 9 weeks, used to be 8; OSUT (infantry) is 14 weeks (a-la Marines)
All this is apart from “zero week”/“p-week”/whatever which are several days of preliminaries before the course actually starts.
In the 90s they all incorporated a “culminating experience” event (Crucible, Battlestations, Warrior Week, Victory Forge)
Bear in mind that AF boot camp isn’t very weapons-intensive - few career fields in the USAF involve packing a firearm, so that’s mostly handled in follow-on training for those fields. That could account for some of the lost time. Of course, this is probably true of the Navy, also. Maybe the Navy’s just mean.
AF apparently is stripped of almost all “job-specific” elements and is arranged to be as “tight” as you can possibly get and still get in all the education/reeducation and physical/mental conditioning required.
To the bare-basic of learning “the [insert service here] way” and getting your mind/body re-conditioned to it, Navy adds firefighting, water survival training (incl. a swimming qualification) [note: duh], and training about how you do things aboard a ship as opposed to on land, plus indeed some weapons training(shotgun/pistol: for boarding party/onboard security issues). Coast Guard (same length of BT) gives even more emphasis to the latter.
The Army 9-week course has weapons qualification, land navigation, and quite a bit of field training (incl. digging of foxholes, cover and concealment, movement at night). The Army long course and Marines add infantry tactical training and yet more weapons quals (and the Marines also add water survival). Plus in both “green” services the extra time gives the recruit gets more training time to meet their physical conditioning requirements, which are generally more strenuous than in the “blue” ones.
(BTW the Army went from 8 to 9 weeks relatively recently, after figuring that the non-combat-arms troops, specially the Reserve/Guard, were graduating a little too “non-combat” for comfort [heck, I could’a told them that back in '85! So no, it’s not Clinton’s fault]. Even then, after a look at how things went in A’stan and Iraq, TRADOC has decided to intensify and load up on the tactical side of BCT for support-services recruits AND on refresher combat training for those already in).
There was a lot of thought that went into chosing my job. I spent days reading the descriptions of every job I was eligable for, this one was on my top four list. I put jobs that I know I would be happy with, and I trusted in the Lord that I would get the one that was meant for me.
The first on my list was an exciting job that I could do in the civilian sector, that was Air Traffic Control. The second on my list was a normal job that I most likely wouldn’t be stressed and be able to go to school in my free time, that was Still Photographic. The third on my list was a job that seemed like it would be interesting, and that was the job I have now. I got picked for that job, and I’m going to keep it, much to the dismay of my parents. In fact, I stopped talking to my father because of this.
Anywho, I’m happy with this job for a few reasons, keep in mind that I’m young, naive, and stupid. When you think of a small town boy who has never really been away from home, that’s me. I figured, if I’m going to go into the Air Force, I might as well do things that other kids my age cannot possible have a chance to do. How many college students can say they were on a AC-130?
Most of the Air Force jobs are support and maintenance. I’ve never been one who liked to fix things. I never liked working on cars, so why would I want to work on an airplane? I’m also computer illiterate. I know how to turn a computer on, and that’s about it. So working with computers is out.
I also wanted to feel I was actually doing something. I wanted to be able to see the result of my actions. I figured I’d get more satisfaction being next to the P.J. I just picked up as opposed to being at the base.