She’ll be fine. All recruits have bad days, but they also have good moments and some terrific moments.
You’re good to worry, the Army does select really great persons to be drill sergeants and they have been to basic and Drill Sergeant school, which is basic on steroids.
Have no worries, she’s in good hands.
I figure they get judged based on the success of their recruits.
make your reservations NOW. Yes there are lots of hotels around training bases, and they are always full at graduation time. if you want to stay in the on post hotel (called the Guest House, heh!) errm, probably should have made that reservation a couple weeks ago, but you can call and ask, you might get lucky. I am assuming as parent of BCT graduate you are entitled to stay in the Guest House as it was back in my day. Oh, and yeah, you gotta handle the reservations yourself but if you go to the Base website, they will probably have that contact info. travel agents are great for this btw.
Poysyn and swampspruce yes! becoming a parent for the first time is the only other thing that I can think of besides getting married that compares to graduating BCT or OCS and WOCS
all opinions expressed in this post are the result of personal experience as a US soldier and husband of a US soldier, opinions may not reflect current reality
Both times I finished recruit training, it was just a Pass In Review and stand there for a speech.
My son is at Fort Leonard Wood in week 6 of BTC. Talk about floored when he enlisted! I couldn’t believe it! He never showed any military interest, didn’t even play team sports in school because he didn’t like the sports mentality. Then the icing on the cake - he signed up for six years with his mos 68c, practical nurse specialist. He always hated blood so I was shocked!
Does your daughter’s company have a Facebook page? I’ve been plenty surprised in that they give an update each day as to what the future soldiers worked on that day, and post pictures each week. Other photos are posted about once a week by company on the FLW web page. If you haven’t looked for her on there do! I write my son everyday and write to his battle buddy often too because my son said he doesn’t get much mail. I would be happy to write to your daughter.
All medical mos have ait Fort Sam Houston, so our kids will be there at the same time. Private message me and we can console/celebrate together!
Just as a point of contrast, not everyone finds finishing basic to be an epoch or a huge deal. My husband found it fairly tedious, and most of his buds also didn’t have anybody come and see them graduate. Just felt it wasn’t necessary or that big of a deal.
Oh, yes, I liked the Facebook page and one of her friends set up a group, so all of her friends could get updates on her adventures. They posted a bunch of pictures this morning, but I didn’t see my daughter in any of them.
I am following your thread, so please keep us us here in the SDMB rooting for her informed.
IMHO, a big thing in growing up is knowing that you can buckle down and get through difficult situations mentally and physically. If she continues this will give her life long lessons.
Update:
So far my daughter has rappelled, gotten gassed, and learned how to navigate (they got dumped in the forest yesterday.) I’m sure our military Dopers are nodding and smiling!
I heard from Ivygirl! She has to do push ups for every letter she gets. So far she’s up to 300 push ups.
I’m confused. Is she using a different alphabet? English only has 26 letters.
Go ivygirl! I couldn’t even count to 300.
For every letter she receives from home. During mail call some drill sergeants will make the soldiers “pay” for each letter they receive by doing push-ups. Its fun, and the soldiers usually get a laugh out of it as the ones getting lots and lots of letters have to do lots and lots of pushups. Its also illegal, and has been banned as hazing and abuse. I’m surprised to hear any drill sergeant is still doing it.
During one mail call (in which all the officer candidates of our class gather around the Drill Instructor and he passes out mail) of my Navy OCS, I remember one officer candidate (whose relatives must have been familiar with Marine Drill Instructors) received a care package covered in (G-rated and good-natured) insults and taunts towards Marines and DIs, like “he’s got more push than you’ve got time!”. Our DI took it well and laughed, but still made the recipient do pushups until he couldn’t any more.
In my opinion, this level of hazing isn’t abusive and actually builds camaraderie, but there’s a fine line and I’ve seen DIs go over it. It probably depends largely on the attitude of the individual DI – I think my class had a particularly good one (oorah SSGT Williams!), and somehow even while pushing us hard, it was clear that he was not cruel in any way and was looking out for us. It sucks that, sometimes, camaraderie building traditions (like mild hazing) are thrown out due to excesses, but it’s understandable considering how cruel and abusive some of those excesses are.
From what she said, it’s tradition and she hasn’t done them yet. So maybe it’s like an honor chart, where she’s racked up so many push ups because of the letters. She said she’s gotten 30 letters, so I guess that’s ten push ups each.
They’re going to make her do 300 pushups at once?
I doubt it. I think it’s all in good fun. Although when Ivylad was in the Navy about 20 odd years ago the DI tried to break him with push ups and couldn’t. He could bang them out without a sweat.
Heh, I do remember one guy in Basic who was a gymnast most of his life. He’d put on a few pounds between that and his enlistment so he didn’t look particularly fit to casual observation. But he could do pushups while grinning like a possum until you got tired of watching. He had a good sense of humor but lousy timing and so found himself in Drill’s office doing pushups. Drill got tired of watching after a while. The office door closed. A few minutes later the door opened and our gymnast exited looking none the worse for wear. He kept a lid on the jokes for the rest of the program, though, and was a model soldier whose energies turned to keeping the rest of us on task and not griping about stress. I can only guess there had been a successful appeal to intellect, a “throw me a friggin bone” moment from Drill.
well, probably not all at once. When Mrs. Guest was in basic, for daily mail call, they quickly got to the point they just dropped her and she pushed till mail call was over even if she didn’t get any letters that day. Mrs. Guest still owed 500 pushups when she graduated Basic <very evil grin>* My Love could seriously push some dirt when she graduated!
On the other hand, there was also a tradition when I was at Basic and AIT that 'toon mates could get down with you and take some of your pushups for you.
*hey, this is the love of my life, I was in serious withdrawal while she was away and coping as best I could as well as trying to help her pass her pt test
One recruit in my troop snickered and made a comment about one of the Instructor’s vehicles - to be fair it was a gold firebird - when we arrived at the classroom the staff member was waiting. He was given 500. He didn’t make jokes (at least not out loud) after that.