Week 11: Two Quizzes, a Test. RPFT #2, OPORD #2

Whew! Glad this week is over, it was brutal. It may have been a week in the classroom but you have so much going on youll probably only get a few hours of sleep. First of all, as the title of this week says, there is a lot going on and of the 1,000 possible points in this course, 250 are part of this week. So if youre not very good at math that 1/4 of youre grade in 1/16 of the course. Don't eff it up. So anyways Monday is just a day of classes on Defensive and Urban Ops. Pay attention because its the only classes you will get. Tuesday starts out early, we had to be there at 0400 so we could go have the RPFT. We went out to Rangerland and were actually graded by real RI's. A LOT of people failed. The first time we did the RPFT a few weeks ago not a single person in the company failed, this time about 1/3 did. Only a few on push ups, none on sit ups, and a bunch of the five mile run. I don't know what the difference was this time, or if it was simply just the heat but it wasnt good. The run is the only real graded event and its worth 25 points. Then when we came back to the classroom we had the defensive ops quiz. To be honest it was probably the easiest quiz we've ever taken. Then for a couple of the platoons they got released after a quick review of urban ops. Not our platoon. We watched some real good army videos on how to not be an idiot as a PL. Kind of funny, but most people just wanted to go work on their OPORD. Tuesday night was the night I decided to pull my all nighter for the OPORD. As I said a few weeks ago, you need to put at least 40 hours into it. Which makes it really hard if you get off of work everyday somewhere between 1700-1800. Anyways as I think I said before the real key to passing is writing a word for word script. I literally dont think a single person that passed didnt have one. Mine was about nine pages long in size 12 font. If anyone is interested just let me know and I'll email mine to you. I got an 85 on mine and the only reason I didnt get a 95, at least according to my grader, was because my graphics were zoomed in enough on the urban area we were fighting. Wednesday we had three people go got more than 90% on their first OPORD brief to us. It was a good idea to pay attention to them as each grader is different and you can see what your grader gave them. So, you basically had to come back at at 0200 Thursday morning for the 12 mile ruck. I two words--it sucked. First of all it was a damn thunderstorm when we started so our light a pre weighted 35 pound rucks weighted 56 pounds when we crossed the finish line (at least thats what mine weighted). Anyways its a simple six miles down and back and I did the first six at a 13:30-14:00 min pace. Which paid off because the last few were brutal. The track we took had mile 10-11 completely uphill. I swear that thing looked like Mt. Everest and felt like it as well. I had been on pace the whole time and had saved up some precious minutes but mile 11 literally took me almost 20 minutes and that took away almost all of my time. Suffice to say I made it at a little over two hours and 58 minutes and I was dead. My traps hurt so bad I literally had to lay on the ground because when I stood up or sat down and gravity pulled on my arms it hurt to bad. And I was not alone. Most guys though didnt take care of their feet  and that was the main problem. Of the company about 25-30 failed. Im not sure exactly cause I was too smoked to care. They will have to retake it in week 13 on the one mile track--yuck. Then the rest of Thursday and Friday are all OPORDs. I went at about noon on Thursday we I was free to go after wards. Friday was kind of a bummer day. We lost another five who failed both their OPORDS. One came as a really big surprise. And two people passed who I was certain would fail. I guess you just never know. So we are back down to 27 and we started with 40 and have had 4 inserts. Its been brutal. Though next week is supposed to be a blast, we do a few air assault mission and use simunitions the entire time. I'm jacked. Anyways, the only other thing we did Friday was have an advanced CFF class with CAS and CCA. All in all, a brutal week, and good luck when you hit it.