NROTC Marine Option TBS Dates

kinnem

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Heard from DS today. He must have called immediately after getting the news/orders. His TBS report date is Sept 8, 2015 (of course). It's the date we all were rooting for and frankly the one I expected. Some of those field exercises could be damned cold in Dec - Feb. We're all excited and for me it means he can finally go on my annual Canadian fishing trip in June. I've been trying to get him there for years! Woohoo!

Now we need to get him to line up a summer job, which I don't think he'll have any difficulty doing. He may even be able to get a couple. There's a bartender job at a craft brewery that I know he's interested in.

Anyone else hear yet?
 
Hey! That is AWESOME. My DS put in for the first one in June but hasn't heard yet. He wants to go right away. No news yet.

I was at the Infantry Officer's Course in December and January. Winters in Quantico won't disappoint. Its the cold and wet field exercises that make a man out of you!
 
Kinnem, congratulations to your son good luck at TBS. Quantico in the summer was always toasty, he will have a couple of nice months.
Aside you were from Utica at one point and fish Canadian waters: Ontario; St. Lawrence? Enjoy the trip with your son!
 
Kinnem: another nice thing about that September start date is the 6 month class will go over the holidays and the Marine Corps Birthday.

The Birthday ball is a good one in Quantico.

And according to my DS, this year's students got a fair amount of holiday time off. Not bad!
 
Kinnem, congratulations to your son good luck at TBS. Quantico in the summer was always toasty, he will have a couple of nice months.
Aside you were from Utica at one point and fish Canadian waters: Ontario; St. Lawrence? Enjoy the trip with your son!

Sent you a PM but short answer is upper Quebec and I get to use what few French skills I still have to order breakfast. For dinner you eat what they put in front of you, but since the cook was a 5 star chef in Montreal there are never any complaints! PB&J is the standard lunch that we haul in from the States!
 
Kinnem: another nice thing about that September start date is the 6 month class will go over the holidays and the Marine Corps Birthday.

The Birthday ball is a good one in Quantico.

And according to my DS, this year's students got a fair amount of holiday time off. Not bad!

I hadn't thought about the Ball!! I bet it's the bomb at Quantico. In fact I bet there are several locations as I doubt there is one that is big enough. I've been wondering how it would be handled over the holidays. Only real downside I see is he will miss his girlfriend's graduation in December and I suppose that might not be an issue by then.

EDIT: I have to add, the kid has been getting a little soft lately since they abolished his Boat Crew club, ending his Friday evening "SEAL" workouts. He's just not quite as lean as he was. I'm eager to see how TBS sculpts his body!
 
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Screw TBS, let's hear more about the craft beer! :D

I bet he's ready to get started
 
Screw TBS, let's hear more about the craft beer! :D

I bet he's ready to get started
I'm sure he is, but he needs to keep his eye on the prize and graduate and commission first. In the meantime he's almost ready to bottle his first batch of home brew. Looking forward to a bottle of that.
 
Screw TBS, let's hear more about the craft beer! :D

I bet he's ready to get started
I'm sure he is, but he needs to keep his eye on the prize and graduate and commission first. In the meantime he's almost ready to bottle his first batch of home brew. Looking forward to a bottle of that.

Yea yea yea, dad, school comes first yadda yadda yadda. LOL, from everything you've posted about him he sounds like he'll have no problems in that department. A nice summer break until September will be fun, I've enjoyed the 2 months between commissioning and BOLC after missing my last 3 summers.

Sorry for all my thread derailings, I'm a sucker for good food and good brews.
 
Well that is not a long wait at all between graduation and heading off to TBS. Since he will need to seek summer employment, I guess that means that military paychecks don't start until they report. I have heard of some people, enlisted ones I believe, who were put to work helping out at the local recruiting office. I do not know if they were bringing home a check for that though.

My DS has his date for when he goes to OCS. Early July, the 5th, I believe. It seems things are starting to happen fast. Once he got that scholarship the reality of this is really starting to sink in. Kinnem and USMCGrunt, good luck to both of your sons at TBS!
 
Well that is not a long wait at all between graduation and heading off to TBS. Since he will need to seek summer employment, I guess that means that military paychecks don't start until they report. I have heard of some people, enlisted ones I believe, who were put to work helping out at the local recruiting office. I do not know if they were bringing home a check for that though.

My DS has his date for when he goes to OCS. Early July, the 5th, I believe. It seems things are starting to happen fast. Once he got that scholarship the reality of this is really starting to sink in. Kinnem and USMCGrunt, good luck to both of your sons at TBS!

You are correct Sampia. He's not on active duty, and thus no paychecks, until he reports. In the meantime he'll need to shell out some big bucks for uniforms! :( I don't know about the folks who report to recruiters. Nice work if you can get it I suppose. I know some Marines, and some Ensigns as well, who have hung out at college while they waited and assisted with the unit, but I don't know if there was money involved and it wasn't over the summer either. I suspect there was but don't really know.

July 5 sounds correct for the second increment of OCS. If you can make graduation it's pretty neat, but not worth going into huge debt for either. I wouldn't have missed it for anything though. If you can spend a couple days and include a tour of the Marine Corps museum, it's time well spent. Tell your DS to prepare hard. It's much smoother if you're physically prepared. Also, tell him we're all rooting for him!
 
Sampia, glad to hear your DS has his dates.

Kinnem and I tried to chronicle some of the details of last year's OCS training events from a parent's perspective for those who come after us. It also had what little we learned from our son's during the training. You may want to search for those posts as the time gets closer.
 
Well kinnem, the stars are aligning.

DS just got word he will be starting the Basic School (TBS) on 8 September also. Our sons will finally meet.

Lots more to come but pretty exciting to see this journey progressing towards the next milestone.
 
September start has its pros and cons, as do all TBS companies. Start with the heat, but will cool down and finish in the cold. The good part is for land nav once the leaves start to fall, it becomes much easier. They will do rifle range in the heat, September can have some really hot days and then some that aren't so bad. I am guessing the field hasn't been much fun the last few days. If there are students in the field now, they may even pull them with the temps about to drop below zero. The winter time they do monitor them closely, especially because this isn't cold weather training and they aren't issued cold weather gear. I was with a bunch of guys who are at TBS currently a few weeks ago. Sounds like not much has changed since I went through. To be honest academics are not hard or any singular event there. If someone makes it through OCS and 4 years of college, someone can honestly sleep walk and make it through TBS. Doesn't mean they will do well or get an MOS they want.

The guys going through TBS mentioned they are looking to get rid of the quality spread, so that would be interesting to see. Good luck to your sons. I am sure they will do well and hope they end up with MOSs they want!
 
Thanks NavyHoops. Many years ago, I started TBS in May then stayed through IOC. Got to see everything Quantico has to offer in the weather category except for a beautiful springtime. Hadn't thought about land nav - you are probably right on that. We were never issued anything but "mickey mouse" boots for cold weather when I was there - guess it hasn't changed.

As far as the quality spread: there was a brief experiment with a new MOS approach that was announced, implemented and then dropped in the last year - I am not sure any single TBS class ever went through it. Last I read, the quality spread is back in place.
 
Well kinnem, the stars are aligning.

DS just got word he will be starting the Basic School (TBS) on 8 September also. Our sons will finally meet.

Lots more to come but pretty exciting to see this journey progressing towards the next milestone.
Woohoo! That's awesome - both the start date and that DS's will do it together.

NavyHoops! Thanks for the scoop.
 
Screw TBS, let's hear more about the craft beer! :D

I bet he's ready to get started
I'm sure he is, but he needs to keep his eye on the prize and graduate and commission first. In the meantime he's almost ready to bottle his first batch of home brew. Looking forward to a bottle of that.

Yea yea yea, dad, school comes first yadda yadda yadda. LOL, from everything you've posted about him he sounds like he'll have no problems in that department. A nice summer break until September will be fun, I've enjoyed the 2 months between commissioning and BOLC after missing my last 3 summers.

Sorry for all my thread derailings, I'm a sucker for good food and good brews.
While I'm on this thread Bull I thought I'd let you know important details abut my son's visit home this past weekend. He brought back a six pack of his first attempt at a home brew. An American Pale Ale that he added additional dry hops to about a week before bottling. Best damned beer I ever drank. A little citrus scent to it. He told me to leave the rest in the pantry for a week and then chill it to achieve peak flavor. Wishing you good brews and good food!
 
so...taking a trip down memory lane, as best I can recollect from a decade ago...

I was prior enlisted and a product of the MECEP program, so my milage was little different. I remained on Active Duty after commissioning and reported directly to Quantico...I "worked" in Mike Company for a couple of months before classing up...which really meant no break in pay for me. As an aside, I'd heard they "recently" had a backlog from the OEF/OIF surge (when Mike Company became a training company vice a holding company) and that now that Mike was back to being a holding company, folks were getting delayed by up to a year from graduation....sounds like that is clearing up.

Sounds like your son(s) will be in Fox Company (Sept start). I was Echo (Aug start). Both companies have pretty much the same experience...starts pretty warm, finishes pretty cold. Definately agree that land nav was much easier once the leaves fell...and I recall some cold nights during Offense week and Defense week....one of the coldest nights of my life was on an ambush patrol to nowhere. Team Leader struggled mightily with the old map and compass....good news was we were warm while walking...bad news was we were soaked with sweat by the time we set in, were so late we had to set in without having a chance to swap t-shirts, put on warming gear, etc... so we lay there shivering and chattering our teeth until we finally completed the task. We would have made less noise if we'd walked right out on the trail and starting singing the Marine's Hymn.

We did get a nice break at X-mas (nearly 2 weeks if I recall correctly) and I'm not even sure it was charged as leave if you didn't leave the local area...

Birthday Ball was in DC at a fancy hotel. Tons of attendees including many of the HQMC General Officers...it wasn't intimate, but it was full of pageantry...

As to the uniforms...yes, its a big bill but there are couple of programs in place (or at least there were) to take the sting out of it. One of them was a career starter loan from an insurance company...basically, it was $5,000 at an incredibly low interest rate paid back over 3 years plus a term life insurance policy premium....I just did a quick google search and it looks like that program is still in place...I think my total payment was about $160/month including the insurance premium....and I paid for all my uniforms with that less my sword which my Dad purchased as a graduation/commissioning gift.

Sorry for the long post....ended up longer than originally intended.
 
USMCDad sounds like my experience. I was Echo but we started in July. We were slated to finish in mid-January. Our major field exercises were in Nov and Dec. It snowed for most our final 10 day FX. We got pulled out of training twice due to cold. 1 was during swim quals that we did in Oct in an outside pool. The entire class was getting hypothermia. They finally brought a doc from the hospital to figure out what was going on. The second was us crossing a creek in November and our Platoon Commander having us hold position for an hour. Our SPC finally took over, put us up on a road, had us run the 1/2 mile to a building and then strip down out of our wet gear and warm up. They brought our packs to us for dry clothes.

Because most of MOS schools started early January they graduated the entire company except for 75 of us before xmas break. So we had finished all of our requirements, did our mess night and had our two week xmas vacation which was great. We came back, had formation once a day and were told to be scarce and not get in trouble. Our final graduation was sort of ridiculous because no one was there! MECEP and USNA grads reported to TBS immediately after basket leave. We sat in Mike Company for a month doing nothing. It was actually a good month for all of us. We had never really been around MECEP guys and they had never been around USNA guys. They realized we weren't so bad and we got along great. Their prior knowledge our knowledge of Quantico and TBS training areas really made a great combo. Our ROTC and OCS grads reported the day before Echo Company classed up. Kinnem and USMCGrunt, this freaked out alot of ROTC and OCS guys not being able to report early. Don't worry about it. We did nothing for a month, so it isn't a big deal. I think orders will state to report in Alphas or a Suit. They probably won't have alphas, so not an issue. As mentioned there is a chance for great loans to buy uniforms. There is also time in the training schedule for uniform purchases and fittings. Even if they already had uniforms we had to be fitted again. One of the Lts I talked with a few weeks ago said their sea bag issue with sword was around $3k which was pretty close to what I paid a few moons ago. We actually went to a few lectures while we were there that required us to wear suits.

Alot of Lts like to buy tons of gear when they report. Tell them to hold off, most isn't needed. Yes some good under armour, ski socks for the cold months, knife, red lens flash light are good investments. The rest of it, hold off and wait until later. They will have time to figure out what they need and want later. No need to buy tons of stuff they won't use. Between uniforms, gear, MREs, wardroom fees, association fees, etc, a Lt can put out alot of money. Food is a big cost because you are buying stuff for the field to supplement MREs and eating out is about the only way to get out of the barracks and get a break from the place.
 
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