JackalofDeath
02-16-2005, 08:20 PM
Two years ago, I wanted to be a seal. Today, I don't. Here is how it happened.
My recruiter in Burlington NewJersey royally screwed me. You see, I was a dire-hard seal wannabe. I would train day after day. I would do about 6 miles a day, 300/300, pullups, the works. Atleast it was enough, to be fit to get through bootcamp and hope to get into BUD/s.
Well after working my butt off, getting straight A's in highschool while still keeping with my PT. Outdoing marine wannabes in PT. Graduation went by fast, and my date came to ship through bootcamp. I never really paid much attention to the benefits of DEP, I just wanted to be a SEAL. I didn't know jack about the history of the navy or the random information they require you to memorize to get your book signed off to up in rank.
(here is a little something, rank means very little in the navy, unless you are E-6 and above)
So it was my day to ship to bootcamp. I was going to fort dix, I stayed overnight at one of those MEPs hotels. I was a vegan at the time, and gave it up right there and then , knowing I would have to start giving up a lot of things to be what I wanted to be. I was kind of disturbed how my roommate I was stuck with during the MEPs hotel stay was on drugs, the night before he'd obviously do the drug test. I think he said it was acid he was on. He carried around a jug of water like the drugs wouldnt be found in his system if he flushed it out, the night before.
I stayed up all night, talking to my girlfriend over the phone. Considering I wouldnt be able to talk to my girl for months. I had about 15 minutes sleep before we got our wake up calls.
After all the eating/getting into MEPs, we started getting our examinations. It was an assinine proceedure. But my recruiter assured me I would get in with no problems. He had everything taken care of. Well, you know how recruiters are. They stopped me from shipping to bootcamp because of medical reasons. Acne.
Now after all that, I was severly ticked off, and explained one of the navy reps at meps that my recruiter told me I would have no problems getting in, and that I obviously did. The recruiter got in trouble, I was yelled at over the phone by his LCPO. And my recruiter was told by his LCPO to leave me at a random gas station out of the way.
Conveniently my recruiter was nice enough to not do as his LCPO said, and he dropped me off at my house and told me to think about whether or not I should keep trying to get into the Navy.
I decided not to, for the time being. Because mainly the doctor at MEPs said I would have to wait 3 to 4 years before even thinking about going through MEPs again.
After about 4 to 5 months of going to college and feeling like accomplishing nothing. I felt like I was going nowhere. And luckily a navy recruiter called, and He didn't seem to be such a BSing liar as my first recruiter.
After another month or so, I was able to enter MEPs once again. But this time, I just wanted to get in, because ive been waiting so long to get in. I was officially screwed out of any and all benefits upon joining, and I did not get the same job pick as I first selected the first time through meps. Instead I was given a much simpler rating. EM.
I did not care at the time. Boy, I should have. 5 to 6 months later, I joined the navy. I went through MEPs. This time I did not have a girl to be talking on the phone with. I didn't have the initial motivation I had in the first time. It seemed almost routine, because I was not even sure I was going to get accepted into the Navy again.
I was accepted. I got into bootcamp, it seemed like childsplay. Maid bootcamp we all called it. The only problem was getting qualified into BUDs. Because of being in an integrated division , we had females that were always too slow to keep up. They kept us everytime from being allowed into stroke development.
I did not pass the swimming portion, which is the first portion of the BUDs qualifier. After that you do pushups, then running then pullups. I never had a problem with swimming, it was just my condition at the time. They called it the rickie crud. Everyone would be sick once in bootcamp, solely because of massing so many people together. The only times I was allowed to try to qualify were those times. I would be on my hands and knees vomiting after failing out of the qualifer on the first step. I barely had enough energy at the time to keep myself up in the water in my condition.
I dropped the seal program after never passing my qualify, luckily I did not fail all the times and luckily I atleast tried. Because here is a little tid bit they don't tell you when you are signing up, If you do not try for BUDs when in bootcamp. Or you fail all your tries , you are immediately stripped of your rate and put in Seaman ATD. Which is the bottom of the barrel for rates. You are basically a deck swabber then.
3 people had their rates taken away in our devision because of this. We had about 6 or 8 SEAL wannabes. No one passed the qualifications. It wasn't that it was hard, we had someone who was actually trained by 2 SEAL members before entering bootcamp and he still did not pass. He went delusional and was going around telling people how he passed and was making up the story of how he failed. When everyone know he was with us when we had to drop the seal program, he was there signing the same paperwork.
I am kind of glad I did not pass qualifications into BUDs, because the image they have in publicity isn't what they really are. It isn't a matter of "are you seal material" its a matter of "how bad do you want to be a seal". for me it was just a pipe dream I was trying to achieve.
that was my story, and here are a few tips:
Pullups. They are what everyone fails at in qualification. The running , pushups, and swimming are nothing. Its the last step. So you are exhausted when trying to do the pullups, because they are right after pushups. You are required to do around 13 pullups, knuckles facing you. The harder style, not the easy kind.
The swimming: Pray to god you are not in a integrated division, and GO TO STROKE DEVELOPMENT. It is there for a reason. I probably would have gotten farther if I had made it to those classes. And don't be afraid to see if you can work a schedule with your chief. They are nicer and cooler than they seem.
pushups and running: that's the easy part.
Anyway. I might get unruly responses because of this. Oh well.
My recruiter in Burlington NewJersey royally screwed me. You see, I was a dire-hard seal wannabe. I would train day after day. I would do about 6 miles a day, 300/300, pullups, the works. Atleast it was enough, to be fit to get through bootcamp and hope to get into BUD/s.
Well after working my butt off, getting straight A's in highschool while still keeping with my PT. Outdoing marine wannabes in PT. Graduation went by fast, and my date came to ship through bootcamp. I never really paid much attention to the benefits of DEP, I just wanted to be a SEAL. I didn't know jack about the history of the navy or the random information they require you to memorize to get your book signed off to up in rank.
(here is a little something, rank means very little in the navy, unless you are E-6 and above)
So it was my day to ship to bootcamp. I was going to fort dix, I stayed overnight at one of those MEPs hotels. I was a vegan at the time, and gave it up right there and then , knowing I would have to start giving up a lot of things to be what I wanted to be. I was kind of disturbed how my roommate I was stuck with during the MEPs hotel stay was on drugs, the night before he'd obviously do the drug test. I think he said it was acid he was on. He carried around a jug of water like the drugs wouldnt be found in his system if he flushed it out, the night before.
I stayed up all night, talking to my girlfriend over the phone. Considering I wouldnt be able to talk to my girl for months. I had about 15 minutes sleep before we got our wake up calls.
After all the eating/getting into MEPs, we started getting our examinations. It was an assinine proceedure. But my recruiter assured me I would get in with no problems. He had everything taken care of. Well, you know how recruiters are. They stopped me from shipping to bootcamp because of medical reasons. Acne.
Now after all that, I was severly ticked off, and explained one of the navy reps at meps that my recruiter told me I would have no problems getting in, and that I obviously did. The recruiter got in trouble, I was yelled at over the phone by his LCPO. And my recruiter was told by his LCPO to leave me at a random gas station out of the way.
Conveniently my recruiter was nice enough to not do as his LCPO said, and he dropped me off at my house and told me to think about whether or not I should keep trying to get into the Navy.
I decided not to, for the time being. Because mainly the doctor at MEPs said I would have to wait 3 to 4 years before even thinking about going through MEPs again.
After about 4 to 5 months of going to college and feeling like accomplishing nothing. I felt like I was going nowhere. And luckily a navy recruiter called, and He didn't seem to be such a BSing liar as my first recruiter.
After another month or so, I was able to enter MEPs once again. But this time, I just wanted to get in, because ive been waiting so long to get in. I was officially screwed out of any and all benefits upon joining, and I did not get the same job pick as I first selected the first time through meps. Instead I was given a much simpler rating. EM.
I did not care at the time. Boy, I should have. 5 to 6 months later, I joined the navy. I went through MEPs. This time I did not have a girl to be talking on the phone with. I didn't have the initial motivation I had in the first time. It seemed almost routine, because I was not even sure I was going to get accepted into the Navy again.
I was accepted. I got into bootcamp, it seemed like childsplay. Maid bootcamp we all called it. The only problem was getting qualified into BUDs. Because of being in an integrated division , we had females that were always too slow to keep up. They kept us everytime from being allowed into stroke development.
I did not pass the swimming portion, which is the first portion of the BUDs qualifier. After that you do pushups, then running then pullups. I never had a problem with swimming, it was just my condition at the time. They called it the rickie crud. Everyone would be sick once in bootcamp, solely because of massing so many people together. The only times I was allowed to try to qualify were those times. I would be on my hands and knees vomiting after failing out of the qualifer on the first step. I barely had enough energy at the time to keep myself up in the water in my condition.
I dropped the seal program after never passing my qualify, luckily I did not fail all the times and luckily I atleast tried. Because here is a little tid bit they don't tell you when you are signing up, If you do not try for BUDs when in bootcamp. Or you fail all your tries , you are immediately stripped of your rate and put in Seaman ATD. Which is the bottom of the barrel for rates. You are basically a deck swabber then.
3 people had their rates taken away in our devision because of this. We had about 6 or 8 SEAL wannabes. No one passed the qualifications. It wasn't that it was hard, we had someone who was actually trained by 2 SEAL members before entering bootcamp and he still did not pass. He went delusional and was going around telling people how he passed and was making up the story of how he failed. When everyone know he was with us when we had to drop the seal program, he was there signing the same paperwork.
I am kind of glad I did not pass qualifications into BUDs, because the image they have in publicity isn't what they really are. It isn't a matter of "are you seal material" its a matter of "how bad do you want to be a seal". for me it was just a pipe dream I was trying to achieve.
that was my story, and here are a few tips:
Pullups. They are what everyone fails at in qualification. The running , pushups, and swimming are nothing. Its the last step. So you are exhausted when trying to do the pullups, because they are right after pushups. You are required to do around 13 pullups, knuckles facing you. The harder style, not the easy kind.
The swimming: Pray to god you are not in a integrated division, and GO TO STROKE DEVELOPMENT. It is there for a reason. I probably would have gotten farther if I had made it to those classes. And don't be afraid to see if you can work a schedule with your chief. They are nicer and cooler than they seem.
pushups and running: that's the easy part.
Anyway. I might get unruly responses because of this. Oh well.