As submitted by Dave

When did you attend? July 19th-Sept 7th.

Where were you stationed? Ft. Rucker

How long was this school? 6 weeks if you have not attended PLDC, 4 if you have.

What was training like? Normal schedule? Did you train on weekends? Late at night? Classroom or field based? Training is 6 days a week with Sunday being used for church and not much else.  Wake up is at 05:15 and PT is at 05:25.  PT is not very hard as long as you show up in shape.  After PT is classroom training most days until 17:30.  There about 5 tests through the course.  If you fail you can take a retest but two failures gets you recycled.  We had about 30 failures between all the tests. You’ll have more than enough time to study.  There is a 1 week FLX where you stay in the field and will not have any showers or hot meals.

Did you get to see family/friends during the school?  There is no visitation at all except for the 1 on-post pass during week 3(which my class lost 4 hours of cause our barracks were dirty) and an 8 hour off post pass (which we lost completely) .

How often were you able to communicate with family/friends? By phone? Email? There is no phone or internet during the first phase. (weeks 1-3 for the 6 weeks and 1-2 for the 4 week class)  When the class get these rights the will only be from 1930-2000 every night.

Describe the graduation ceremony. The night before graduation is a reception.  We had got a babysitter because children are not allowed.  However, your spouse might as well skip the whole thing.  It lasts about an hour and is really boring. After reception you are free to stay off post but will have to report at 05:30 the next day.  Graduation is open to everyone and is held in the museum.  The whole ceremony last about an hour.  Anyone can pin your rank on.  I had my kids do it or you could have an instructor do it.

Any other tips or information? My room was never actually inspected.  It had to be neat but the inspections only focused on the common areas.  There is not a lot of time for personal hygiene so I would suggest shaving at night.  They never inspected us for anything like that.  If you can’t pass a PT test don’t come.  You will be held over for a long time.  There were guys who failed the initial PT test and still had not started the course when we graduated.