The End of OBLC

After all the excitement of the field we returned to a week and a half of classes again. I was assigned to platoon leader (PL), which meant I was responsible for my classmates regarding their wear abouts and actions. This was much easier said than done, as it was the last couple days together, people started to slack off and didn’t want to be their anymore so everyone was on edge, it was lots of fun (haha)!! Our classes were about leadership, the most important stuff and it was hard to stay focused with the end in sight and eagerness to move into our tacks. Our instructors understood and did all they could to keep us focused but I don’t know what I learned those last couple days.
We hadn’t had a platoon dinner so we set up a simple meeting place to say farewell. We had a blast, most everyone came and it was a great end to the mighty 5th. We cheered to working and meeting each other in the future many times (made for a tuff day after). We continued our celebration back at the barracks (aka hotel, aka 1384) in the hall where we usually hung out, we got kicked off of 4th floor and moved to 5th where we were also kicked out of indicating it was probably time to end the celebration.
The following day we had out briefs and graduation, woohoo!! Graduation was short sweet and to the point. Mixed emotions were going on, we were all happy it was over and ready to move on but sad we were breaking up into our tracks, nobody really said goodbye mostly because we were still living, eating and hanging in the same place.
We were broken up into our tracks, which are specific training for our jobs. We as nurses started right after graduation because our leaders are working on making the Army Nurse Corps the elite Corps of the Army, hooah!! There were 54 for nurses in our class and it was really cool to sit in class and look around and know that we are going to be spread out around the world. I remember sitting in nursing class and thinking how we are all going to be in different fields of nursing and now to know my class is worldwide is a pretty cool feeling. It will be fun to keep in touch with everyone and here about all the different experiences we have.
Our nurse track consisted of several briefs about how the nurse corps runs and who the important people are along with their goals for the future. We learned about all the educational opportunities available to us and I almost was ready to sign my name to nurse anesthesia school program, its free 36 months of intense schooling (only school, no work) and just have to give 4 years. Now who wouldn’t do this, me of course. My fear of anesthesia is I will be get board very fast and there’s not much else you can do but put people to sleep or teach. I haven’t said no but pretty sure it will not be the route I take.
The best part was we were able to go back to Camp Bullis for nurse training day. Our bus ride was awesome; we all had our own seats with space to spare. I was a casualty and we painted ourselves with wounds waiting while the staff got ready for us. We had a couple mental people, several locals including a pregnant woman and many with hidden weapons (fake of course). I wish I could have seen all that was going on, but we kept coming and coming. We slammed the staff with 25 casualties in 30 minutes. They did pretty good triaging and getting us to where we needed to go, it was a fun day!!
We also spent one of our weekends becoming TNCC (trauma nursing core course) certified. It was one VERY long day of lectures over almost trauma that you might see, day two hands on assessing, stabilizing and triaging patients, and day three was testing. I am happy to say that I am now TNCC certified for the next 4 years.

We all left Fort Sam at the same time (March 10) and nobody really said good bye, it was like we were all going to meet again in a day or two. It was so weird but yet I feel several of us will remain friends for some time.