When I got to San Antonio, it was late - midnight or so maybe. They had SF tech school ropes waiting to sign us in and throw us on a bus. We got to in processing after a nerve-wracking bus ride through San Antonio, and were issued ABU parka and liner, and told to gran a box lunch and told to sit down and eat our sandwhich (which was fucking NASTY), and then shuffled around from place to place until they were ready to ship us off to our dorms.
Next stop? 326 training squadron, where we were met by a horrible lady named Sgt. Miller, from a different squadron, to get us settled in for the night. She gave us our addresses to send home, and unpacked us, yelled a lot, and made us shower and told us to get the fuck to bed. I didn't get to bed until about 3am that night. We woke up to confusion - Sgt. Miller had put us in our brother flight's dorm, and them in ours. They quickly shuffled us to the correct dorm, and so we met TSgt. Lyles and TSgt Anderson - our TI's, who we came to love like family in later weeks.
The rest of 0 week is a large blur, but I remember my saving grace being the EC's from our big sister flight. After the TI's left for the night, they guarded the dorm all night. They straightened up night displays, shoes, cleaned - whatever they could to take the heat off of us. They told us it would get better, to just hang on, because it was the worst of it - and weeks later, I told my baby flight the same thing as they went through their 0 week.
From the blur, the 2 things I remember clearly from that week were my 2 phone calls home. The first, to give my mom my address very quickly. I told her to let my first call go to voicemail so she could replay the address, but with every ring I was hoping more and more she wouldn't go through with it so I could hear her voice. All my flightmates were crying and trying to talk for a second after they gave their address, so it was really hard to hold it together. At the end of the week, we got a real phone call. But, I was a student leader at the time, so when my whole flight messed up our homework, I was presented with a mere 5 minute phone call. My mom kept telling me she couldn't hear me because I was breaking up, but really I was hyperventalating from not being able to breathe from crying so hard. That was the hardest 5 minutes of my life, while I cried and begged my mom to figure out a way to come to graduation because I missed her so much (my dad only came to graduation) and the like. That was a very emotional call. A couple days later, they gave all the student leaders 15 minutes though, because they had to by the rules - and that call went much better. I think what broke me originally was everyone else was all crying and shit on their 15 (some even got 30 as a reward for something), when I got 5. Pissed me off that they thought they should be upset, hah.
Other than all of the emotions, zero week was a lot of processing appointments - so a lot of rushing from meals to get done to make them. We got uniforms issued, and on Saturday of that week, we took our PT assessment. Which, in TI world, means that they can make us push forever after we're assessed. They can't before hand. So my flight got a good, long, 30 minute beating immediately after doing our PT test - and then again once we got back to the dorms.
They call it hell week for a reason. It's the worst. However, just remember:
"They never said it would be easy, they just said it would be worth it."
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