I Think, Therefore, I Can’t Decide

Before intel training, officer candidate school, and Guantanamo Bay antics I had nearly three years of US Coast Guard Station Montauk New York with which I had to contend. Like many who are not from New York, I was not familiar with Long Island. I thought I was going to Staten Island, so arriving at an earthy, isolated surf and fishing town, 100 miles from New York City, with more secrets that an Agatha Christie murder mystery, I was pleasantly surprised.  I reported to the small 20-25 person unit in August, just as one of the hurricanes that rocks the eastern end of the Island each year was hitting. In the exact hour that I walked onto the unit, the Chief of base was out on a ¨training evolution,¨ that he mismanaged and would cause him to soon be relieved (fired).  Following that event, the unit was the mostly in disarray. There were various temporary replacement leaders who were unable to understand the unit enough to make any progress against its misfit culture. I slo...

My friends and I thought that Coast Guard boot camp would be like a militant version of Bay Watch. We would train on the beach, practice valiant ocean rescues, and learn advanced first aid. However, t he only thing Baywatch-like would be our cheap and ultra thin bathing suits that showed every crevice and nipple detail.  As three woman who signed up for this in Ventura, California, we received tons of athletic swag from the recruiter (who took us surfing on base like he had some kind of backstage pass, which he kind of did). It was a tough reality to find out that the Coast Guard was not sponsored by Billabong and pushups were not going to give us a Pam Anderson physique. We were about to have eight weeks of bootcamp nonsense led by three dudes of varying respectability. Of the three company commanders (CC’s) in charge of leading our group, one was mostly respectable, another was half-way decent, and the third was a grown man taking out his Black Sabbath tee shirt and...