Armel,

I hope you are well. As I understand your question I hope I can shed some light on your concerns. It seems you want to know: how it was, which I interpret as a general overview, preparations one can make academically and lastly any regrets.

To your first point BOLC can be fast paced and to be most successful you would be best served spending as much time out of the classroom reviewing your material and either internalizing it or cataloging it for easy access later. Your living situation will be based on whether or not your PCS or are TDY. The main difference being that those who PCS will not be given a meal card to eat at the dining facility. You will also mostly need a vehicle to get around or partner with someone who has one. Overall it is a collegiate experience that very much depends on your personnel motivation to maximize your time there.

To prepare,  it would help to have a background in simple networking principals. Unless you are already well versed in military communications technology I’d argue trying to learn it before hand to be a futile effort. This is because your role in a line unit will not require you to know all equipment at your unit’s disposal. I would recommend learning your enlisted MOS and what capabilities they provide. Its just good stuff to know who your subordinates are and what abilities they have. Try your best to be as fit as you can. I can not stress enough how much clout being a 300 PT score or close to it offers you as a leader in the army.

So the only major regrets I can see people having is one of three: 1) not getting security+, 2) not saving every scrap of useful data from your Pathfinder(O-3 in SCCC) mentor or 3) not saving your classmates contacts. In order to remedy this I recommend studying for Sec+ and getting the cert. This will confer clout, albeit a small amount, at your receiving unit and let you apply to be a system admin there. A useful tool for your company to have is someone organic who can help out with minor issues like printers being remapped, putting computers back on the network. You’ll be that resource and if you do it well people will like you. Save the information people give you. I would recommend searching out the Signal Core Lieutenant Handbook as a great resource to familiarize yourself with. All that stuff will be useful later. Get an external HDD if you don’t have one already. Keep in contact with the people in your class. Help each other out and you’ll go far. These are the people we’ll be going to CCC with and so it’ll be useful to be familiar once the band gets back together come CPT time.

Do you best to be a team player. That means lead when it’s time to lead and follow when it’s time to follow. Do not let the collegiate culture and its siren song take your eye off the ball. Work hard then play hard. Keep it in that order and I think you’ll do fine.

Best of Luck,

Mike