I’m curious on other’s thoughts on their in-processing experiences with other BOLCs. I also wonder how much of this is specific to the post you experienced BOLC at versus other posts.

So! I’ll start off about Fort Jackson for AG BOLC. I don’t remember too much about my in processing at BOLC (being a few years ago), except that my leave form got stamped at the Post Lodging, then I took it to the Staff Duty desk for signing in to the course. We had 1-2 days of intro briefs to chain of command, finance brief, UA, PT test, etc. I seem to recall a much more relaxed attitude towards signing up for courses, which could be due to the very small number of courses available at Jackson for AG officers as related to Benning. I had a classmate who went to Postal course (2 or 3 weeks), and it only resulted in him taking less leave and no impact on a report date; that made it very easy execution. Possibly more to an implied point of yours – if you are doing schools, inform your follow-on unit. I know this was the golden rule for us at Jackson – any additional courses were between students and the follow-on unit. As long as it didn’t impact BOLC, the SSI (schoolhouse) didn’t really care. I’ll pick up this point from my S1 perspective.

Last year working in a BN S1 shop of an IBCT, I had a handful of 2LTs who passed their report date. Honestly, it’s not uncommon on BN level reports. A LT gets moved by DIV and BDE doesn’t find out until the officer has inprocessed another BDE on post, and only do you realize you lost the gain. Diversions happen a lot with NCOs, to. Information can change so quickly that it’s not really a red flag unless you’ve heard from them and THEN they fail to show up. So, long story short, I’d emailed these few LTs who were past their report date I was given, and come to find out they did BOLC then Ranger then Airborne – of course they were months late by the data I had! Lesson here is that by reaching out to your unit and communicating that you’re trying to do schools (or just finished and have another one lined up) will be met by acknowledgement that you’re tracking enough to communicate with sponsor, and that you’re taking advantage of your post resources while you’re there. It is ALOT more expensive and time intensive to send someone back to, say, Benning for a school once they’re in the unit and plugged into a slot versus before the unit knows what they have to use/lose. This can also drive decisions for PL slots, as I’ve also seen first-hand. A BN commander in an IBCT who knows he’s getting a Ranger IN officer might bump that person higher on the OML (despite not being in the unit yet and at a lower TIS than their peers), but without that information, the officer could arrive to S3 time and PLs have already been filled so they have no choice but to wait for a slot to open. Letters of Introduction are “old school” but totally appropriate here and provide basic information that probably isn’t on your ORB yet. Again, this information is going to drive the BN CDR’s decisions on officer positions. It can only benefit you to reach out to your unit.

BL: Communication with the follow-on assigned unit is definitely key here to success.