Quantico: The Real World for B-Schoolers

April 17th, 2006 • Business, Education

So as many of you know, I went to Quantico a little over a week ago. For those wondering about the short story, yes I survived and I didn’t really hurt myself during it (other than some very sore muscles afterwards). Here is the low down on the entire experience.

What/Where is Quantico?

Quantico, Virginia is actually the only American civilian city which is bordered on three sides by a military base and one side by a river. The base is also called Quantico and the locals (read: military) call the civilian city “Q-town”. To get to the city, you have to go through a military checkpoint which, naturally, features armed guards. This feature has led some home listings in Q-town to be classified as being inside a “gated community”. I’d call it one better since most gated communities don’t have security personnel trained and armed to kill people. I have no idea what the crime statistics are for Quantico but I imagine it is pretty safe. If you consider living in an area where you randomly hear artillery being fired (and I did while I was there) safe.

Why Quantico?

The reason this trip came up is because of the great leadership academy at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. The Goizueta Advanced Leadership Academy takes applications from MBA students who are in their last year of study (so the second year for 2 year students or immediately for one year students like me). The academy is an extra-curricular activity, with no academic credit, so the responsibilities come on top of “regular” school work. The academy is extremely well run and we’ve had some unusual opportunities as fellows such as taking an improv class and an art class - both sponsored and paid for by the academy. The academy also paid for all the fellows to go to Costa Rica over spring break to do community service. I, unfortunately, was not able to go on this trip but from the pictures it looks like the folks that went had fun and made an impact.

Part of the academy is a capstone experience which entails going to Quantico. Quantico is home to training facilities for the FBI, DEA, and the Navy and is also home to Marine One (the helicopter which ferries the President around). But these aren’t the reason we went to Quantico. Quantico is also the home to the Marines Officer Candidate School (OCS). OCS isn’t just another boot camp for Marines. To get into OCS, you already have to be a Marine. So the training and exercises that are performed at OCS are really meant to determine who is capable of leading Marines and who isn’t. In fact, with each incoming class (roughly 300 Marines), about half continue on to become officers. Training for Marines is a ten week program. Interestingly, if you decide to quit on day one of OCS, you can’t leave until the fourth week is over.

This was clearly an opportunity for an experience that doesn’t come along too often. So I gritted my teeth and set my fear aside and went on the trip. 64 other students from Emory also did the trip as well as a dozen or so of Johns Hopkins students who were there at the same time as us.

What did you do at Quantico?

I’m not going to go into a detailed description of every minute of my Quantico experience because others may find this posting and this could ruin the entire experience for them. Part of the experience was not knowing exactly what was going to happen. We arrived late on Thursday and after a short introductory presentation, the yelling and screaming commenced. I learned how to make a rack (that’s a bed for you civilians), put on a helmet properly (I initially put it on backwards and was called a “doof” by one of the Gunnery Sargents), and take a cold (and I mean COLD) shower in about two minutes flat. I will say, I was surprised that we were allowed to get any sleep. Of course, I’m not sure you can count an hour and a half as sleep. I probably could have gotten more if I used my ear plugs (too many people were snoring for me to sleep) but I was worried about sleeping through something and getting an even greater tongue lashing.

The morning (again, if 4:45am is really morning and not still the middle of the night) entailed getting breakfast at the mess. Luckily for me I knew (thanks to a lot of war movies) that the military way is that you eat everything you take. That, coupled with the fact that I’m a vegetarian, kept me from taking too much food. Some of my classmates were not so fortunate. Let’s just say that some people weren’t just wearing green on their clothing.

The rest of the morning comprised of doing the Leadership Reaction Course in a group of five students (in Marine lingo, a fire team). My fire team was led by the Gunnery Sargent on the men’s side of the squad bay. This course is made up of a number of wet and dry challenges. From the name of it, clearly if you mess up on the wet challenges, you’re getting wet. I stayed dry (other than the light rain) but other teams had folks who weren’t as lucky. The challenges last ten minutes and are basically designed to make you fail. The Marines want to see how you organize yourself and your team as well as what happens when you fail. We had the solution to a number of challenges but we needed probably another 3-4 minutes to complete most of them.

Lunch consisted of an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat). My meal, cheese tortellini, was surprisingly good. Plus, this was the only time in my life that I’ve ever eaten government property (although the school bought the meals, they say “US Government Property” on them).

After lunch, we went through the Combat Readiness Course. This was the tough part of the day. Of course, real OCS candidates go on a hike/run (I want to say 14 miles) before doing the combat course. This is designed to physically and mentally exhaust the candidates before pushing them through the course. We, fortunately, didn’t do a run before tackling the course. I made it through all of the obstacles in the course although there were a few parts that were touch going.

One area, named The Quigly, is a set of three logs which you have to go under while there is barbed wire above you and a mud river (more mud than water though). Like most of my classmates, I didn’t execute this obstacle totally right and I ended up going under water. I sucked down a bunch of mud water. Not pleasant at all especially since I tasted the grit of mud for the rest of the day. Also, the Quigly is the part that makes you smell like mud for days afterwards regardless of how many showers you take. I think I finally lost the smell after about three days. I think this part of the course was also mostly responsible for permanently coloring my socks and t-shirt brown from their natural white. At least they told us this would happen.

Another area, soon after the Quigly, entailed going up a mud vertical climb assisted with a rope and cargo net. I was one of the last to go and as I climbed up I lost my footing (the mud was wet as well) and slipped down about eight or nine feet. I was exhausted and ready to give up. I called up that I didn’t think I could make it and both Gunnery Sargents (mine and another one from a fire team that joined us) started yelling at me (in a nice way, not in a screaming way) and goading me on. I’m not sure how but I made it up over that climb. I attribute this almost entirely to their pep talks from the top of the climb down to me. And this, I think, shows just how much skill these guys have in taking you to the limits of your abilities and pushing you beyond them.

The worst part of the combat course happened when one of the Johns Hopkins students from my fire team fell off a rope we were using to cross a gully. There were two mats at the bottom to cushion any possibly falls. Unfortunately, the student fell right in between the two mats. Her shoulder hit one of the mats and apparently she dislocated it. By the time the paramedics got to her (there was an ambulance on site for us, just in case) her shoulder had popped back into place. She obviously left us for the day but was back with us at the evening barbeque. She was in good spirits but I’m sure the experience was quite scary for her. Of course seeing her fall was a confidence crusher for the rest of us.

We wrapped up the combat course with eight of our ten students. We lost one to the dislocated shoulder and another to a leg gash which needed to be re-dressed (this student got the gash during the Leadership Reaction Course earlier in the day). Eighty percent completion rate is way better than the normal fifty percent but then we didn’t go on a fourteen mile run beforehand.

What did you learn from Quantico?

I partition my lessons learned into two different buckets.

First, this was my first experience in close quarters with Marines. These are good people. The Gunnery Sargent who led my small team (I’m refraining from using his name to protect his privacy) was a great guy to have as a leader. An interesting thing I noticed him do at the end of the combat course was he washed off the front of his t-shirt, which had “USMC” (United States Marine Corps) on it, before we wrapped up. The love and respect that these guys have for the corps is unbelievable. Have you ever seen a company employee who cared so much about the company logo that they would wash the dirt off of it? The task of instilling that pride in individuals is something that is difficult to do but the Marines have done it. How? By getting the best (physically) and brightest (mentally) individuals available. Why else would only fifty percent of enrolled OCS candidates graduate to become officers who lead other Marines?

Second, on the front of leadership this was an exceptional experience. The exercises were focused on teamwork and leadership but there was a subtle subtext about listening, communicating, and being responsible for others. Our Gunnery Sargent made the point that in the Marines you always look after your subordinates before you look after yourself. This can be seen when getting food (subordinates always get in line to get their food first) or on the battle field (you ensure that your subordinates have the ammo they need before you get any). How many times have you seen managers seek cover for themselves without worrying about their people or, even worse, throwing their people to the wolves when things go wrong? I’ve had this done to me and I definitely appreciate the philosophy of the corps.

Would you do it again?

Goes without saying. This was quite possibly the best experience I’ve had in my entire year at business school. If you have the chance to go on a trip like this, regardless of what shape you’re in (I’m not in the best of shape myself), go. Don’t worry about how you’ll do it. Just go.

Pictures will be coming at some point. I’ll post some when I get them.

Oo-rah!

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