Officer candidate school

Specifically, I was a radioman or a communications technician on board a ship.

And at some point after my tour on the ship, I was able to manage to get accepted to Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island.

I completed Officer Candidate School.

I was scheduled to be a surface warfare officer or a SWO, as they're nicknamed, and essentially a ship driver.

But I had injured my foot the first week within OCS.

We've chatted about it before.

The trick to Officer Candidate School is staying in, whereas the trick to boot camp is getting out, right? I mean, it's-

[laughs]

They're looking, they want you to quit 'cause they don't want you to try and lead Marines if you are-

WWNO's Bob Pavlovich spoke with Kai about his life, about hosting Marketplace, and about public radio.

You spent some time in the South when you were in Aviation Officer Candidate School in the U.S. Navy.

Were you able to visit the New Orleans area during that time?

A couple of times.

Pretty much everything's going to change.

Understanding what your commander expects you to accomplish and then being able to pass that on to your subordinates and accomplish it is, to me, that's your real takeaway from officer candidate school because there is no – unity of command, excuse me, there is no unity of effort.

If there's not unity of command.

Yeah.

Then in 1970, I was going to be drafted, so I joined the Navy.

and went to Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island.

And I learned a lot about leadership there.

That was really the main topic.

But by the time...

I went to officer candidate school because remember every summer we don't get to just go hang out at home and party with friends.

You deploy.

So Marine Corps midshipmen, we have to go to officer candidate school, which is basically boot camp for officers.

If you can't make it through officer candidate school in Quantico, Virginia, you're not going to become a Marine.

And I am so lucky that my unit pushed me.

And this is what you can't see until you look back.

They took us to the Navy SEAL base to do the confidence course.

So a couple different pathways to becoming an officer.

One is direct commissioning, um, uh, one is OCS.

You've already gotten your, you've already gotten your degree, and then you decide to go in after that, and you go through a program called OCS, Officer Candidate School.

Another path is ROTC.

And so you do that typically, the traditional route is about four years of college.