Alright, I was hoping for some good old fashion insight on exactly what A school will be like and what to expect when it comes to duties, hours, and time to maybe workout on my own. I will be attending sw school and would like to know are all the seabees separated as soon as we get to a school or does this take place a little later? And how school and training are set up? What is gulf port like besides just hot and miserable? And how is liberty set up?

Thank you for your time in answering my questions!
Max

Hey Max, welcome to the wonderful world o' the Bees.

I graduated from CM A-school last November, so unfortunately I don't know what life will be like for you in Gulfport (we were in Pt Hueneme) but here are some basics that I think might be universal:

The A-school students are off in their own housing on base. It took about a week to 'class-up', meaning you were assigned a class number and you officially started learning what you are there to learn. In the interim, the people who were waiting to class-up sat through indoc, went to the computer lab and did GMTs, etc. Once you had your class, you all stayed together in the same class until the end. Just like in boot camp, leaders will be assigned - MA, class leader, squad leader, etc.

We did mandatory PT three times a week with SDCs, usually running, but at Pt H we had a gym and you could go there on your off time if you wanted to, no sweat. Thats also were the people on light limited duty went to work out while the rest of us ran a marathon (just kidding...but we did run A Lot.) Our PT was after school, but I hear other A-schools do theirs early AM.

As far as leave/lib goes, we were on a phase program, you probably will be too. When we first arrived, we were on Phase 1, which was: no civilian clothes, no off-base liberty, no alcohol. Phase 2 was civilian clothes, off-base liberty ok with a buddy, alcohol ok if you're 21 or above. Phase 3 was all Phase 2 stuff, plus weekend liberty - meaning if you weren't on duty at the weekend, you could leave Friday after school and not have to muster again until Sunday evening. Yay, sleeping in!

Duty: We were assigned to a duty section, and each duty section had duty once every 4 days (we had 4 duty sections.) Duty was standing watch, and cleaning.

A-school was fun, I had a good time and learned a lot. Just mind your p's and q's, don't do anything stupid, and you'll be through it in no time!!

I will try to answer some of the questions you have but, remember that everyone is different. Some liked it and some hated it.
With that said, I am a SW but, its been a few yrs ago tat I was in A-school.
First off, I thought that the barracks was crap, we had 4 people to a corner, I say corner because we didn't have doors and for the walls we had like dividers that didn't go to the celling. Almost like open barracks. The instructors have to do barracks watch after the class day is over and some are cool and some act like this is boot camp. The barracks may have changed, I know they were working on some when I was down there, so that might be better. I remember a lot of PT, not bad if you can run good. The class part I thought was easy and Ilike it a lot. First, we did sheet metal project and then welding, gas and stick.. If you get top of your class you can get E4 but have to put time in your unit and sign for 1 more year of service. Great if you are planning on staying in a while. You will have duty sections that you will be asigned to. You will stand barracks watch, rovers outside the baracks, quarterdeck watch, and maybe others I forgotten.
When I was there all rates were in one barracks living together. In the morning you do PT, go shower and get ready for class, then we all formed up outside of the barracks and marched from the barracks to the classroom area, at lunch we formed back up and marched to chow (we had a chance to eat where we wanted, fast food or the chowhall.), after chow march back to the classrooms, the class would end at 4pm or 5pm can't remember, march back to the barracks and that would end the day unless your duty section had duty that day.
For liberty, you will have the phase system too.. to stay out through the weekend, we had to do book work in order to get this liberty. You will have time to do same things that you like, workout, hangout, study sctions, and what esle you want.

I had fun, besides the crappy barracks I liked it. Like I said before, it has been a while since I was there so some of these thing may have changed.

Good luck and stay out of trouble.

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word of advise, when you get to your unit, you might want to look into going UCT. Under Water Construction Team, pretty awsome, at least I think so.

I was stationed in Port Hueneme, Ca great place.

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I wish I could do the underwater welding part of it however I am going into the reserve side of things and not sure if they offer that side to reservists and I am female not sure if that would change anything, not that it should but it might. Also, what is the ratio of males to females in Seabee units? My classifier was shocked I was a woman who wanted a seabee rating and said I would be better off doing "something else"...haha. He was also shocked I already have a steady hand at welding. Also, will I receive any welding certification when done that I can use in the civilian world?

There are a lot of females in the Seabees. The Seabees are small compared to the fleet. Recruiter try to man fleet rates more because of this. My SW class had 6 males and 1 female. Your class maybe bigger. I don't think a lot of females would like to weld. When I was in NMCB5 most females were BUs, EOs, EAs, UTs, and you will also have SKs, YNs, HMs, and other rates assigned to your unit. I don't know the ratio though and about the welding certifications, the Seabee units in the past would certify you through C-schools but my unit did not certify any SWs anymore, I don't know why. Some units may differ. You will get college credits for your A-school and other traning classes you attend. You will also get a certificate for going to your A-school and the other training. I can also tell you that you may do more BU work than SW. It just depends on how much welding work that the project needs and what SWs get picked to do the welding. Not sure how the Reserves works that well, all I know is that you can ask to go on ATs which are projects that differ in lenght of time and locations. I went and work at a reserve unit for about 5 or 6 drills. At that unit we didn't do much except a lot of NKO computer courses and SCWS training. A SCWS pin (Seabee Combat Warfare) will be something your unit will push you to get. My advise to you would be to get it as soon as you can. The pin will help you get special projects, looks good on your evals, and other things, like getting out of SCWS trainings later that your unit will always have. lol.. One of the major things to do to get your pin is, you will have to do a FEX.

Good luck

SW2(SCW)

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I don't know to much about other units besides NMCB units because that was the only one I was in. I heard that ACB units do a lot of welding. Here is a great website that will show you UCT, ACB, NMCB units. http://www.seabee.navy.mil/
Check it out.

Thanks for the insight everyone. Another question can computors be used for personal use in "a" school?

max -

you can have pretty much anything you want in A-school so long as you can lock it up (obviously nothing illegal). the barracks in Gulfport are not too bad, 4 to a room, 6 rooms to a mod, and a communal bathroom and laundry area. depending on who is in charge, a-school life will be anywhere from an annoying nuisance to the worst experience of your navy career. mine was the latter, and i wouldn't go back to gulfport for any sum of money. hopefully they have a new LCPO and good NMTs when you go, and everything will be fine. I am a BU, but I know that there were very good SW instructors. School is the best part of the day because you are away from the barracks complex and the reach of the NMT staff. Other than that, all bets are off. Expect some miserable 0445 PT sessions, suspended weekday liberty, perhaps some weekend "emergency recalls", and plenty of EMI. Liberty phases are phase 2 after 2 weeks, phase 3 after 5 weeks onboard, but being SW you are only going to be there for 7 weeks anyway. Try to get on MWR trips as much as possible (gets you out of duty and out of town!) and just get off base every weekend to keep your sanity. If you are 21, the Hive is a nice 45 minute retreat at the end of a miserable day. Just keep your nose to the grindstone and you will be out in no time. Good luck!

My orders are almost completely approved to go to Port Hueneme for A-school. It has been a few years since boot, but I have been told the instructors are like RDC's. Is this true? They should be over that. Most will be E3's or below, and being a E4, I guess I may be asked/or told to be a class leader. I have forgot a lot of the basic stuff since boot, since we dont use it. What else of the expected unexpected should I be aware of? And how big are the lockers to lock up our stuff/how much can we bring since it is about 3 months long?