Waking up
 

I've read on some posts that you can wake up earlier than reveille. Do a lot of people get up before reveille to get ready? are we even allowed to get up before reveille to start getting ready?

My division woke up at 0430 and was on the toe line at reveille

Yeah but what is 0430 compared to reveille?

Rev will vary from day to day. You won't ever wake up during or after rev, always before.

Okay, gotcha. So we can be up anytime before rev? And is it hard to wake up without having an alarm clock?

Yes u can wake up be4 rev, your not going to have a hard time waking up when everyone is going to be screaming wake up!!!

some divisions made a wake up list so that the night before, if you knew you needed to be up or wanted to wake up early to study or shine boots, you could put your name on the list and what time you wanted to wake up. Then the persons who were standing watch knew who to wake up and what time. It came in handy for ironing clothing also.

No alarm needed, the watch stander will wake everyone up. We woke up an hour before rev everyday.

Most RDCs are going to expect their divisions to be awake, shaved, dressed, and the compartment on-spot when they walk in at rev (0600 most mornings). For some, that might mean waking up at 0500... for others, 0555.

I'm glad that's not just allowed, but expected. I look like a slasher victim if I have to rush a shave.

Agreed, Auridan. I just get a stomach ache if I wake up really quickly...

lol OCS is so different

Our section leader for the day (who had a watch) would go door to door at 0445 to wake everyone up. Then at 0500, they would go through the hall saying "reveille, reveille, reveille" (once we had our cell phones, some people would play a recording of reveille) and everyone had to be out in front of their door in PT gear (what we slept in) and flipflops by about 0503. Then we would have 20 minutes for hygiene. And then chow between 0530 and 0630 depending on where we were in the chow rotation. On weekends, reveille was at 0615.

I'd say... -_- lol

They're basically required by week 9 (we were on individual schedules, so the place runs on texting), some people earn them earlier, especially if they held jobs.

Yeah, I'm applying for OCS now. loljk

It honestly depends on the division. In my original division, we always started waking up an hour before rev - the watchstander would wake up the MAs and they would wake up everyone else. Rev varied - it was 6 at the absolute latest but sometimes as early as 430 depending on the day. Generally we would use the first forty minutes or so to hygiene and get dressed and then 15 minutes to clean the head and get everything on spot and everyone on the toeline by the time the RDCs came in. It took that long to hygiene because we secured the big side of the head pretty much all the time. So we only had 6 sinks for 80 people to brush their teeth in. Also to be technical only 6 people were authorised to be out of their racks at any given time between taps and rev, so we had to be quiet. The OOD didn't usually visit close to rev, but you never knew.
When I was in RCU, things were different. Rev was 530 on weekdays, 6 on weekends. And we were expected to be in our racks until rev. RPOC would wake us up an hour before rev to brush our teeth and then go back to bed though, since we still weren't supposed to hygiene during morning routine.