Appeasement

Sheena was pestering me for pictures of myself in uniform. I still dodge the camera most of the time so there aren't many out there, but here are the ones I do have:

This is my beast squad in front of a Blackhawk. I'm the one in the bottom left that looks like they have a red square on their chest.

Beast squad again, lined up on the wall waiting to go down to breakfast formation. You should be able to pick me out of this photo.

My buckner squad. By now you should be noticing a trend- I'm only in group photos...

The guy in greens was the ROTC guy in our squad. He was pretty cool, but made me realize how much better West Point is than ROTC as far as hands on training goes.

Buckner- My beast roommate Edwin Cruz and I found each other outside the big dance the last night there.

Christmas dinner this year, Skomp and I in the mess hall.

Christmas dinner night out on the stoops. Everyone smokes cigars. I could only handle being out there just long enough to get this pic. B Webb is on the left and Skomp is in the middle (my roommates).

No saber, I don't get that until firstie (senior) year. Even then, there probably won't be any pictures of me with it, sorry sis.

sleeping cadets

Many of you, I am sure, have heard about/seen the sleeping cadets (here too) from President Obama's Afghan-plan speech, and it makes me mad (I know, big surprise). Was it unprofessional for them to be sleeping? Yes, just about as unprofessional as the news media searching the crowd for those cadets but still nowhere near as unprofessional as the treatment we received during the process of hosting the event.

Lets talk about sleep for a little bit. Cadets are more tired than the average American, and the average college student. You may think I'm biased (and I probably am) but science is on my side. The sleep patterns of cadets has been a topic of sleep research for years and it has been shown time and again that cadets fall way short of normal, let alone healthy sleep. One interesting fact regarding this is the average time it takes people to reach REM sleep, the stage of sleep where dreaming occurs. The average American takes 45 minutes to an hour to reach this point. The average college student? 20-30 minutes. The average West Point cadet? 6-15 minutes. The high end of our average is a third of the low end of the rest of America's! So yes, we tend to sleep, and sometimes we sleep when we're not supposed to.

That being said, I would still argue that given any population the size of the one in Ike Hall for the president's speech, under the same circumstances would have had the same results. The most obvious evidence for this is the fact that Hillary Clinton was also struggling to stay awake when the camera panned to her. Aside from that fact though, there is still the treatment of cadets the day of the speech.

We had a full day, normal with the exception of the speech. Unfortunately, that means that rather than going back to our rooms after being in class from 7:30 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon, we were in Ike Hall immediately following classes. This would not be a big deal if we were like navy (see funny picture below) but we are not. They brought a few thousand cadets into a warm, comfortable theater, wearing our dress gray uniform (easy to sleep in because the collar prevents the head-bob that helps so many people stay awake), told them they can't move, can't sleep and, oh yeah, you can't have much with you so there is very little to do! If you slept, you were woken up in a not-so-nice, very military manner. Then we all sat there for 4 HOURS before the president even showed up. When he got here and started his speech, the lights went off, and we listened to our boss talk in a very subdued, monotone voice for an extended period of time. How many of you could stay awake through a meeting like that? Let alone how long we had been sitting there and that it was at the end of a normal work day for the most tired population in the United States.
This is classic example of the fishbowl principle (cadet life is like living in a fishbowl- lots of people like to tap on the glass and all you can do is smile and put up with them; similar to the magnifying glass principle), people (especially the media) judging those in the public spotlight without bothering to learn the facts about a situation and the media's hatred for USMA. As if this wasn't enough, they took and posted pictures with captions designed to make us all seem like blood-thirsty savages who want nothing more than to killFor the record, Kill Bin Laden is historical account of Delta Force operatives in the beginning of the Afghan war and On Killing is about the psychological and mental cost of having to kill another human being--both are highly applicable to our lives and the president's speech and neither are a sign that we are blood-thirsty.

Christmas for the Corps

Tonight was Christmas dinner for the Corps (had to be this early because next week is Army/Navy). This means a glorious meal of surf and turf, cookies, cheesecake, eggnog, sparkling grape juice (non-alcoholic wine), etc. After dinner, the entire corps goes out to smoke cigars so while they're out there, I'll blog! Unfortunately, there is so much smoke in the air that even indoors you cannot escape the smell.

The plebes all have to festively decorate their tables and this causes competitions every year. This year, the plebes at my table managed to produce an amazing table considering that as of lunch time they had nothing bought or planned. They used wrapping paper for a table runner, had festive napkins, and all those minor things, but the big thing- a huge fondue pot with melted chocolate, strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, pretzels, and more! Nice touch plebers.

We eat our meal and then the fun begins. The first captain gets up on the poop deck and leads the corps in 12 Days of Christmas. Everyone stands on their chairs, tables, chairs stacked on tables, or on each other and we sing so loud and rowdy Navy can probably hear us down there in their sorry excuse for an academy. Inevitably, the song ends in a food fight (in our full dress uniform) and everybody storms out of the mess hall to smoke their cigars. The noise outside my window right now is ridiculous and the whole atmosphere is a crazy 4000 man party.

Admittedly, I do feel somewhat left out sitting up here in my room, though after going down to take pictures I know there's no way my virgin lungs would hold up to more than a few minutes out there- too much disgusting smoke in the air. But its ok, there's a lot of work to be done between now and tomorrow morning anyways. 16 more days and I'll be on my way home to celebrate the real Christmas in my own way, the party can wait.

A much needed break

The week and a half before Thanksgiving is always the worst week of the semester here. Last week-over a 5 day period-I had 6 major tests, 2 quizzes and a major math project/presentation. This week I only had a 10 page paper, cake compared to last week.

So far I have only gotten 2 of my tests back and the results haven't been good. American Politics I usually do fine just BS-ing my way through- its politics, no sweat- so I put off studying that for Physics (on the same day). Maybe a little more time on AP would have been good. I ended up with around a B, still not bad. Physics on the other hand...

The physics dept. has a terrible reputation here. This comes from the fact that at least 1/3 of the students fail every time we have a test. Last week, I was a part of that statistic. Luckily, my grade in the class absorbed the blow quite well and TEEs should be enough for me to recover. Even if I don't, I'm still at a B- so I'll can live with it.

On the bright side, to compensate for all of this we get class drops (except physics) or days without that class. Because of people having to take the oral part of the Spanish test and people presenting their math projects, I don't have either of those classes all week. Today, because our AP paper was due at 1600, I didn't have that class so Physics was my only class (we had 2 quizzes-one announced and one pop-quiz-both of which I rocked).

And the best part? Thanksgiving break finally starts tomorrow afternoon! I can't wait to see my brother and his family again, and the youngest for the first time. Freedom is so close...

Sorry if this post was rambling and/or incomprehensible, I haven't slept much in the past week and a half. Hopefully the rest of the semester will just glide by like a dream.

Army VS Airforce

In honor of the Army-Air Force game:

Army/Air Force Mentality

An Army infantry soldier stands in the rain with a large rucksack on his back, weapon in hand, after having marched 12 miles, and says, "This sucks."

An Army Airborne Ranger, standing waist deep in the rain with a 80 pound pack on his back, weapon in hand, after having jumped from an airplane and marched 18 miles, says with a smile, "I like the way this sucks!"

A Special Forces soldier lies in the mud, 120 pound pack on his back, weapon in hand, after swimming 6 miles to shore, crawling through a swamp and marching 24-miles at night past the enemy positions, says with a grin, while biting the head off a snake "This really sucks, I wish it could suck more....."

An Air Force Pilot flying over the battlefield, the rain is pouring down, looks down at the soldiers below and says: "Sure sucks down there!"

An Air Force Officer sits in an easy chair in his air conditioned, carpeted room and says to his friend, "Man.. Cable's out! This sucks!"

Boston

We (USMA LDSSA) took a trip to Boston this past weekend to attend a conference and had a blast. M. Russell Ballard spoke to us, as along with Clayton M. Christensen and David Neeleman.

Elder Ballard spoke to us first and gave an amazing unscripted talk. He had one written, but decided not to use it and just went by the spirit instead.

Brother Neeleman went next and spoke about the internet as a tool for helping others find the gospel. Websites are much easier for most people to use until they are ready to get baptized because they can remain anonymous if they don't want people to know they are investigating and they are able to work at their own pace. Unfortunately, until recently Google searching "Mormon" yielded almost entirely anti-mormon websites. One day, Bro. Neeleman was searching and found FairLDS.org and decided to send a donation ($1,000- "a small donation") and was shocked to receive a letter from the lady who runs it explaining that she has MS and was struggling to keep the website running until his check came. After that, Bro. Neeleman decided to start helping the church change the image it had on the internet and started the More Good Foundation (Mormon means More Good) which is aimed at ensuring that each anti website or comment online is countered by 10 pro-Mormon sites/comments. They achieve this goal through websites such as LDS.net(where everyone should get an account) and MormonWiki. I wish I had the statistics on how big of a difference they have made, but I don't. What I can share is some good youtube channels:

http://www.youtube.com/user/mormonmessages?blend=3&ob=4
http://www.youtube.com/user/MormonNewEraMessages
http://www.youtube.com/user/mormonanswerman
http://www.youtube.com/user/mormons101
Or a Much Larger List, though this still will not show everything.

Elder Christensen spoke on member missionary work and dispelled many of the common misconceptions on how to go about the work. He placed a lot of emphasis on being genuine with people, never building up your relationship prior to inviting them to learn about the gospel, never judging whether a person would or would not accept the gospel until AFTER you have tried and inviting those who have sufficient for their own needs to share in our opportunities to serve others.

After Elder Christensen's talk we broke up into 60 different groups, ate lunch and developed plans for new ways to share the gospel and improve people's knowledge of what we believe. Ideas ranged from using twitter to redoing the old pass-along cards. We all voted on our favorites and the top ten got to present their ideas to Elder Ballard in front of the entire conference and he then spoke to us again and is taking the ideas to the brotheren to decide on implementation. My personal favorite was virtual temple tours- when there is a temple open house somewhere in the world a 3-D virtual tour would be put online to help dispel myths about the temple.

After the conference we had a few hours to wander the city/eat dinner. A dance started at 8-ish but was pretty lame (masquerade balls aren't a very good place to meet people, neither are dance floors too small to see anyone through the crowd) so I spent probably more time wandering the streets than at the dance.

The next day was stake conference where we got to hear from Elder Ballard again and met him briefly afterword.
It was a fun weekend, but now the week is in full swing and life has resumed its normal function. On to life's next adventure!

One more thing. For those who are interested, the talks are supposedly going to be posted on ldseducationconference.org sometime soon. They really were amazing and if you are interested in this stuff you should check it out!

Life in general

Ok, so my last blog entry made it sound like I hate life. This is not really the case, it was just a long day/night before and I needed to vent. Really, life is pretty good right now.

School is going much much better than last year. I just switched teachers in math and can't understand a single thing the new guy is talking about so that grade may take a dive here before too long but other than that I have decent grades without too much stressing over them.

My plebe is good- though fairly high maintenance. Rare are the days that I don't spend at least an hour in her room for this, that or the other. She seems to perpetually be in trouble but if I tell her to do something she does it. On the bright side, the more she gets in trouble the more opportunity I have to help her and impress the chain of command (CoC). Unfortunately, basketball practices have officially started (the coaches couldn't be there before) so trying to schedule our time together is more difficult because she has no time.

While the APFT was a smoker, I did still pass it and will not have to be up running at 0530 every morning. However, it did serve as a wake-up call that I will not be able to sit on my butt much longer. I may still be young, but my body isn't as young as it once was and if I am going to keep up with the demands of this life something has to be done so hopefully exercise will be a bigger part of my life from now on.

I have a new calling at church (*cough-SHEENA-cough*)- branch missionary. There's a lot of exciting things going on in that area for such a strange situation. The missionaries aren't allowed in the barracks, nobody is unless they live/work in them, so there is really no way for them to find investigators which puts the burden on us as members to help the investigators find the missionaries. Last weekend we had a baptism for a new plebe who found the church by going to "Mormon" chapel time during beast. The service was beautiful, and she brought a friend who then came to church the next day. We'll see if she shows up tomorrow. The other branch missionary is a return missionary so I am really looking forward to learning from him and using this to help prepare for my mission.

That pretty much covers all aspects of my life right now. As you can see, I don't really have any room to complain. I have a roof over my head, even if the water is kinda cold sometimes, and I don't have to pay a penny for it. Food is never an issue, the mess hall is free for me. I'm getting a great education and getting paid to do all of this! So yeah, I'd say life right now is pretty great, despite the long days once in a while.

TGIF

Today was a looooong day, thank heaven its almost the weekend. It all started last night when I went to the library to work with my lab group on a physics lab write-up that was due today. We got there and realized that USMA's internal mainframe was down. Since everything here revolves around the internal websites, including many classes, we couldn't do it! Sweet, its due tomorrow, we haven't started it yet and now we can't even get to what we need to do it...at least I can get some face time with my plebe and try to figure out some of this math stuff I don't get.

Went down to do FCDT(fourth class development time) with my plebe. My squad leader has mandated that we do at least 2 FCDTs a week, one my choice one her choice. Last week she had asked me if I knew how to make a particular style of bracelet out of 550 cord (parachute cord). Me?! Know how to make a bracelet?! Are you serious? But it was pretty simple so I figured it out and decided that we could do that for FCDT. Since her roommate's team leader hadn't done anything with her yet this week she joined us and in about 15-20 minutes we were almost done with the project, everything was going as planned- shoulda known, that can't happen here. My plebe's roommate's team leader showed up and started talking, no big right? WRONG! 2 1/2 hours into this project TAPS plays and I am forced to scrap the whole thing and retreat to my room.

Feeling relieved to be out of there and somewhat tired I shower quickly and try to rack out. Unfortunately, shortly after I fell asleep my roommates decided that 12:30 at night is a good time to watch a movie. Already I could tell that today was going to be a long day.

I had the first two class hours off this morning, an opportunity that usually means catching up on the sleep I didn't get the night before but this time it means going to the library and working frantically on a lab write-up. Since both of my partners are in class, I basically ended up writing the whole thing on my own, though one of them did get the chance to help a little. After writing the first 3 of the 4 sections I had to quit for class, physics no less. Upon walking into the room I notice the desks are in an odd arrangement and there is a test on each one. CRAP! I completely spaced the test! 30 stressful minutes later the testing time ends and we all get up to go see the answers next door. . .pretty sure I got somewhere between 67% and 70%- no bueno.

Spanish and lunch, then back to the library to finish this stupid lab. An hour-ish later it was finished and I headed back to the room to study for my last class of the day. After skimming the texts I took a 20 minute nap and headed to class. Luckily, the class was fun and relieved some stress.

Not so luckily, my company had an APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test) this afternoon. For those who don't know, I'm still just as lazy as I was before coming here. In fact, there are a few names for people like me, names like "slug" and "4-mile-a-year guy" ('cause i only run 4 miles a year, 2 two mile APFTs). Needless to say, these tests cause a little bit of anxiety for me since I've never been a good runner. I was one push-up shy of maxing that part, a few sit-ups short on that part- so far my score looks good. Then the dreaded 2-mile run. . .

2 miles isn't bad for people who run once in a while. In fact, a decent time for this distance is about 13 minutes, 12 is good and I know a few people who do it in about 9. 15 minutes of pain later I cross the finish line, ignore the person trying to hand me my time and run over to the railroad tracts where I proceed to lose everything I had in my stomach in front of everyone (that long after eating it wasn't much).

Well, at least I am now done with all the bad stuff for the day. One more mandatory meal and I the day is officially over! I waited patiently for a shower to open up and, courtesy of the wonderful West Point plumbing and lazy civilians who won't fix anything, took the coldest shower of my life. By a couple minutes in my entire body was numb, but just didn't care at this point so I stayed and waited until the plebes started calling minutes before getting out and getting ready for dinner. Unfortunately, the plebe that was supposed to be calling minutes was all jacked up and didn't show up until the final minute so I had 2 minutes to get out of the shower, dry off, get dressed and make it to formation.

Now the day is officially over and I am about to crash. Now if I could just get my roommates to quit harassing me about making bracelets...

Math Project

This semester the math and physics departments decided to work together to develop a project. Though the project wasn't too terribly hard (probably took less than 20 man-hours) and wasn't designed to be a pain, it almost killed me and one of my partners (the other one not so much).

We were given several weeks to do this stupid thing but, being the typical "I'm too busy" cadets we didn't start on it until a couple days before the due date. Not that big of a deal right? Divide the project into its separate parts and everyone can pitch in to finish it quickly. At least that was the plan. One person's computer had died so he automatically got stuck with the write-up, the only part he could do on his temporary computer. The easier part of the math went to the other partner and I got what was left. After many hours of running the equations, realizing an error and re-running the equations with the problem fixed my part of the math was finally complete and I was done by about 10 the night before it was due.

At 12 I got a call from the person who was doing the write-up telling me that the third member of our group, the one who got the easy math, had done it completely wrong. "Could you try to figure it out really fast?" Yeah, I could have, 2 hours ago when I was still awake! "No problem, I'll send you everything when I'm done with it." Thankfully it really was much easier and only took until about 2 to finally get it all done and sent to where it needed to go. That third guy effectively got away with not contributing ANYTHING to the project- worthless punk.

Completely unrelated to this that third individual had some disciplinary actions brought against him (breaking the honor code) and he gets to repeat yuk year and spend an extra year in this place! I think he should be getting kicked out, but still, life has a funny way of providing justice sometimes.

Disney World

Four of my company-mates and I went to Disney World for Labor Day (three company-mates who were part of the plan and another who attached himself at the last minute). During AMT my roommate convinced me to set the trip up. Travel expenses were very low- we used mom and dad's timeshare for a place to stay and Disney is letting those with a military ID into the parks for free this year so the $200 airfare was the only major expense. I was quite reluctant to go through with the plan but in the end it was worth it.

Friday we flew to Orlando and got in late. $50 taxi ride from the airport to the timeshare where, rather than going to bed like sensible people, we ordered pizza (thank heaven for Papa John and his insomnia) and took our time getting settled in. Everyone was shocked when we walked into the place and they saw how huge it was- and they quickly grabbed cameras and took pictures of everything (I think we ended up with more pictures of the room than the parks). Got to bed about 1 or 2, can't really remember.

Saturday we got up and hit the parks- Magic Kingdom in the morning and Epcot in the afternoon. Mission Space and Big Thunder Mountain were the favorites of the group for the day and not much was seen of the different countries.

Sunday we hit up Typhoon Lagoon in the morning and headed to Downtown Disney in the afternoon. Pleasure Island has a movie theater and the weather was terrible so we decided to watch a movie. The first choice (through voting and time constraints) was Gamer but the theater messed up and was playing Aliens in the Attic in the auditorium that was supposed to be Gamer so we ended up going to Inglorious Bastards (name of the movie, don't comment on the language). I would not suggest that movie for anyone- too bloody. If you can find a version with less blood then watch and enjoy, but otherwise don't.

Monday we traveled back to West Point and resumed life as normal. Although it is never easy returning to this place, it is much less difficult now that we aren't plebes and have a little more freedom. Life returned to normal, classes the next day, and the next; didn't take long before everyone was back to living weekend to weekend and paycheck to paycheck. But hey, at least we're getting paid!

Not long ago Vo, the mastermind of it all, came into my room urging me to find another 3-day weekend and another fun vacation destination we can travel to for cheap. We'll see, I may have another story in a few months.

Blogger refuses to load the pictures so I will post them later.

New Commandant of Cadets

The Comm is leaving tomorrow morning and will be missed greatly. BG Linnington has become one of my biggest role models in the short time I have been here, it is a sad thing to see him go. The Corps will be without a commandant until November (not certain how that works. . .) at which time BG William (Bill) Rapp will assume the post. He seems like a competent enough fellow but there is always apprehension and following in BG Linnington's shoes would be a daunting task for anyone.

BG Linnington will be deploying to Afghanistan Monday morning where he will be on staff for a joint operations unit.

School year so far. . .

The school year, aside from the first week-ish, is boring and there is rarely anything to write about. It is much nicer to not be a plebe and the amount of extra time I have from not doing duties, memorizing meals, days, etc. is shocking. This year is supposed to be the most intense academically but I seem to have settled into the same groove as in high school-get up, go to class, do absolutely nothing, stay up late still doing nothing, repeat and somehow manage to still get good grades. We'll see how long this pattern holds up, hopefully the whole semester. Having a plebe to take care of is great. I love taking care of people, helping friends with anything that is bothering them, etc. so having an individual who's problems are basically my problems is like a dream come true. I can't wait to graduate and have 40 of them! Though by that point, most of their problems will be taken care of before they get to me but it should still be great.

Speaking of my plebe- I wanted to die when I first got the name and looked it up on Facebook (don't laugh, that's the first thing you'd do with the name too). To understand why, you need to understand a few things about getting a plebe- the four things you do not want your plebe to be are:

1) Female- no offense to the ladies, you just tend to have more problems and are more difficult to deal with in general, especially after living surrounded by guys and losing your social skills.

2) Prior Service- if your plebe knows more about life/the Army than you do what are you supposed to teach them?

3) Prepster- someone from the prep. school. Often scum-bags (sorry to any prepsters who read this- you know its true though) though that is not the problem, it can be handy for your plebe to know how to get out of EVERYTHING. The problem is usually that they have already had a year of USMA type life and again, there's not much for you to teach them.

4) Corps Squad Athlete- Another stereo-type: corps squaders are shammers, think they are better than everyone else, etc. Basically its the whole jock thing from high-school. On top of all that, they have no time for you to be with them/teach them how to do things/make sure they have done things.

The first thing you do when you are given your plebe's name is look them up on Facebook to find out if they fit any of these categories. Also, if their profile is blocked it tells you they were smart enough to block it, if not then you can learn all sorts of things about them. Sounds creepy but the upper-classmen are doing it too so you might as well be able to prepare them for what they are going to get hazed about. . .

So I got my name, logged in to facebook and saw a tall-looking girl in ACU's. That can't be right. They wouldn't give me a girl would they?! Plus she's in ACU's, she must be a prepster! Possibly prior-service but thankfully she looks too young. I check the sheet again. AH! She's on the women's basketball team too!!! Sweet, this is going to be interesting. . .

The first day we spent a good amount of time getting to know each other while cleaning rifles. Turns out my female/prepster/corps squad plebe isn't too bad after all. Her whole goal for the semester is to make my life as easy as possible. So far she's done a pretty good job of it too!

Classes are going good. My schedule is 19.5 credit hours light. I picked my major- Computer Science. Looks like this is going to be my lightest semester by far between now and graduation. Great choice (sarcasm).

Lastly, a lead-in to what will probably be my next blog post. One thing I don't think I mentioned in my AMT post is that my roommate convinced me to get a room with my parents' time share and go to Disney World for Labor Day. More to come on that. . .

For the impatient ones

I have been rather slow about updating and telling y'all about my fun and exciting life but hey, if I'm constantly on here writing I don't have time for my life to be fun and exciting right? Anyway, I promised updates would be coming and the blog is slowly catching up to real life; as for the rest of what has been going on, patience and it will be on here eventually, I promise. Hopefully soon but no promise on that part.

AMT

Well, its been a long time but I'm finally going to explain my other summer training:

Those of us who had Advanced Medical Training (AMT) during the third block of the summer had to report on the same day as the Buckner run-back. No break. Joy. On the bright side, Meg and Gute from my squad were going to be there with me.

I roomed with a guy from my company and turns out we were right next door to Meg and a few doors down from Gute, always nice to be close to the people you know. The days were 11 hours with one hour off for lunch. If we were lucky the day was split into two parts, half in-class learning (death by power-point) and half practical exercises, if not we had 10 hours of power point slides. At the end of these insane days it was expected that you would go back to your room and study for a good 2-3 hours on top of all that. Yeah right. We went back to the barracks and had fun (head out to the mall, watch movies, etc.). This lead to many nights next door "studying" with friends until 1 or 2 am.

This was also my first real introduction to the political climate of the military when an individual desperately wants to expand his/her power. The barracks we were staying in were controlled by SGR (the Summer Garrison Regiment), but we were not a part of SGR because we were on a MIAD (Military Individual Advanced Development). Unfortunately, the SGR TAC decided that he wanted us to be under his jurisdiction.

The first problem we had with them was when we had to be awake at 0400 to do a 12-hr EMT shift and they decided that it would be important to wake all of our girls up at 0300-0330 to make sure they were in their rooms. As the SGR TAC was a Major and the officer in charge of our training was a LT Col. we soon had the power to check off our own people.

Next came room-standards. The standard for AMT was simply that the room needed to look nice. SGR came around and yelled and screamed that our beds weren't made to standard, our closets weren't set up per SOP, etc. This fight continued through the entire course until one day LT COL Chamberlain checked our rooms and said they looked fine and a certain captain came by later and threw our stuff around because our rooms weren't up to standard. This battle ended with us submitting to SGR standards and waking up earlier for breakfast formation. We never got stuck with their guard shifts or anything but the extra sleep lost and trying to find the time to get our rooms to military standard was not fun at all. C'est la vie.

In the end we all (mostly) passed the exams and got on the national registry. New York State tests came later and I still haven't heard back though it should be coming soon. There are some cool opportunities opening up for the EMS club here such as a high-volume EMT station trying to get their Friday night and Saturday shifts completely covered by cadets, they're trying to give us access to higher levels of training (EMT CC, CPR Instructor, etc.). Should be good!

Camp Buckner

My first training event of the summer was Cadet Field Training at Camp Buckner (AKA Buckner, Bucknam, Buckghanistan). Buckner consists of seven main training events: Intro to Patrolling (ITP), Land Navigation (Land Nav), Water Confidence Obstacle Course (Wet COC), Confidence Obstacle Course (Dry COC), Mounted Maneuver Training (MMT) and the Combat Engineer and Field Artillery (FA) training sites.

ITP is three days of learning basic Infantry skills. Ruck-march out, set up a patrol base and pretty much just pull guard shifts waiting to get ambushed most of the day/night. During the day we did leave the patrol base to learn such tactical skills as setting up and ambush, react to contact, etc. In the end it was useful training but life is no fun when you have spent 3 days standing, laying, sleeping and eating in puddles (it rained most of the time). Marching out the final day consisted of a Mogadishu Mile type scenario except with casualties that had to be carried out. No fun but it felt good in the end to look back and see how much more I am capable of than I thought possible, especially with trench foot that made my feet bleed without running.

Land Nav was another three day excursion into the woods around Camp Buckner to learn how to read a map. Boy Scouts prepared me well and I spent three days getting to know my squad-mates better, pick blueberries and just basically relax. The testing day came and I got my points. Night land nav testing that night was interesting. Meg-Ann, my partner (easy to spot in the squad photo cause she's the only girl), is an amazingly loud person so I never had to worry about us getting split-up and lost, just stop and listen and you'll hear her from miles away (seriously, she admits it too).

The Wet COC is two obstacles designed to make us more comfortable with heights and water at the same time. The first obstacle is two balance beams high above the water. The first beam is stationary but the second is designed to wiggle as people walk across it and has stairs in the middle. As long as you keep your eyes looking forward and keep walking it really isn't that challenging but many people froze and fell off into the water. The second obstacle is the slide for life, a zip-line off a 75 ft. tower into the lake. Such a good day, too bad it wasn't warmer.

Slide for Life, picture taken from www.army.mil

The Dry COC is an obstacle course on dry land rather than over the lake, surprising huh? It isn't emphasized as much as the Wet COC because there are a lot of obstacle courses in the Army, its really not that unique.

MMT was a week spent in FT Knox KY. riding/shooting/commanding tanks and tank units. We spent time in simulators, on the firing line, etc. but the funnest day was a force-on-force exercise using MILES gear which is basically just advanced laser-tag. The first iteration I was a dismount in a cav-scout (cavalry) HMMWV that promptly got destroyed when the fighting started. For the second iteration I was a Tank Platoon leader. Though my company lost the fight, I am proud to say that I was in the last tank standing and that we destroyed 5 of the enemy's 16 tanks and my platoon destroyed 8, I think, which is an entire company. Unfortunately, the other platoon got destroyed and my platoon was soon isolated fighting enemy from front and back, not a good situation. Knox was nice though because we had the afternoons off, ate in a DFAC rather than the camp mess hall and had air conditioning in our rooms.

Combat Engineers and FA were both one day training sites. With the combat engineers we learned about IED's, route clearance and breaching operations (blowing up doors). FA was an opportunity to set-up and fire howitzers as well as call for fire and launch mortars (even though that is mostly an infantry thing). At the end of the day all the excess powder from the 105 mm rounds has to be burned off. Videos don't do it justice but here is one anyway.

There is a dance at the end of Buckner and, even though I'm not a dancer and didn't spend much time there I am proud to announce that my class destroyed the dance hall (the support system collapsed and it fell into the lake, 2012 knows how to party) and the Comm and Dean, both 1 star generals, crowd surfed off the stage.

The final day started at about 4 AM and the entire class, our cadre and some of the staff of West Point ran the 6-ish miles back.

Catching Up

Its been a long time since I posted on here and a lot has happened. Leave came to an end all too soon and I returned to the point for another year starting with Camp Buckner, AMT and then the academic year.

Buckner was great. Shooting big guns (howitzers, tanks, etc.), little guns (.50 cals, M4s, etc.), blowing doors off hinges, its all good. It was even better because of our amazing squad and platoon.

Buckner Squad

Things are quite different this year. Rather than being a plebe I have one to lead. Academics are a bear as always, but the stress is so much lower that my 19.5 credit hours seem like nothing compared to last year (hopefully my gpa will reflect that). AMT has opened many doors and caused some troubles but mostly it has been good. More details on all of these experiences will hopefully be coming soon, if i ever get around to it. . .

Grad Week and Summer Leave

I have 3 weeks off for summer leave (down to 2) and figured it would be a good time to blog about my life after TEEs.

Grad week is one of the most miserable weeks of the year at West Point. Every morning starts early (as early as 4:20) and after breakfast you drill until noon. Drill consists of holding an M14 and (basically) marching in circles. There's a lot of standing maneuvering all to prepare us for the 3 parades we had that week. Oh, one more thing drill is big on, people passing out from standing still too long in the heat of the day. Fun :)

The afternoons aren't bad, you just have to deal with stupid policies such as ensuring that everyone is 100% moved out of their rooms by Thursday night when nobody is allowed to leave until Saturday. Mostly the afternoons were spent watching movies and sleeping-nobody really started moving out until Wednesday night/Thursday morning.

On the topic of moving out- our company is somehow missing a storage room. This means that there is not adequate room to store all the junk we have to have, let alone all the stuff people just want to have. I was one of the unfortunate few who had absolutely no storage space. The Firsties graduating and moving out meant an entire room completely emptied out so I eagerly moved in and stowed my stuff in a locker, just in time to be told that we are not allowed to move in there until after the Firsties are completely moved out. What?! The locker is empty, why can't I use it? Especially since my stuff has to be out of my room by tonight! Great! Not a big deal, I can wait a little longer, right? No dice.

The entire company goes down and cleans the lockers out (completely ignoring the lockers of my fellow plebes who were too lazy to move out) and I promptly moved back in. Later that night our 1SG for next semester goes down to inspect the room and sees that there are a bunch of plebes that had moved in and demanded that we vacate the room so that next year's plebes can use it. NEXT YEAR's plebes, the ones who won't even need the room until NEXT YEAR. Surely we can at least use it until they need it? Nope! This kind of stuff continued until I finally managed to get a locker 5 moves later (there's a lot of stuff to move, it gets old after a while).

It was a long week but it ended well. Friday morning, before the final parade of the week, the plebes got recognized (became non-plebes and therefore one step closer to human) and the next morning everyone got promoted over a breakfast of Belgian waffles and vanilla ice cream. Yum!
Graduation was amazing. I wish I could have seen it live but took a guard shift for a buddy who had family that was going to be there so had to watch it on the internet but it was still impressive. Got to go to a "Bar-pinning ceremony" and see some of my friends from church get commisioned and have their 2LT rank pinned to their shoulders. What an amazing afternoon! Then a group of upper-classmen took me to dinner at Prima Pizza in Cornwall, famous for delivering pizza anywhere in the US by way of overnight shipping. The one that invited me paid my share of the meal cost to celebrate my promotion and freedom from plebedom. Stuck around for church on Sunday and headed home (about 12 hours going through Salt Lake or 14 through Vegas).

Since I've been home I have scraped, painted, repaired, helped people move, cleaned out a barn, visited people, camped, etc. Its a wonderful feeling to be home but the time is going too fast just like it always does.

TEE Week

Just like everything else here, West Point had to break the conventional style of naming things and give finals a more militaristic name, Term End Exams (TEEs). Breaking with the norms of other schools isn't always bad though. For example, though I have never experienced finals week at a "normal" college, my understanding is that the week is very stressful. Here, TEE week is one of the least stressful of the semester. Why is this? We can finally put the military side of our existance aside for a few days. The time this gives us is amazing! A complete breakdown in military discipline probably isn't good, but it sure is relaxing.


Now that my tests are done it is time to reflect on the past year. Plebe year was at the same time the most horrible time in my life and far less problematic than I was expecting. Frankly, it isn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be. On the other hand, I will certainly not miss the hours spent on the wall with SGT Wasson chewing us out for this and that, taking out the upper-classmen's garbage at night, calling minutes (see "Minutes Explained") or being at the beck and call of any upper-classmen who has the slightest need. Servitude in general just isn't a pleasant situation to be in. One more week of virtual slavery and the plebe class will finally be recognized (this means that we are no longer treated as poorly, though we still don't have many priveledges) and recieve a promotion. I can handle one more week though, the end is near and coming fast.

The Things of Home

Well, another late night. I'm working on a math project but there's really nothing I can do with it right now so my thoughts wander. . .(I'm really not slacking off, my computer is figuring out a complex problem and has been for about half an hour now and takes over half my system resources to solve it, maybe its time to give up?)

The weather has been amazing and as I stick my head out the window for some fresh air the feel of the night is reminiscent of warm evenings back at home, walking the dog or playing games out back with my family. I still stand by what I have said, the "homesick" phase is long gone (that was part of beast) but still thoughts often return to the "good ol' days". Am I too young to feel nostalgic? Probably, but what can ya do? To put it in perspective, here is something I jotted down during one of the sessions of general conference:

"The things of home are never quite gone, they will always return to us--be it a scent, a flavor, a sight, a sound; the things of home will always find a way to return to us, and then, if we are wise, we will find a way to return to them."

This doesn't mean that we will run home to mommy and daddy when things get hard, but that those who are wise will find a way to keep home with them wherever they go. Homesickness? No, more like nostalgic, but it is nice to know that there are only a few days between now and my escape to home.

Well, its 1:20 in the morning and Mathematica (the math program on our computers) still hasn't solved this equation. I'm going to bed. Hopefully there will be an answer waiting for me in the morning. . .

Tom Ricks is a Biased Fool

The Washington Post seems to love posting bad articles about us. First they broke the news about the "West Point suicides" and now Tom Ricks is calling for the closure of the service academies? While his claims are mostly accurate, they are twisted to show only what he wants the reader to know: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/16/AR2009041603483.html?sub=AR

First he discusses the cost difference between West Point and ROTC. What he fails to include in his figures is that ROTC pays for more than just what is shown in the $130,000 he claims. When looking at figures for just the academics (which he did with ROTC) West Point, from what I have heard, is estimated at $180,000. What's more, ROTC programs vary from college to college. It is possible for ROTC to produce officers for less, but they also probably spend more on a good share of them.

Next he talks about West Pointers getting "community-college educations". USMA is ranked 6th in the nation overall and, I have heard, 1st for public colleges. But the education we receive is inferior? I beg to differ. He is right that most of our teachers do not have doctorates, but that says little about the quality of instruction. I would like to point out that the men and women who are teaching all have masters degrees, the department heads have doctorates and, oh yeah, our professors actually teach us. I have never been taught by an upper-classman about to graduate because the instructor is too busy doing research to be bothered with actually teaching. On the contrary, teachers are always available and more than willing to sit down one on one and help a struggling student. That doesn't mean there is a lack of research here, just that they are focussed on educating. There is constantly research going on in many fields and many of the research projects conducted by cadets are worthy of a doctorate degree in and of themselves. USMA provides a top-notch education.

Mr. Ricks' claim that three of the last six chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have indeed been officers produced by ROTC; however, 50% is pretty good when you consider that the service academies only produce 20% of the military's officers. Seems like we are pretty well represented to me. Oh, and by the way, if USMA graduates don't go very far in the Army then how come EVERY 5-Star General was from West Point? Something just isn't adding up here.

As far as being educated next to future doctors, lawyers, etc., nothing would change. Countless "old grads" have become lawyers and we send some graduates directly to medical school. Since most of our teaching staff is made up of graduates, there is really no point in claiming that we don't produce teachers. Congressmen? There are always graduates involved in politics. Many congressmen are produced by this fine institution as well as Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Having never been to the war college (you go there as a LT. Colonel before being promoted to Colonel) I can't really speak as to the quality of education that occurs there, but I can vouch for the quality of our senior officers. Meeting and greeting with foreign diplomats and officials is nothing new to them, they do not need to go to school to learn how to do it. Why don't you ask Gen. Petraeus about that Mr. Ricks? While you're at it, why don't you ask him about his under-graduate years at USMA before going to Princeton?

Tom Ricks may have reported on the military for ten years, but I would like to see him come to the Academy sometime and see what really goes on, he may be quite surprised.

Brainwashing

Well, I'm back. Once again it is not because of a time surplus, but just that I can't sleep. There's no burning blog topics for me to address so I'm going to talk about beast a little, answer a question I have gotten from a couple of un-named people:
No, I have not been brainwashed. I am the same guy I was before coming here. The only thing that has changed that you will ever witness (unless you try to attack me or my brothers) is that I have more confidence. I walk different, act different, but I still think and speak the same.

Lots of people talk about the "brainwashing" that the military does to you. It doesn't exist. There is a certain amount of indoctrination involved to going through military training, but there has to be. The things soldiers have to see, hear and do are unspeakable. While some say there is no adequate way of preparing for it, the Army gives it their best effort.

Yes, I do know things that would make most people more than a little worried if I started screaming them on the subway, but wouldn't you be worried if someone started screaming regardless of what they said? It does feel weird now, looking back at my previous limits and comparing them to now, and certainly the Spirit of the Bayonette, The Law, and many other such mantras are far from what I would have said in high school. But have I been brainwashed? No! Don't be ridiculous!

I have learned, I have grown, I have become a little harder (physically and mentally) but I have not lost my values and beliefs to what the Army supposedly wants me to think. One of the key elements that makes our Army so great is the ability of our soldiers to think for themselves. Couple this with the disipline to obey orders even if you disagree with them and you will have an unstoppable force. That is what we strive for, not a puppet collection.

Now, I realize that the people who would ask me about being brainwashed are not going to read this blog, but perhaps someone will find this post on Google and it may change their mind. Who knows? Frankly, I'm not concerned one way or the other, these posts are just to clear my mind so I can sleep. If you don't like it, don't read it!

Minutes Explained

Lunch break: I can tell nothing productive is going to happen so I'll blog and answer the "minutes" question. . .

Minutes are just one of the chores that "plebes" here at the academy have to do. Its not too bad, nothing painful, just one of those things that is annoying to waste time on. 7 minutes before every formation we start yelling out how many minutes there are before said formation (5, 4, 3, 2 + a 2 minute buffer). It has to be yelled by all the plebes who are calling at the same time and goes like this:

Attention all cadets, there are (5, 4, or 3) minutes until assembly for (formation, i.e. breakfast) formation. The uniform is (uniform). (5, 4 or 3) minutes remaining.

For the last minute:

Attention all cadets, there are 2 minutes until assembly for (formation). The uniform is (uniform). This is the last minute to be called for this formation. Do not forget your lights. 2 minutes remaining.

No pain (unless you mess up), not too much stress (unless you are in charge and people are too lazy to do it). Just one more thing to put up with. . .38 days left.

long days

At the end of another long West Point day, I find myself reflecting back on the events of the day. This is not because I have tons of time to spend on such things (I really shouldn't be spending time on this either) but rather because I am too tired to think straight and my mind is racing too much to go to bed.

The day started out like any other, woke up at 0610, learned my plebe knowledge for the day (the day's meals and 2 news articles), shaved, etc. and got things set up for calling minutes (a process I'll have to describe later) which I am in charge of this week. Head out to formation and a SGT that lives next door asks if I am aware that no minutes have been called in our section of the building at all this week.

"No, Sergeant, I will take care of that, thank you for telling me."

So far so good. . .now just a test and my day should be mostly over. . .

I had the first 2 periods off today, and being the tired cadet that I am I slept 2 hours before going to my first class (one of the few good things of the day). Classes are dull, Fundamentals of Personal Fitness and History of Eastern Asia. Come back from class and lunch minutes are supposed to be getting called. Instead of minutes I hear my First Sergeant (1SG) yelling about how crappy the (lack of) minutes are and all of the upper-classmen confused as to what the uniform is.

"Crap, this could get ugly" I think as I head up to my room to ditch my stuff. Minutes are being called in my section of the barracks, so it must not be that bad, right? Announcements for lunch say something different. 1SG (in a rather ticked off tone):
"I need to see Bishop and his entire chain-of-command in the back immediately after formation"

I turn to my squad leader standing right behind me (who was, until today, impressed with me and giving me an 'A' for my military grade today, who knows what it is now) and he is looking at me like "WHAT DID YOU DO!" I knew what it was, and it was completely out of my control, not fair.

We all go to the back of formation, and my TAC (the officer in charge of our company) is standing there. Great, now I'm not only gonna get chewed out, but its going to happen in front of the TAC, this just keeps getting better. . .

Never before, and hopefully never again, have my face and 1SG's face been so close, or his voice so loud.

"What's the deal with minutes. . ." and he proceeds to rip on me for there not being minutes in his section of the building. Then he moves on to the lack of minutes in my own section for breakfasts. All I want to do is scream "I DIDN'T KNOW, I HAVEN'T HAD A CHANCE TO FIX IT, GET OFF MY BACK" but rather, I said "Yes 1SG" when he demanded that I turn over the names of those who had been messing up minutes.

After lunch I go take the huge test i spoke of earlier. Math. I discovered early on that EVERYTHING I studied the night before was left out of this test. Admittedly I still feel I did well-ish, but only time will tell. Come back from the test and take a nap? No, I was up so late the previously studying for the test (which helped none at all) that neglected to write a poem for english and shower. I did both of those and headed to class where I learned of 2 huge assignments for that class in the next week. Crap.

After school nap? Nope! Swim meet! We won 54 to 19, and I beat my coach in the butterfly and managed to finish the IM, so those were good, but I desperately needed sleep (and to throw up).

Go back to the barracks and sleep? Still no! Go back and meet with 1SG, shower, and sleep, that's the plan. After my shower, I checked Facebook really quick. Hey! a message! Mom is the only one that sends me messages on Facebook very often, so I figured I should read it then. Turns out that an old friend and neighbor died at 2 AM. Wow, can this day get better? Yes, it can, and does (thank you Murphy, the Army hates you). I got no sleep (still) and had to go call minutes for dinner.

After dinner (minutes went smoothly, Murphy can't mess with everything) I return to my room and try to work on stuff. No dice. Too tired. Can't keep my eyes open. A 20 minute nap!! Yay!! 20 minutes later I wake up to my Team Leader cracking the door open and TADA! time for us to chat. It was a good chat though. I finally finished (I hope) taking care of the minutes stuff. My homework that absolutely has to be done for tomorrow is done, and I'm hoping that after this my mind will have cleared enough to go to bed, we'll see.

Things get better, SAMI (Saturday morning inspection) and In-Ranks Inspection (uniform and rifle inspection) means NO SLEEP THIS WEEKEND!!! YAY!!! JUST WHAT I NEED!!!! What's more, while everyone is sleeping off the effects of being up until 3 or 4 in the morning scrubbing floors, I will have to be in the library trying to work on one of my millions of papers and projects coming up. But hey, spring is here, the grey period is gone, I get to see the sun almost every day now, so it could be worse!

Boston

I finally got out of here this weekend for the All-New England Winter Extravaganza (a huge young single adult activity with all the stakes in the New England region- hence the name). It wasn't really in Boston, but only about 20 minutes out so still not bad, and I did get to go into the city on Saturday for a couple of hours.

We stayed in members' houses. The only reason I bother to mention that is because of what happened at the member's house. The house I stayed at had 5 bedrooms upstairs and the living areas downstairs. 1 1/2 bath, which meant you had to shower upstairs. So Friday night, everyone is tired and goes to bed. I'm slower to get ready because I was on the phone all night, so everyone else is in bed and the lights are off. Unfortunately, the bathroom is directly at the top of the stairs. . .not a good combination. I came out of the bathroom and couldn't see a thing and went right down the stairs. Luckily I caught myself on the railing, unluckily my knee went through one of the stick supporting it, crashing loudly and putting a huge dent in my shin (I somewhat suspect a stress fracture too, but since all the doctor can do for me is tell me to take it easy and limit what I can do I refuse to go see her).

The next day was infinitely better. We woke up and got ready, drove to the church worried about missing breakfast because we were late. Oh wait, we forgot to figure in Mormon Standard Time. . .we were there before most other people. After breakfast there was a keynote speaker, Jane Clayson Johnson, who was an anchor on The Early Show, Good Morning America, and several others before she became a stay at home mom. Her talk was wonderful, but us poor cadets had a hard time not chuckling at times because the main story she used was about one of her reporting tasks which required that she attend a mini-boot camp at the amazing West Point, NY. She didn't know there were cadets in the audience.

After that we broke off into workshops. There was only time for three and they all looked great, so I just kinda wandered from class to class. The first two, I was planning on going somewhere else and felt like I should go to them instead and they were wonderful. The last one I went to the one I had planned rather than the one I felt like I should go to, not as good. Still a good workshop, don't get me wrong, but not what I was looking for. Moral of the story, go with the spirit, he knows what'll work out best.

That afternoon most of us cadets went to Boston for a couple of hours to just chill. We finally found a place to park (who knew a fifteen seater van could could be parallel parked with less than 2-3 inches of room in front and back?) and walked aimlessly down a street, soon getting lost. The good thing about a city is that there are maps all over for the subway systems, so you just look for one of those and BOOM! you're not lost anymore. Nobody could have guess that we were tourists with 8 clean-shaven, short haired, straight young men in downtown Boston all huddled around a subway map, but who cares? we're cadets, we don't need to fit in. Ben Westman, one of the guys, just got off his mission to Hong Kong and desperately wanted to go to Chinatown, so we went. Chinatown is always fun, but with him it was a blast. I tried a new kind of bread that was amazing, some tea (he assured me it was Word of Wisdom approved and that he drank it all the time on his mission) that he convinced me to buy because it was "the best drink ever" (tasted like liquid cardboard), and some Japanese gum (yes, in Chinatown, who'da thunk?). Then we found a little shop where Ben went insane with the Chinese suits (see pictures), but they were insanely expensive. He bargained the best he could, but when the lady said $35 and he said $5, didn't go so well (all happened in Chinese, he had to explain it later).

We headed back to the Church where we had dinner and a dance. Meals were interesting there. West Point cadets don't get out much and as a result, we are the most socially awkward people you'll ever meet. Luckily, we don't care if people like us anymore, we're pretty secure. That meant that everyone could pick out the West Point cadets at a glance, we were the only large group of guys with no girls mixed in. The whole weekend we said we were going to branch out, not sit by each other, never really worked out though. . .

Since I am happily taken, I played wingman at the dance. The problem is all the guys I was helping were 18. While that is ok at a YSA dance in Utah, these people push the 30 year-old age limit so there was pretty slim pickins for us. I was gettin my buddy to dance with all the best looking girls there, but one was a junior in college, the other already had a degree. He pretty much gave up after that. . .

The next morning we got up and went to church. The night before, the CIC (Cadet In Charge) for the trip told us to be there 10 minutes early. We got there almost 10 minutes late, but the other van wasn't there yet so we were still good :) Turns out they pulled in about the same time on the other side of the building. We walked in 10 minutes late from both sides of the chapel. Perfect timing. 13 cadets, walking into the meeting from opposite sides of the back of the room and meeting half way across a pew in the front of the congregation. We made quite an impact, so much so that they stopped the meeting to welcome us. It was perfect.

The plan was to leave after sacrament and make it back to West Point before a storm hit. Turns out that there was an old grad in the congregation though. . .one that knew our OIC (Officer In Charge) nonetheless. He asked for a few cadets to come bear their testimonies in his Sunday School class, so we waited for them to finish, then waited for him to talk to Bro./MAJ Cook. We climbed in the vans and headed to gas up. Before we pulled out, Bro. Cook talked with all of us. We had to make it as far as we could before the storm hit, so our orders were at or above the speed limit (beautiful thing about driving vehicles with government plates, tickets are much less common) until weather made us slow down. Everyone but the drivers fell asleep, when we woke up nobody knew where we were. MAJ Cook had dissappeared long ago, the driver of the lead van had decided to follow a different route. Ended up working out well though, we made it to Highland Falls where we stopped to get some food (its always better to get food outside West Point than inside the gates). Orders were to get it to go and get back to the barraks, until one of the drivers locked the keys in the car. The department we got the vans from was closed, the MP's didn't have a lockpicking kit. . .fine, call the local police. He couldn't crack it, had to hand his gear over to a cadet to break in.

Several hours of math project later, I'm sitting in my little gray cell, putting off the rest of my homework by writing a long blog entry. . .

Some pics from the trip:



I'm not a picture taker so there aren't very many, but in the future there will hopefully be more.

The Land of Opportunity

West Point is an odd sort of place. Everyone who comes here hates it, but we all chose to come and we all choose to stay. Why does this happen? Well its different for everybody, but one thing that helps is the abundant opportunities made available to cadets through summer/spring break/random other time trainings. This place really allows you to do what you want, without giving you any freedom. . .

This year, as a plebe, there have been and are many opportunities presented to me. Of these, I am only going to tell you about three that have been causing great debate in my mind lately. The first is USMAPT, United States Military Academy Parachute Team (we love acronyms). Not only would the army pay for me to get my skydiving certification, but they would give me chances to dive six days a week (weather permitting) and go all over the world to do it! What a cool opportunity! It comes at a price though. You have to commit to the team for all four years, which includes giving up your Christmas break, some of you summer, and inordinate amounts of your time throughout the week. I opted out of that one and am probably going to forever wonder if it was the right decision to make. . .

SCUBA diving courses are available every semester here. I wanted to sign up for the SCUBA team but missed the try-outs and also missed signing up for the class this semseter. At some point I will take the time to do that though.

And finally, rock climbing. I don't have much upper-body strength and have never been incredibly sucessful with climbing rock walls, so this wasn't really something open to me. That is, until we went rock-climbing for my PE class ("Military Movement", called that because it sounds too panzy to say we do gymnastics). It didn't take long before I realized that I wasn't too bad at what we were doing, so maybe I'll go down to the rock wall this Wednesday and see if the team is desperate enough to ask me to climb with them. We'll see. . .

The point is, as much as cadets like to whine and complain about how hard life is and how bad it sucks here (as you will probably see me do from time to time on here), there really are great opportunities waiting for those willing (and blessed to have time) to pursue them.

I give up

The growing pressure to join the blogging community has finally crushed my will to not do it so here I am. Don't expect frequent updates (my life is rather boring).

Suppose a good place to start would be a little about me just in case there are some people just blog surfing who come across this. My name is Richard Bishop and I am a plebe at the United States Military Academy (aka West Point). I am from Utah (yes, I am "Mormon", but we prefer LDS) and don't really know what else to say. . .