This past week was Spring Break. The upper three classes got to leave on Friday after their last class, but the Plebes have 2 days to show their family around campus and have a formal banquet. My parents came with my older sister who just got back from her mission. It was fun to show them around and spend time together in the middle of the semester. For Spring Break, I decided to be a nerd and go on a trip to South Carolina with the History Department. We visited Civil War and Reconstruction Era locations in Charleston and Beaufort. We were hosted there by a retired 3-star general and his West Point classmate from […]
An Average Week
The past couple of weeks haven’t been too exciting so I’ll share what an average week looks like. The average day goes as follows: After classes finish, the rest of the day is yours to work out and do homework. About every other week, Wednesday is a Study Day, which just means classes don’t happen. It’s supposed to counteract the intense workload, but the joke is that Study Days miraculously get filled with random online training and meetings that you didn’t find out about until the night before. Weekends are normally free when it’s not football season, but occasionally there will be a study hall on Saturday mornings for Plebes and people with below a […]
Declaring Majors
At West Point, you take shockingly few classes solely directed toward your major, only around 10 classes or so out of around 40. This week the Plebes(freshmen) got to declare their majors. In a total reverse from what I have been saying for years(Mechanical Engineering), I declared as a Military History Major. I’ve fallen in love with the History Department here. During my history class last semester, History of the Army, we got to handle actual weapons from both world wars, talk about revolutionary war events while looking up the Hudson River to where they happened, and “wargame” major battles throughout history. The History Department also offers fantastic trips over Spring break and during the […]
71-Month West Point Experience
A big thing at West Point is the idea of your “47-month experience.” This takes place from when you show up in June until you graduate in May, 4 years later. At significant milestones, someone always mentions how many months are left. Of course, for the LDS cadets who leave on missions for 2 years, this number is totally insignificant so we joke about the 71-month experience. This week I started my mission papers .(Yah! More paperwork) On Saturday, we were able to go to the Hartford, Connecticut Temple to support a young woman from the YSA branch as she received her Endowment. It was a great experience for everyone involved. I was the Cadet […]
Exceptionally Clean Rooms
The first week of each semester at West Point consists of attending meetings and preparing your room for SAMI(Saturday Morning Inspection). There is a 50-page packet that describes exactly how everything in your room needs to be laid out. Preparation includes taping gloves and pieces of parade uniforms into place in drawers,folding shirts into perfect 8-inch squares, buttoning every single button on and inside jackets, making beds with duct tape, and dusting every nook and cranny to the extent that a white glove can’t find dust on even the most obscure surface. Due to timing, the inspection actually took place on Monday(MAMI?) then we had classes starting on Tuesday. My credit load this semester is […]
Christmas Dinner and Army/Navy
Christmas dinner was on Thursday, and it is packed full of traditions. The Plebes(freshmen) decorate the tables and get cigars for everyone else. The entire Corps shows up in “Full Dress,” eats a little bit of food, stands on the chairs to sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” then goes outside to smoke cigars. The day of the Army/Navy football game is the single most important day in West Point Culture. The game happened on Saturday. I elected to take a bus with several hundred other cadets to and from the game (affectionately called The Boomerang Buses), but a lot of people get hotels and stay near the game. I woke up at 4:10 to […]
Branch Night
Branch Night is one of the biggest things that happens as a cadet. It is when the Firsties (seniors) find out what their job will be after graduation. You rank your preferences and do some interviews then West Point works with the army to decide what job you get. The process is based mainly on class rank, so people at the bottom of the class often get put into their lowest-choice branch because West Point has to fill a quota. Like many things here at West Point, there is a lot of tradition that goes with Branch Night. The best part about Branch Night is what happens to the Firsties’ rooms while they are at […]
Thanksgiving 2022
After finishing two intense academic days, I spent my break with a few other cadets at the senior mission couple’s house. I slept a lot, ate good food at a lot of families’ houses, and toured Revolutionary war-era sites with another mission couple and a student from Princeton. I spent a lot of time with returned missionaries and current missionaries, and it’s gotten me more excited to serve a mission. I’ve also discovered that the overlap between the army and the LDS worlds isn’t that big, meaning that everybody knows everybody. I’m thankful for all the people who opened their homes and kitchens for me this week.
The Impact of Reading
Reading has made me who I am today. That’s not an exaggeration. There were undoubtedly other factors but reading is probably the single greatest factor in my decision to pursue a career in the army. Every week in elementary school, we would go to the library to check out books. Every week I would walk out of the library with a military book. These were barely more than picture books, but they had me hooked on the military. Around 4th grade, I got a book with 10 stories of Medal of Honor recipients from World War I and another from the Vietnam War. Reading the stories of these heroes only further strengthened my desire to […]
The Busiest Three Weeks of My Life
Two weekends ago, the LDSSA took a trip down to a Young Single Adult conference in Washington, DC. It was great to get away from West Point for a little bit and be able to mingle with other members of the church. Last weekend was Family Weekend. Families got to walk around the barracks, academic buildings, and cadet gym. Seeing my family was so awesome but I was dead tired from trying to get all of my schoolwork done before the weekend. The Fall Sandhurst Competition happened this weekend. Sandhurst is a military skills competition that West Point hosts. Teams from academies and ROTC programs from throughout the country and around the world come to […]