<p>After junior year, I had the privilege of participating in the United States Naval Academy Summer Seminar. Designed to give aspiring midshipmen an idea of what it is like to attend the Academy, the program pushed me mentally and physically over the course of five days. The rigorous experience was a drastic change in lifestyle for me, but I enjoyed every minute of it; I am proud of how much I matured due to attending.
Summer Seminar was one of the most physically grueling experiences I have ever faced. While I was used to waking up early for zero period, waking up at dawn for physical training was new to me. Sun or rain, the sound of gongs and howling midshipmen woke us up at five AM. We performed repetitions of push-ups, sit-ups, and a plethora of various exercises before a jog. The hardest of these sessions was on the last day, when we had to complete a three-mile jog. Cardio has always been a problem for me, so I was afraid I would not make it. Due to my friends pushing me on though, I can proudly claim I went the entire way without walking once. In return, I led cadences, which helped distract everyone from the run and made it actually enjoyable. The biggest sense of accomplishment I felt was two days prior however. I was taking the physical readiness test, which consists of push-ups, sit-ups, and 1.5-mile run. During the running portion, I began to slow down. When a female midshipmen told me to keep going, I replied I ready to puke. To which she asked so what? and ran beside me. I persevered and finished in 10:30 minutes, my best time yet.
While the Summer Seminar program did not put as much emphasis on academics, there were mock courses available for us to take. Again, there was a dramatic shift from my high school norm as classes were three-hours long, in comparison to one-hour classes. Some of them were boring, like general mathematics, where we merely went over problems, and some of them were quite entertaining, like physics, in which the instructor used electromagnetism to propel a metallic disk fifty feet into the air. The most memorable course was a seminar on leadership, in which we talked about the qualities and actions of an ideal leader. Being in NJROTC and a scholar of Sun-Tzu, I was able to share my experiences and thoughts. Conversely, I heard what others considered staples of leadership. Consequently, I now have a list of characteristics that I try to improve on weekly.<br>
While I no longer strive to attend the USNA, Summer Seminar will always remain a lasting memory for me. I feel as if I developed over those five days. Prior, I had been worried about whether or not I could survive college. After taking exhaustive classes immediately followed by grueling physical training, I can happily say that the college workload threat no longer scares me. More importantly, I left with a new sense of self-confidence in my abilities and developed vital morale and leadership characteristics. </p>
<p>Some things I was wondering about:
COMMAS
WE OR I?
1.5 or one and a half
BESIDE OR BESIDES?
to puke. To which bad flow?</p>