<p>There are two types of frames for BCGs, guys and girls. You get in trouble if you dont wear them and should be. (I didnt have them, I just observed this)</p>
<p>As for time during the ac year- you have it, but you have a TON of stuff to do during that time (like reading or homework or studying-ie, what I should be doing now lol) But you need “self” time too, and you find ways to make it. Sports practice helps. My company still doesnt have IM</p>
<p>TIme during the summer- 30 minutes at night. Litterally. and 4 hours on sunday.</p>
<p>This is something that all of the Plebes to Be need to understand. Don’t be posting your AIM screen name in any of the soundoff etc. threads. You really don’t want any upperclass finding your sceen name along with your “real” name…</p>
<p>Also… does anyone know why BILLY the GOAT mascot for football is wearing No. 71 jersey? Is the Mascot person a Midshipman, part of the cheerleaders?</p>
<p>Reform comes in the middle of the week after PPW and it’s not a happy time for the plebes. Suddenly you have 3000 new people who get to yell at you. And then there’s HELL-o night…</p>
<p>During the week after PPW, the plebes move to their company areas and into their new rooms, get their books, go to briefings and other things like that.</p>
<p>I have never posted this but this seems like a good time.As a parent of the 2010 Class, yes I was there at PPW last August. At the very end everyone was standing around the entrances to Bancroft Hall. Some young people like my Plebe wanted to leave their parents a bit early - others lingered until the absolute last minute. Since my Plebe left us with her final goodbye hugs with about 30 minutes to spare…while my husband went on a long hike to get back to the car to drive by and pick me up, I decided to walk into Memorial Hall which was still open. I was virtually all alone in there. I couldn’t believe it. The ONLY person in that huge hall was a USNA Second Class Yearbook photographer - taking shots of the Plebes and families from his long-range lenses. </p>
<p>What happened in that Hall while I was all by myself was most instructive. As the 30 minutes wound down I heard yelling echoing all over the place. Every corner of the Hall in the hallows of Bancroft Hall there were Plebes being yelled at to hurry up, get out of their clothes, get into their rooms, prepare for a formation…it was a cacaphony of screaming voices. I heard female Cadre, male Cadre, Plebe voices answering and the scuffle of hundreds of bodies trying like mad to follow the barrage of commands. Mind you, I could SEE none of this, I only HEARD the noises echoing in a ghostly manner. It was almost like a movie set where I was the star, the camera is panning my face and I am experiencing memories in the sounds of my mind - it was that surreal. Yet I knew that I was privy, as a Plebe parent - at long last to the REAL world of my Plebe and her 1200 mid-mates. The confusion, the noise, the ‘craziness’ as she terms it - I could hear, I could sense, I could almost taste. It was both thrilling to me as a mom who got this ‘secret moment’ and yet sobering as well - since the whole point of this kind of training is to simulate a crisis environment to teach leadership and peak performance under stress…I was hearing a Plebe snapshot equivalent of war training. I hope I’m conveying the power of this experience to you all. As the minutes wound down on the clock I knew I had to get OUT of there. The Plebe class was about to pop out of the Hall and be on Tecumseh Court for their evening dinner formation and that they didn’t want any parent’s there and I dare not risk bringing any undue attention to my Plebe by being there as a ‘lurker’.</p>
<p>Just as I got out of the area they closed it off to any visitors and within a minute out came all the Platoons of Plebes and their Cadre in a changed uniform, in perfect order - composed, erect - in formation ready to march to dinner. The chaos I was so priveleged to catch was replaced by this order and dignity for comsumption by the general public. I would guess about 200 of us parents, who hadn’t yet left the Academy grounds - lingered just long enough for that one final glimpse of our precious Plebes as they marched into the caverns of Bancroft Hall for their dinner meal. I will never forget the swirling emotions I experienced as I went through that last hour - but I will forever cherish that unbelievable, unexpected, very personal and private window into the life my Plebe and her co-mids had experienced for 7 weeks, that I was priveleged to experience.</p>
<p>Questions like “quiet time”, “alone time”, “personal time” and the like have NO meaning for Plebe Summer and most if not all of Plebe year. These are young people first and foremost in the most elite Military Officer Training our country has to offer. They are in a Boot Camp on Steroids. They should be - they are going to be leaders of others. The burden of deaths will be on their consciences. I urge all new Plebe parents to realize their children are NOT going to college - they are going into the military and the military has so deemed them college students. That is the order of events - not the other way around. Throw out any ideas of this being like college, or a college dorm. You’ll spare yourselves a heck of alot of mental grief if you approach your child’s Plebe Summer, and Plebe year with this frame of mind.</p>
<p>“I urge all new Plebe parents to realize their children are NOT going to college - they are going into the military and the military has so deemed them college students.”</p>
<p>Oh Boy here we go again…I’ll go with what the Military has deemed them…college students and my Plebe will say the same thing. </p>
<p>This summer he will be in the military, at certain times of the day he is in the military but he still is a college student through and through. He takes basically the same classes as other college students, he goes through 6wk and 12wk and final exams just like the college student my hubbie teaches. He viewed his appointment and acceptance as a college choice. It works for him. Mine chose to attend the United States Naval Academy as a college choice - a darn good one at that - he has a job while he is in college called the Navy and in the end after he finishes college he will have a career, at least for five years, in the United States Navy. But right now my plebe is in college.</p>
<p>In the same manor for some Midshipmen and their families they will view the whole experience as a military choice. Neither is right or wrong it just is how it is viewed.</p>
<p>Please let your child decide how they view the experience, take their lead as they are the ones that are about to embrace an attitude that will help them make it through Plebe Summer, Plebe year and then the rest. It has to be their attitude not your view.</p>
<p>thank you spidermom…years ago as a college student I wrote professionally, and my writing prof in college actually got me a job offer for the LA times on Staff as a writer…but my heart at that point was for marriage and being a wife and mother.Now, 31 years of marriage later, 5 kids later…I am toying with this thought again, so thanks for your kind words</p>
<p>prof…It really isn’t so much of an ‘either-or’ on the military vs. college question, but it DOES help to think of it in my terms when you are told to polish your shoes instead of studying for a chem final that you HAVE to pass, or to get up and run on remedial PT instead of writing your English paper…it is at moments like that a midshipman to survive has to realize they are not primarily college students, and juggle every stress put at them from all sides…academic and military.</p>
<p>And I also think it helps ‘newbie’ parents start to familiarize themselves with this novel thought before they freak out when they wonder why their Plebe is not ‘allowed’ to stay up late and study but then is awakened early for a room inspection.</p>
<p>While the stresses of plebe year subside after Herndon…the academic work picks up and starting 2/C year, billets (job) possibilities open up. So MIDN life does not get a lot eassier in the terms of free time as you progress through the Academy. This is also made with the assumption that you are working your behind off (i.e. not sleeping and blowing other things off).</p>
<p>The point is: in the military you got to understand that there may not be free time</p>
<p>I just got my son’s cell phone bill; 15 minutes talking to his dad, 1279 minutes talking to his girlfriend on the opposite side of the country. Apparently they do have some time but I think it’s all after 2330.</p>
<p>I hope he doesn’t get caught. Plebes don’t rate cell phones during study hour (2000-2400) and plebes don’t rate being up past 2300 unless to do studying.</p>
<p>It’s the cadet game. You do what you can, but if you get caught, you pay the price. I think it’s a bad way to run things (not a good model to follow, especially in AD), but that is life at an SA.</p>