I need advice from Navy parents

SteveTheBeav
Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:56:39 +0000

I took a very gradual approach with my parents. During the spring of my Junior year we began looking at colleges. I told them that I wanted to look into the Service Academies. After some research, I told them that I wanted to apply to the Naval Academy to see if I could get in, along with other schools to keep my options open. I did this to ease them into the discussion and partly b/c I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to go to USNA or not. They are not anti-military liberals, but they both had objections to my decission. My mother’s maternal instinct kicked in and she worried about my safety which was understandable. My father (and most of my family) already had a “master plan” for my life in which I went to an Ivy League school and became an MD, so USNA didn’t really fit into his plans for me. I have nothing against my father or doctors, but I knew that going into medicine was not what I wanted with my life and not what would make me happy.

My mother was thankfully, a silent objector to my decision, my father was not. First he tried to pressure me into thinking his way. Then he took every chance he got to degrade the military. Neither tactic worked on me, and actually just ****ed me off and made me more determined. What he failed to realize is that I am just as stubborn as he is.

As I began the journey (or ordeal) of the application process I gradually realized that USNA was one of my top choices in schools and looked like a place that I really wanted to be. I explained this to them and gave them my reasons. They understood, but asked that I still apply to other schools to keep my options open, which I agreed was a good idea. By this point both of them had cooled off a bit. My dad had convinced my mom that if I was in the Navy the chances of me getting shot at were not as likely (whether or not this is true is not important, it’s just what he told her). He finally realized that his tactics were not working and that I was actually serious about going, so he started to support me more so as not to cause a riff between us.

And that’s sort of where we stand as of now.

What I have not yet told them, but think they may have figured out is that, one, USNA is my top choice and THE place that I want to be, two, that my first choice of service assignments is the Marines, and three, regardless of what school I end up going to, I plan on going into the military after earning my degree in any way that I can, whether it is ROTC, OCS, or straight out enlisting.