I'm here to answer your unanswered ???s'

DisgruntledAlumn
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 07:42:54 +0000

“hi DisgruntledAlumn, I am a kid who applied to USMMA for class of 2012. I have lots questions regarding USMMA. can you tell me the experinces of first day? ( im little scared to tell you the truth). I know its tough, but i want to hear more besides its tough. i came to u.s 6 years ago and i was wondering if accent is an issue there. i mean I do understand and talk fine but the thing is when i get nervous i just go like u know. i mean do you really have to be fast talker? and fluent in english in order to survive?
thank you”

I wouldn’t worry too much. As I was also a drill instructor, I know what Indoc is about on both sides of the fence. The goal is to make you flustered, disoriented and basically break you down in the first couple days. This is so they can mold you into a midshipman in a short time peroid. Basically, no matter how short you you think your hair is, you’ll get a haircut on day one. In the gym, when you first process, everyone is nice and everything goes smooth. Once you step outside, you will be bombarded by drill instructors whos main job is to yell at you. You can do nothing wrong all day and you will be doing push-ups and getting yelled at. Day one is where they come at you the fastest and hardest. They will expect you be loud in your answers, and no matter how loud you are, they will ask you to be louder if you get my drift. A good movie to watch is “full metal jacket” Just watch the first hour and you will see that a lot of the the lines the drill instructors will use will come from this movie. There are different routes you can take during indoc to mold your time at at KP because some people do pay close attention to this time. You can step out on the limb and try to answer all the questions and be the hero all the time but your classmates will probably not think highly of you. Or you can try to slip under the radar by doing exactly as you are told and nothing more. Or you can try and challenge the drill instructors where you will get known but it will be painful as they will not being doing every push-up with you.

The accent issue…a drill instrictors goal is to break you down, they will try to make you stutter, they will try to make you unsure of your answers, they will try to make you cry. on the first Sunday when everyone gets to cal home for the first time with a five minute time limit, I never saw one plebe get off the phone and not be crying. And let me forewarn you and you parents, five minutes is five minutes, the drill instructors have no problem hanging up the phone for the plebe, so you might want to sit around the house all day waiting for the call as you child may only have one chance and it really means a lot to the plebe.