It’s only Wednesday? Crap….

This week is going WAY too slow.

I was thinking the other day as I was walking back to my room after a class, before I got here, I didn’t even know what this place looked like.  It occurs to me that I had no information whatsoever about what I was getting myself into.  This was a bad idea.  I’m not saying that I want to leave.  I do however encourage my noble readers to thoroughly investigate important life decisions.

This leads to my pondering for this post.  During psychology the other day, I got to thinking about what I’m being trained to do.  When I graduate, I’m going to lead soldiers.  I’ll have a platoon of people that I am responsible for, and later a company of them.  Every so often that really sinks in for me.  It’s not that I forget about it the rest of the time.  Some days are just more thought provoking.  One thing that scares me a little is that I’m not sure that a lot of people here really think about that fact.  To some people at the academy, it seems like this is just school, and that after this they are going to get a job just like any other college student.  But we aren’t just any other college student.  I can’t help but be amazed at the culpability I will have in my job.

Some of us will be leading men in combat, others working in the rear to keep things maintained.  Regardless, we will be responsible for the lives of our troops.  When I was in Germany, in a sustainment and support battalion in garrison, a soldier in another company died in the motor pool from an accident.  How does his PL feel after that?  His CO?  Do they feel responsible?  Like they failed him?  I have to think that I would feel that way, even if there was nothing they could really have done.  And that’s just in a garrison environment; what about in combat?

I don’t really mean to be so somber, it’s just been on my mind with my old unit getting ready to head over.  Some days when things are just stupid, I wish I was going with them, doing something useful, instead of sitting here picking up people’s trash and delivering their laundry.

Michael

Another Sunday Night Edition of Hazefest

Honestly, Sunday duties are not that big a deal.  Tonight started out fine: we got all the laundry delivered, there were very few mistakes on knowledge during the delivery portion.

Then once we were done they brought us out on the wall and asked us Schoffield’s Definition of Discipline.  They hadn’t asked it in a long time, so a lot of people messed it up, probably about half.  Then they started complaining about it and then asked us Worth’s Battalion Orders, which they haven’t asked us in a long time either.  Most of the people messed it up.  I did too, because a huge group to my left messed up so I couldn’t here where everyone else was at and got too far ahead.  CDT SGT Baum, one of the platoon sergeants and probably my least favorite of them because of his reliance on profanity to get his point across, started going off on us about it.

Essentially, it was the same arguments that they usually give us.  The addition this time was that he was going to take every minute that he could from us this week.  This of course sucks really bad because this is one of the last weeks of classes so we have a lot going on in all of them.

Every time I start to feel alright about this place, the upperclassmen give me a new reason to hate the way they do things.

On another note, weird article in the Washington Post today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/16/AR2009041603483.html

Michael

Honor, Sugar, and one jacked up night at the Point

After our last extremely successful strike on Mr. McKavitt, our resident midshipman (sarcasm of course, see last post), one/a few of my classmates decided that another great idea would be to put sugar in his room.  As in, put sugar crystals in his bed, uniform, belongings, etc.

This was of course a horrible idea.  We received an email from our First Sergeant this afternoon that we had until 2000 hours for the culprit(s) to turn themselves in.  That time rolled around and we got an email from a plebe he had talked to who said that we had until 2030 hours.  At 2031, we received an email:

Plebes,

Who ever thought it was a good idea to pour sugar all over Midshipman McKavitt’s room, including his personal belongings and uniforms, has made a terrible decision for your class.  Until further notice the entire plebe class has all privileges, including walking privs, movies and music privs on the weekend, and pass privileges revoked. Additionally, all plebe rooms will be in open door AMI for the remainder of the week until COB each day and open door ESP each night until 2315 this week.  Finally, Rattay and Kinley, as laundry CiC and ACIC for this week you will pick up Mr. McKavitts bed linens and any other items that were ruined that he needs tonight and wash them.  You can thank your classmates for screwing you over.

I strongly suggest that you encourage your classmate or classmates who took this action to come forward and take ownership for their poor decision. I am extremely disappointed in your class for your lack of respect and poor decision making.  You are going to be LTs in 3 short years.  Start acting like it.

So, it would seem that my classmates can’t even own up for something that they do.  They would rather make the rest of us take the fall for them.  To me, it’s not the fact that the privileges are gone, or that I won’t be able to nap…at all.  It’s the fact that the people I’m supposed to trust the most won’t even do the right thing when they make a mistake.

Apparently, the individual did turn him or herself in, but it was after the deadline.  Took them several hours to find their balls I guess.

There is something else that happened that I am choosing to keep under wraps, but really thickens the plot.  It actually makes tonight quite insane.  1.5 more days until Vegas…I need a break…again.

Michael

Homework or Blog?

I guess you can see the answer.

Saturday we had a big inspection, SAMI.  The plebes decided that it was finally time to get back at the exchange midshipman in our company this semester.  He has been a total haze and a general annoyance to our company since he got here.  The discussion has been going over the plebe distro for a couple weeks now.  Saturday morning before the inspection period started, someone put glitter in his display drawers, on his uniform items.

Of course, he has no proof of who it was.  But, he made the conjecture that it was the plebes, which I can of course neither confirm nor deny.  Today, at our weekly session of Sunday night duties, he had a little smoke session with us.

Anyone who knows me know that I hate mass punishment in general.  This was a little different, just because we did in fact do something as a team.  What’s funny is that he said a few things that struck me:

1. We need to work as a group more.  Oddly enough, this WAS us working as a group.
2. The First Sergeant and the Platoon Sergeants came to him to “deal” with our lack of performance.
3. The funniest part, our last exercise was the dive bomber, and to really make sure we knew that we should act mature, he made us make airplane sounds.

We also stopped at 26 flutter kicks.  Who stops at 26?  I think he got more smoked than we did.  I don’t know about the rest of my classmates, but I’ve been legitimately smoked before, and that was not it.  I’ve therefore decided that anything we do to him or his property is going to be completely worth whatever he makes us do.

I’m planning a West Point trivia based scavenger hunt to find his uniform items.  It’s going to take work, but I’ll be damned if it won’t leave an impression.  This is just getting ridiculous.  Every week he sends out a Navy word of the week to the whole company.  This week was about the “Crossing the Line” rituals on ships.  No one here cares!  Who does he think he is?

The Plebe Jihad will strike, and we will strike hard.

Michael

Duties, Midshipmen, and Stupidity…

Another fabulous Sunday night at the Point.

As was put out by our 1SG last week, we will be having duties every Sunday after recall formation until all the plebes know their knowledge.  This is of course like saying that we will have them for the rest of the year, since there will always be people who don’t care enough to study the material that is sent out over and over again.  The usual occurred tonight, as the upperclassmen (the platoon sergeants and my beloved midshipman who I hate more than anything I have ever known) were displeased in the level of knowledge mastery.

Here at the academy, we have a period of MANDATED study time for the lower two classes on nights before class days.  It’s known as Evening Study Period (ESP).  It starts at 1930.  In general, ESP is perhaps the only thing that is sacred here.  Well, at 1930 tonight, we were still doing duties.  When one of our comrades went out to ensure that they realized this was the case, he was basically brushed aside and then eventually, they brought us all out of the wall to tell us that we should NEVER send a classmate out to tell them what time it was.

So, now we are in ESP, doing some push ups because we did that.  One of them said that ESP is dependent on whenever they release us and that let’s face it, we “wouldn’t be doing [our] homework anyway.”  Ok, now, whether that is true or not is beside the point.  For me, I have a lot of work tonight.  I’m just really angry now.  My honor has been challenged.  That is never a good thing with me.

And of course our favorite comrade from Navy was there, being himself, and he sent out his Navy word of the Week after.  Ridiculous.

I get to have first formation an hour earlier tomorrow so that we can have suicide prevention training after lunch.  Awesome.

Michael

My Thoughts on the Current Discussion

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/29/AR2009012904135.html?hpid=topnews

Well, we knew it would happen eventually.  After reading some of the comments on this article, I’m not sure which worries me more, the content and subject of the article, or the American people’s take on the situation.

From my perspective, this has very little to do with military service and combat in our future.  I saw one comment that since people come to the academy before they are 25, they are not old enough to make a fully informed decision.  Pardon my language, but that’s bull shit.  Insurance companies use that to charge more for teenage drivers.  I’m almost 20 years old.  I know exactly what I signed up for.  I knew exactly what I was volunteering for when I enlisted at 18.  I knew that I would likely deploy within 30 days of arriving at my first duty station.  I know now that after my 4 years at the academy, I will be leading men in combat.  Their lives will be my responsibility.  I accepted those risks and costs knowing full well what they meant.

Why are the suicide rates increasing?  My generation has major issues.  I’ll be honest.  I think we have been so coddled over the years that many of us don’t really know what is going on.  I like to think that West Point is the cream of the crop, but deep down I know we have the same problems.  Most of our parents have given us everything we ever needed and more. Many of us never learned to appreciate the value of things.  The value of work.

I was raised by my mother and grandmother.  Living with my grandmother who was alive during the depression, I think I had an advantage.  I was taught the importance of everything in life.  Maybe a lot of my fellow cadets missed that in their upbringing.  I know one thing, many of them are simply not prepared for the military life the way it is.

I don’t really know how to say it, but looking at the people I served with on the enlisted side, and the cadets I see here, many of them didn’t expect what they ended up with.  I’ll admit, we do some retarded stuff here.  Delivering laundry to upperclassmen?  What is that about?  Cleaning rooms that I’m not even allowed to use?  A lot of these kids probably weren’t even really responsible for keeping their own rooms clean growing up.  I had an easy life, I admit that.  When I enlisted though, I learned real fast that the free ride was over.  I adapted, I overcame.

Maybe the problem is that my classmates and other fellow cadets simply are not ready to move on into their new life and give up the high school mentality.

Michael

If I Was the Supe

A lot of my time goes into deciding what my first acts would be if I became the Superintendent, or rather, when I do.  I mostly want to just so I have my own chopper that can land several meters from my house on the nation’s second most expensive lawn.

1. My first act would be to move West Point to the West Coast.
2. I will cordon off the current West Point Military Reservation in its entirety and turn it into a nuclear wasteland for at least 1000 years while all the unhappiness of over 200 years is washed away by nuclear fallout and radiation.
3. ACU’s would become the uniform for most occasions.  We would keep Full Dress and such out of respect to the Long Gray Line, but As For Class will be a thing of the past.
4. In the event that we must remain here in NY, rather than salting down the walkways to prevent/remove ice, we’ll use a Zamboni to smooth out the ice and we will issue ice skates to cadets, such that they can skate to class, increasing speed between classes.

Those are my first few thoughts.

Michael

This Place is Still Weird…

So, I’m still not entirely comfortable with how many officers I encounter on a daily basis.  Seriously, if you are looking for the highest concentration of commissioned officers on any military post in the Army, this would easily win.  And it’s not like they are O-1’s and O-2’s either.  We’re talking Majors, Colonels, Generals, just meandering through the halls.

On a normal day in the active Army, if you see anything higher than your CO, someone messed up.  Heck, I saw my PL like 4 times the whole time I was at my unit.  Here I see a full bird Colonel daily and a couple Generals at the very least monthly, though I’m still convinced that the Supe never really is anywhere, it’s all clones and mirrors.

I guess it just makes for a really weird dynamic.  Does it make cadets too comfortable with superiors?  From observing some Firsties, maybe.

Someone in my chemistry class told me he actually reads these things and enjoys them.  I was surprised.  So more than anything, this blog is for you.

Michael

Knowing That You’re Right, But Doing What You’re Told

I was calling minutes this morning and had a marvelous time.  The uniform today was sent out as “Army Combat Uniform, Under Black Fleece.”  We also wear black gloves with this uniform, but we do not say that in the minutes as it is implied with the black fleece.

I knew something was wrong when the head minute caller on the stoops yelled, “Go Frogs!” and the head minute caller of our division did not repeat it.  Instead, he paused, and then started calling minutes.  I have since learned that members of another company who are assigned to do minutes for the Battalion HQ (52nd division) have been lost all week, and even after being told so, they have been coming to the 53rd division to call minutes instead.

We started and I said the minutes the correct way:

Attention All Cadets! There are 5 minutes until assembly for breakfast formation!  The uniform is Army Combat Uniform Under Black Fleece! 5 minutes remaining!

The problem was that the other two people in the division said this:

Attention All Cadets! There are 5 minutes until assembly for breakfast formation!  The uniform is Army Combat Uniform Under Black Fleece Wearing Black Gloves! 5 minutes remaining!

Generally, once the others hear someone calling it correctly, they adjust to it.  However, when I called the 4-minute correctly as well and they still did it wrong, one of the Yuks walked past me and said “Next time do it right.”

Knowing that I was right, and as always rather upset when my intelligence is questioned, I said, “Corporal, I am right.  Black gloves are an implied item with the black fleece.”

“Call it like everyone else, you know what I mean!”

Obviously, I didn’t think that he wanted me to call the wrong thing because everyone else was jacked up, but that was exactly what he wanted.  I finished out the minutes, calling them wrong to match the rest of the division.

As I walked down the stairs to formation, he approached me an said, “The next time I make a correction like that, you better just say, ‘Yes, Corporal.’”

I was appalled.  I started to say something, I don’t even remember what, but he cut me off.  I just said, “Roger, Corporal” in my best, “I think this is retarded but I’m not going to say anything” tone.

I sent him and email a little while ago:

Corporal

I want to apologize if I seemed disrespectful this morning as it was not my intention.  I knew I was saying the right thing (especially since the e-mail sent out regarding minutes this morning reflected what I was doing) and anticipated that if I said the right thing, the others would realize that they were wrong and correct it, and that is usually what happens.

I never respond well when someone, even a superior, tells me to do something I feel is incorrect, but I could have handled the situation better.

He came upstairs rather quickly, saying that he appreciated the email and that I needed to work on it, especially for next semester because “big changes are coming.”  It seems that the Yuks have an idea in their heads that they are going to haze us next semester.  I’m afraid that the first person who tells me something retarded is going to find out exactly what I think about it….

And the war rages on.

Michael

The Yuk-Plebe War

Here we go again…

After the events of my last blog, it turns out that the Yuks (the sophomore year cadets who are our team leaders) are feeling that the Plebes should be held responsible for their hardship and negative COR’s (Cadet Observation Report, basically just a “you were naughty!” slip).  They complained about the granting of special privileges to the Plebes for this week and cited that we were failing to perform to standard.

Last night, a Saturday night, we had duties.  It was cleaning the barracks (felt like I was back in the Army), and they didn’t haze us, but they said some things that really threw me.

1. “We didn’t realize it was our job to make sure you guys got all your stuff done.”

This of course begs the question, what did they think that their responsibilities were exactly?  They were trying to be Plebes with Yuk privileges.  Sadly for them it doesn’t work like that.  I told the 1SG when I talked to him, that I always wondered why so many officers could seem so worthless, and he finished my sentence for me, “and then you came here.”

The way that West Point is supposed to be is a great idea.  How does it really work?  Not even close to the ideal.  We need to learn responsibility, and yet, who are we responsible for.  Specifically as a Plebe, I am barely responsible for myself.  It’s no wonder that the Yuks don’t understand that they are now responsible for us.  It’s their first (for most of them) real chance at being in charge of someone, and being held responsible for their successes and failures.

The problem is, they want to push their own failures onto us as well.  That phenomena is what is occuring right now.  Their noncompliance with the order regarding Minute Calling has resulted in them being punished.  Rather than admit that they disobeyed orders and were in the wrong, they want to blame us for calling the wrong thing for minutes.  What’s even more interesting is that for the most part our mistakes were resultant from the mistake of upperclassmen.

2. “Next semester we will be having real duties more often.”

If we weren’t doing these “real duties” before, what were we doing?!  Pardon me, but there are other companies who only have duties when there is laundry to deliver, and some companies who’s plebes do their duties at their convenience with no supervision from the upperclasses.

It seems that many of the Yuks want a war.  I am not one to sit idly by and be walked on by people who are in the wrong.  If they want a war, then it is a war they will get.

Michael