I am starting my blog! Last year, I sat behind my lap top screen and pored over endless blogs and websites in an effort to better understand what I was getting into, namely West Point.

 

I would like to share with you my experiences and answer any of your questions you may have so you can become comfortably prepared for all USMA has to offer you.

 

Here is a little bit about Beast. I will go into more depth about what you can do for Beast and what to bring to help you out later on. As for now enjoy the stories!

 

R-Day quickly came and went to my surprise and dismay. I had spent so many months anticipating this single day when supposedly my life would drastically change, and change it did. R-Day was the beginning of the next stage in my life. Unlike my peers in civilian colleges I was embarking on, for lack of a better word, an adventure.

 

I had heard a lot about West Point from having a father who attended the academy and now teaches here. However, no matter how many stories you hear or how many times you visit nothing can prepare you for what you experience during BEAST. You lose a lot of personal freedom, such as going to bed and waking up when you want to or eating when you want to, but what you gain cannot be accomplished any other way but through BEAST.  Beast took from me a lot of time, patience and , energy but it gave me amazing friendships, more confidence, a deeper sense of self-esteem and overall happiness. Yes, Beast, the pain everyone remebers gave me happiness. Just the other day, my Beast squad and I were reminiscing about those fateful and long summer days that have passed and we all agreed that we sometimes wish, on those lonely Thayer weeks, that we were back in Beast. We were simpler then. We awoke, did PT (physical training), ate, were briefed, took academic tests, trained, played sports and went to bed.

 

Beast did indeed break us down, just like they promised, but what we didn't know was that it wouldn't break us it merely broke us down into simpler parts. We were burdened physically and mentally through all the activities Beast demands but we learned to compartmentalize our situtations so that we truly lived in the moments we were given.

 

For those of you who are curious as to how such friendships can be formed when talking is rarely allowed amongst New Cadets here is an inside tip: the cadre wants you to bond by working together to accomplish their hard tasks they give to you, such as the infamous laundry duties. They force you to come up with creative ways of helping each other out. They put you in situations to force members of the squad to learn to put aside differences to get things done.

 

We also found time to hang out with each other at night. We would find treasured free time and usually go into someone's room that had been designated as the "chill out room" and there we would share stories of our experiences with cadre members. We would talk about senior year, the summer vacations we had before Beast, our friends, boy/girlfriends or lack there of, and other loved ones. These were the times we laughed the hardest. People don't realize how much phones, texting, e-mailing, and IMing have impacted our relationships. Sometimes using these different forms of communication we are able to create a comfortable distance between one and another through interpersonal conversations via text or email. However, due to our severe lack of communication with the outside world, aside from hand written letters, we were able to work on communicating with each other in such a raw and basic way, where hiding your emotions or being fake were not viable options.

 

Aside from friendships we became physically and mentally stronger. Beast requires you to constantly be moving or working out so your mile time will drop a lot and muscular endurance will sky rocket. The APFT(army physical fitness test) at the beginning of Beast will more than likely not be your best score here at the academy but it is ok because its purpose is merely to constrast your physical growth from the beginning to the end of the summer. My score, to give you an idea, jumped 85 points by early August when we took our second APFT. I recommend going all out on the workouts in the mornings, especially MSE mornings (muscular strength and endurance) because it will only benefit you in the end.

 

Also, you will become much stronger mentally. You will learn to memorize your knowledge quickly and efficiently. You will become much better at decision making in  regards to yourself and your squad mates. You will learn to ease the pain of leaving your friends and family by making friends in your Beast company.

 

To wrap this up for now, I will say Beast, despite my reservations, was the best expereince for me at the time and I have never regretted it once.

 

More to come on Plebe academic year!