DD is currently in her fourth year of NROTC and I don't think there has been a semester yet in which she has not at some point asked "Tell me again why I am doing this." As you say, it is VERY time consuming, especially as a senior (at this point she averages over 25 emails per day relating to ROTC) and as her consortium consists of six different schools and she is on the battalion staff, she has to do a lot of travelling back and forth between campuses. As you also say, she is "not as obsessed with ROTC as 90% of the others appear to be" (though over the years I think this changes a bit for many, half of those in her university who began NROTC freshman year didn't return for the sophomore year), and she also does not like all of the bureaucracy. All of that being said, I can make the following observations.
Every semester when she asks herself why she is in ROTC, she always comes back to the same conclusion that it is what she needs to be doing. As a freshman she was very sleep deprived because, as you say, much of what happens in college occurs after 9 PM. And I'm not speaking about partying, I'm speaking of mandatory dorm meetings, scheduled study breaks, and during her freshman year ensemble practice for a singing group she was in which often didn't begin practices until ten in the evenings so everyone could be there. By now, she has to a large degree taken control of her own schedule. She found another singing group on campus and is now leading it so she can set the rehearsal times herself. She goes to bed at 9 PM and gets up at 5 AM each morning to work out (her unit only has PT one morning a week so she goes to the gym on her own the other days), and she manages her class load better (no credit for ROTC classes which are on another campus - that is on top of her regular load). She still hates all of the bureaucracy, though she is not alone in that as it is the number one complaint among junior officers in all branches and one reason the military is having major retention problems. While she gets along fine with the others in ROTC, her social group is outside of ROTC. She tells me she has three groups of friends: ROTC, Class, and Social Group (largely church and music connections), and there is little overlap between the three. Her senior year has been her best, though still has its frustrations. On the other hand, she has had great opportunities to meet a wide variety of people, attending lunches with numerous admirals, with the majority of the living medal of honor recipients, and on one occasion she was seated next to the SECDEF for lunch. She commented once after attending a Naval Conference at Notre Dame that most of the admirals who spoke said they were originally not obsessed with the navy and had planned on getting out after five years, but one thing led to another and the next thing they knew they had been in twenty-five years. Through it all she has held to Socrates statement that an unexamined life is not worth living, so she regularly examines her own life and her decisions. Perhaps that comes from being a philosophy major (though she is going into nuclear power in the navy). And as a parent, I wouldn't want it any other way.
