Something I remember being posted by one of the "old timers" around this time last year: This is the end of Indoc, beginning of classes. Tell yourself, "Let me give it a try to Acceptance Day." That's five weeks. Then, "Let me make it to the end of the first trimester." Then, "Let me make it to Thanksgiving." Then, Let me make it to Christmas." And so on. It gives you a series of goals. And for some plebes, they're going to hit the end of one of those goals and say "no, this is not for me." For others, it convinces them that "yes, I can do this."
Plebe year is definitely a series of lows and highs. One of DS's highs came in the 5K run (this year's takes place next week): he placed 4th out of about 600, first in his company. (And then it was a short move to the cross country team.
) His low? Failing Calc II second trimester. When he came home that week, he was about at the lowest I've seen him - he already knew he failed Calc II and was very much afraid he had also failed Physics II, and looking at setback at best or disenrollment at worst. He ended up with a C in Physics II, so the Calc II failure just meant summer school.
In fact, DH just returned from KP this morning with the car we let him use during summer school, loaded down with DS's stuff as well as stuff belonging to other 3C mids who didn't have a chance to store it in the sea lockers (DS is a B-split, so he's headed out to sea next week). DH commented on how happy DS is - part of it is looking forward to going out to sea, but the other part is feeling comfortable with the KP environment.