Everyone has 24 hours in a day. Service Academy Plebes have a little more on their plate than an average college freshman. A common way for people to handle the volume of work expected of them is to expand their waking hours in a day. This typically means waking up earlier and going to bed later. High achievers tend to believe they can work their way out of a jam. In this case, the common misconception is that you can work more and do more. The fallacy is that the system is literally designed to keep adding to your plate until you reach a tipping point. An inflection point where you learn a different way - typically a triaging approach that forces you to realise what is critical and what is just noise.
There will come a time where you are staying up until 2am and then getting up at 5am - repeatedly. As you reach the zombie phase and can no longer know what time or day it is, you reach your breaking point as a person and something has to change. This is where you start to make selective choices on things you are no longer going to do. This is often situational. For instance, you may have math homework + an essay + learn plebe knowledge + an exam to study for all in one night. An outsider would have said - why didn't you plan better and not let all of that land on the same night? A SA student or grad will understand how a series of events (and not procrastination) led to this common scenario. You can try to give each task equal time -- and this is the common Plebe fallacy because everything is not weighted equally. The trick to solving this time management problem is to understand ROI - return on investment. For starters, considering this list of things to accomplish in a specific and limited amount of time, the plebe knowledge would be the first to go. You are not going to get kicked out for failing it once. Repeatedly, maybe, but low in probability.
With that off the plate, the next round of evaluation is based on how your grades are in the different classes and what has padding to where if something less than stellar was turned in would still be ok? Is the math grade a daily grade vs. the essay or exam that could be a major grade? Am I close to failing a course and need to give that subject the priority?
While not a real consideration for high achieving high school students, SA students are frequently making decisions based on what will and what will not get them kicked out of school.
My advice, while risking sounding idealistic, is to prioritize sleep over most things. It may result in more PT from upperclassmen who tasked you with learning quotes and knowledge. It will also allow you to pay attention in class. Struggling academically is not a good feeling and it is the hardest to dig out of. The pace at KP moves faster than any SA because of the trimester system. Historically, exams are slanted more towards in-class lecture and less from daily graded assignments. This one secret is one I wish I would have paid more attention to early on.
The internet brings new challenges for today's SA students. Distractions are everywhere, and there is no time for them. Being restricted from your phone is not common, but I can see how it would actually be helpful because it is simply one less distraction.
Most difficult time of the year? Generally the largest break between being able to see your family.
Most difficult thing to get used? Restriction and being subject to someone dictating privileges/rates that are not always based solely on your individual performance. It will at times feel that it is not a fair system.
Your experience, no matter what it is, is relative to you and the time frame of the experience. You will always hear from others that they had it so much harder. To that, I say - awesome, it was relative to the time in which they participated in the experience. Had you participated in the experience at the same time as them, you too would rise or fall to the level of expectation around you.
