To let my friends know my mailing address during Beast?

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Dec 21, 2009
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Will I know my mailing address before R-Day? If I'm not assigned a mailbox until R-Day, how do I let my friends know the address? Phone? Facebook? How?
 
I think you get it 2 weeks before R-day.

If not you could leave your friends' contact info with someone at home and have them contact your friends. That's what I would do anyway.
 
The academy will send you your PO Box address about 2 weeks before R-day. You will not know your company until R-day but that is not needed to send mail until the end of Beast when you are in the field. Your parents can tell others your company after they return from R-day. If your parents don't attend R-day you will need to tell them your company in the first letter home or during the first phone call.

You will not have a computer during Beast so no access to Facebook or email. You will get 3 phone calls home during Beast. Two will be about 10 minutes each and you will be timed by the cadre (this is the fastest 10 minutes of my life :wink:). One will come around the mid point of Beast during the "ice cream social." You will be taken in by a sponsor family on post for a few hours during which they will feed you, let you relax and use the phone to call home. This call is usually longer then 10 minutes but the phone will be shared between all the new cadets with that sponsor family. My son was lucky, the sponsor family had a landline and two cell phones. He was able to call us and talk for a half hour and he called his girlfriend as well.
 
Not to bring an old thread out of the dirt, but it is mentioned above that plebes/new cadets get a sponsor. I know a Colonel who lives on post at USMA who does the sponsor deal. Is there a way to contact someone to get him as my sponsor? Do I have any choice in the matter?
 
Not to bring an old thread out of the dirt, but it is mentioned above that plebes/new cadets get a sponsor. I know a Colonel who lives on post at USMA who does the sponsor deal. Is there a way to contact someone to get him as my sponsor? Do I have any choice in the matter?

Your sponsor for the ice cream social will be random. When you receive your "permanent" sponsor during the beginning of the academic year you will be able to request a specific sponsor and they will be yours so long as they approve the request. If you don't know a specific sponsor to request you are able to put preferences in traits of your sponsor such as "same home state".
 
You can request a specific sponsor. My cadet and the officer to whose house she went for the Ice Cream Social "hit if off" and they requested one another for sponsorship. I think that is the caveat; both parties must request in that instance. I do know of a few friends of my cadet who had prior ties to officers on post and requested one another. I know of one cadet whose sister had a tie to an officer, so that officer requested the sibling as a cadet.

You will also find that over the course of time, you and a family may unofficially "adopt" one another. For example, my cadet's sponsor also includes several of her friends, whom they truly enjoy, when they hold group get togethers. There have been several officers on post with whom my cadet has become close and although two of them have moved on, she still keeps in touch with them regularly.

One thing to keep in mind with your sponsor is that it is a two way street. If your sponsor says to call if you need anything, take them at their word and call them. They can be lifesavers, giving you rides places, letting you do your laundry, having you over for Sunday dinner, etc. My cadet's sponsor family has taken her to Broadway several times and has actually let us use their house for weekend visits when they happened to be out of town. Above and beyond what is expected, but I have heard that is not an uncommon practice.

On A-Day, her family invited us to their house to wait until she could join us, rather than us waiting under a tree or by a statue. They also took us on a tour of West Point unlike one you would get with a tour company.

So use your manners, say please and thank you, talk to them and be conversant, and you can form a lifelong relationship with some great folks! This family has been an integral part of my cadet's life for 3-1/2 years; it will be hard to tell them good-bye in May, although I know we will stay in touch with them, as will she.
 
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