usna vs usafa

Plebe year isn't easy -- isn't meant to be. That's why there are shirts in the MidStore that say N*t College.

I can promise you that every single grad had it as hard as you do. It definitely wasn't easier 40 years ago (we carried 20/21 credit hours, got zero WEs and weren't even allowed to listen to music). That said, your class faces different challenges (we didn't have mandatory PT on Saturday mornings, for example).

The thousands of people who have graduated from USNA aren't supermen/women. It sucked for us, but we made it through. Many of us wanted to quit. But we persevered.

You get two years to make your decision. Almost everyone finds that youngster year is a LOT better and they start to see light at the end of the tunnel (that isn't the onrushing train). That's why the overwhelming majority stay. Some decide it's not for them. They leave and embark on a different path.

You signed up for a challenge. You've got one. Embrace it!
 
usna1985 said:
we carried 20/21 credit hours, got zero WEs and weren't even allowed to listen to music
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I don't think that many of the parents here, much less the mids quite grasp this. When I was a mid, Plebes did not rate radios
until after Easter so approx 3/4 of plebe year with just about zero access to any personal electronics. There was just ONE TV in
the company which was in the Company Wardroom and plebes did not rate being in the Company Wardroom.

One of my first set Second Class in my squad did allow plebes to listen to his stereo as long as they were hanging from his shower
rod ("hang around and listen to music") and that might work for like 1 or 2 songs.
 
We could use headphone in Nimitz Library to listen to The Grease Man on DC 101 during evening study. Also got second hand music from the upper class. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. The three youngster ladies who lived across the passageway wore out the grooves on the Go-Go's first album in the fall of 1981. Whenever I hear "We got the beat" or "Our lips are sealed", I think of them.
 
+100 to all the alumni who've posted their "been there, done that" perspective. They know better than anyone else.

DD told me this a couple years after commissioning. To paraphrase: "USNA is great preparation for AD. AD is nothing like USNA. It's much harder."
 
The Grease Man. Holy crap, that's a flashback! Every morning on the way to high school in my friend's truck.
 
The thing is that, years later, most remember and focus on the positives. Did not rating music or TV or WEs for a year ruin my life? Of course not. I don’t remember the suck. I DO remember the challenge of carrying 20-21 hours and the constant fear of failing out. Ds and Fs were common. It was plebe year. It was supposed to be hard. As CAPT MJ says: Embrace the suck.

Then I went on deployment. 😀
 
Even just ONE year after plebe year, I remember the fun we had way more than the suck! I remember how classmates pulled me up. I remember how I dug deep and kept going. Plus, looking back it seems like for about half of the suck I can now see the point, like ohhh, I get it now. The other half is still pointless, but I'm starting to understand that happens everywhere not just here.
 
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