Weekend liberty
The plebes will have very limited time off on weekends for the most part, if at all. Sometimes they will have liberty from Sat afternoon (after regimental duties/training on Sat morning) until 11 p.m. on Sat evening - not really enough time to get to NYC and back. Some Friday nights are spent cleaning for hours getting ready for early morning inspection on Sat. We live fairly close to the academy, within 25 minutes, and our DS rarely came home. Sometimes that was his own choice since he felt that he was better off staying at KP on Friday night even if they had Friday liberty, doing some studying and then getting in more studying on Sat and Sun. He thought that coming home was too distracting with friends, TV, etc. and he was better off staying at KP. The plebes were very restricted last year with the new liberty policy and in fact all classes had their liberty cut down from previous years. It will be interesting to see if the new superintendent continues with this same liberty policy. Occasionally we would go out there and take him to dinner for just a few hours. But that is all OK if he is doing well with his academics. The worst feeling for parents is when you get that call that they think they are failing several subjects and everything looks very bleak. That's when parents must be prepared to give just the right amount of support without falling prey to the depressing tone on the other side of the phone - and it happens to all of them.