Your Son/Daughter is Going Where?? Round 2

Last year, usna had two PRIVATE concerts: Put Bill, and Pentatonix.
Put Bill? So I’m not the only one out of touch with today’s music scene! 🥴 DD’s eye roll and groan were palpable last year when I said, “So, I heard you guys saw Bulldog in concert.”

She said it was outrageously fun — the most fun she’d had at a concert. Which goes to show, when the lows are low, the highs can be very high. You appreciate much more the good stuff when you also have to endure some bad — or shall we say, challenging — stuff.
 
Put Bill? So I’m not the only one out of touch with today’s music scene! 🥴 DD’s eye roll and groan were palpable last year when I said, “So, I heard you guys saw Bulldog in concert.”

She said it was outrageously fun — the most fun she’d had at a concert. Which goes to show, when the lows are low, the highs can be very high. You appreciate much more the good stuff when you also have to endure some bad — or shall we say, challenging — stuff.
Exactly….much like how good a cracker tastes when you are super duper hungry.

Typo on the name. I actually was familiar with him!! My Mids had a blast as well. It’s all relative!!
 
Concerts at USNA can be a LOT of fun. I can remember a few of them - my plebe year we had the Spinners and the nest year we had Bruce Springsteen and the E St band. For our Ring Dance, we had Roberta Flack.
Wow, impressive!!
 
We also had Fleetwood Mac while I was a mid
Ditto my college campus, right as “Rumours” went huge. Same year, I bet.

USNA has had some great acts over the years, various genres. The Bill Cosby show was great; of course, this was before certain actions of his became known.
 
Jeff Dunham performed at WP while my son was there. As you can imagine, the cadets went absolutely wild when Achemd the Dead Terrorist showed up on stage!!!

When my son was a plebe, I was driving him and a fellow plebe back to WP one weekend. The other cadet had met up with high school friends at their college and spent the weekend with them. He was so underwhelmed with the 'regular' college scene and what passed for fun. He truly realized, after that weekend, that he was at the right school for him and while he had no regrets before - after that weekend he *really* had no regrets.
 
When I first met a neighbor, just a few houses away, she asked about my son. I said: he's in his 2nd year at the U.S. Naval Academy. Her response: oh, my daughter is a professor at West Point in the xyz Department. My reply: Great, she must be a very good professor to teach a WP. Response: yes, but she's not a war monger... My reply: ...just a strange look in response. Amazing.
 
Interesting

Over the past nearly 30 years I have had kids or GKs in the SA pipeline or serving as grads . In that nearly 30 years I have been asked dozens of times where my kids went to college and my kids have been asked where their kids went to or are going to college.

When we say one of the 3 major SAs not once has anyone not known what school I was talking about. All knew it was a military SA. And most understood a service requirement after.

Where they impressed?

What I or my kids do often get from neighbors, relatives, strangers, classmates, friends, teachers, etc when we tell them it’s a SA we get this——-“OMG”

People are not just impressed they are overly impressed. Much more impressed than if we had said Harvard or MIT IMO.

Not one person in the last 30 years that was told this was clueless as to what the SA is.

The years of service after etc they may be clueless about and why should they not be? They don’t spend their days on a forum like this talking about SAs.
 
We had our first experience with a stranger commenting on our DD’s choice for college. Mind you, DD is an appointee and not officially in yet. We attended a performance when a 91 year-old woman struck up a conversation. Got to talking and she asks where DD is going to college. We responded she accepted a SA appointment. The woman started ranting about why would she want to go there. That is no place for anyone. To sign up to die for one’s country is foolish. We didn’t engage that but just politely said some people feel differently. (Both DH and I are both prior service.) Interesting take as this woman’s family fled Nazi Germany. You never know how some people will react.
 
We had our first experience with a stranger commenting on our DD’s choice for college. Mind you, DD is an appointee and not officially in yet. We attended a performance when a 91 year-old woman struck up a conversation. Got to talking and she asks where DD is going to college. We responded she accepted a SA appointment. The woman started ranting about why would she want to go there. That is no place for anyone. To sign up to die for one’s country is foolish. We didn’t engage that but just politely said some people feel differently. (Both DH and I are both prior service.) Interesting take as this woman’s family fled Nazi Germany. You never know how some people will react.
Amazing, she could have said: "Tell her thank you for her service".
 
Most common thing we have heard recently is “I didn’t know the Air Force had an Academy”….
 
Lots of blank stares in Colorado when you mention the Coast Guard Academy. I don’t think most people here even know we have coasts much less people to guard them much less an academy to train those people.
It could be that those stares will come from anyone not familiar with the military in any state. I don't know where you live in CO but around CO Springs the CGA is definitely known. But it could be we have more military related people in the area.
 
Before my alma mater (not an SA) built its basketball reputation, the answer to what school I was attending (in mid 90s) would elicit something like, "...it's pretty cold up there, right?! In Canada?"
Me: "No, not Yukon... U-C-O-N-N; it's in Connecticut"🤷🏻‍♀️
And that we are the UConn HUSKIES also lends to confusion 😆😆
 
I don’t think most people here even know we have coasts much less people to guard them much less an academy to train those people.
Sheesh, what’s up with those Coloradans? Do they think Dillon Reservoir and Grand Lake guard themselves? 😉

Seriously, though, take it with a grain of salt. Use the opportunity to kindly educate them, rather than to look down on them. We need to close the military-civilian divide, and it starts with education.
 
Back
Top