Hundredth Night was last night. The ceremonial beginning to an end for a thousand of my classmates and I. Its shocking to be here already, but there is also a feeling that this day should have been here a long time ago. It too easy to hate this place until one day you wake up and realize you are going to miss it. I perceive this to be the underlying motivation for this blog, to capture the awkward phase of limbo between holding onto the Midshipman attitude while also trying to shed it.
It is more a fact, than a trite saying that the second highest rank in the Navy is a ‘Firstie’. This might just be the wool still pulled over our eyes, but I don’t care. ‘Firstie’ year makes the rest of this place worth it all. Its like a photo-collage of awesomeness. Its the compilation of major events: One, second semester senior in university (no victory lapses here). Two, pre-commissioning slating, planning and celebrating (Ill explain). Three, getting the hell out of Bancroft Hall in three months.
In the months leading up to commissioning, we have many milestones. I would argue these are the greatest parts of the Academy experience. Service Selection is a day of high emotions and a night of no people. You see people exist in society and therefore adhere to social standards, but the night of service selection that’s not the case. If you are anything like me, you drink until you find yourself jumping up and down chanting ‘SWO, SWO, SWO’ and then turning to brush something off your face and realizing its the floor. I personally scrapped one of my classmates off the asphalt in front of Armadillos and carried her back to her room. In timid anticipation, the segundos (2/c) and youngsters were waiting to escort us away from plebe rooms and give saltines to the ones hugging toilets. For me the next big milestone was Ship Selection, where in one of the oldest and cruelest tradition at Annapolis, we lined up in class rank and picked placards representing our ships. Then we drink, starting in the rotunda and leaving a trail of bottles out to the bars. On a scale from one to ten, I was very intoxicated. My roommates put my rack on the floor and I gorged myself before bed. Thankfully I got back, unlike the Ensign from a visiting ship that was found in the Jewish Chapel the next morning.
This is a good opportunity to address the title of this blog. The brainchild of my roommate Ernesto, who spent the last semester in Bolivia chasing Che’s ghost. He was really in Chile on exchange, and he has spent a considerable amount of time in South and Central America traveling. As a Lutheran from Southern Missouri, he spend a year volunteering in Honduras and Columbia doing community work. This is in firm obligation to his church which he willingly upholds. I am a Jew from South Florida who went to Israel for the first time over Winter break. Although secular in nature, I have begun to identify more greatly with my Jewish heritage. Israel has that effect on people. The dialogue that emerges from this blog is an attempt to capture the hilarious nature of our coexistence in what equates to a closet size room at the Naval Academy.
This weekend my roommate and I, the Lutheran and the Jew, respectively, are going to a the George Washington Birthday Ball thrown by the Sons of the American Revolution. Certainly none of them are Jews or Lutherans, but thats our secret. I’ll report back after Operation Not-People concludes.
-Turbo
