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The
"What Point" Cadet
You should be comforted to know that I am not one of those people. I've had brushes with West Point for a long time, since my mother's best friend, my "pseudo aunt," spent a few years there before moving to our neighboring town. As I grew up, my parents had a friend who worked at West Point and periodically made it to our area with a few cadets in tow. When my sister was in high school, she had a few cadet suitors, and I heard her stories about 'boys in uniforms.' Years later I would have my own experiences. More recently, I've been venturing to Upstate New York for weekend jaunts and finding myself gazing from across the river to the Western side of the Hudson and the campus itself, which is quite beautiful. Yet despite these interactions with the Point, I never really grasped the idea of cadet life and just how different that college experience was from mine. When I was 26, I was set up on a blind date with a former cadet who had long since left Army life and was living as a civilian lawyer. If you asked him, he would be proud to show you all the physical scars on his body that remained from his experience serving (combined with a terrible car accident) and regale you with stories about college and his five-year Army stint thus following. A small chunk of his right wrist was missing; there was a deep and scraggly line up and down his arms that show where the doctors sewed him back together, and he had other scars on his legs, hips, and back. Our romance was short lived, so I only heard a few stories about cadet life, but they were all completely foreign to my lifestyle and perspective; I'm sure that my face was twisted in confusion as I listened to him go on. Discipline was the backbone of everything—how they would make their beds, get dressed, prepare for pop quizzes on current events every morning—and that was before breakfast and formation. Unafraid to offend this suitor, I asked him, "What would compel you, at age 17 to choose this? What kind of person decides to put himself through such rigors?" He felt that he'd needed the discipline at that age. I was distinctly avoiding discipline at that age. So you see, I thought about West Point, tried to imagine what it would be like, and came to one conclusion: I would not make it at West Point—-and I don't mean that I wouldn't graduate because of grades, or that I would have trouble socially or anything. I simply wouldn't make it past the first morning that I was there, in fact, I'd venture to guess that I would have had enough in just a matter of a few hours. When I took on this writing assignment, I was to inquire if I could participate in a 'Day in the Life' sort of thing, which they offer in June after school has ended but before basic training for Freshmen begins. But just imagining some officer disciplining me with push ups, was ridiculous. I'd be the cadet who would try to talk it out and try to reason with him. "Yeah, um, hi. I think that push ups are really unnecessary. I mean, you tell me, will it contribute in any way to the greater good if I can 'drop and do 50? Make us closer to any goal of resolution in the Middle East? I don't think so. How about I write a paper about the topic of your choice instead." Know how I know that it wouldn't work? Because I've tried it before. In the summer of 1989, I headed off to Israel with hundreds of other kids so that we could see the wonders of the Holy Land. For six weeks, we hiked up mountains, went to kibbutzes, floated in the Dead Sea, prayed in places that our ancestors died to protect, and when the counselors weren't paying attention, we got into as much trouble as we could. One of those weeks, we spent in the Israeli Army. So, just weeks before I turned 17, I wandered around the hot, arid Army base somewhere in that tiny country, dressed in heavy Army fatigues and feeling mostly miserable. Because we had to wake up so friggin' early, I'd just shower and sleep in my clothes so I could get up at the last possible moment. It seemed I was constantly doing something wrong or losing steam and deciding not to finish a task that I was assigned-not good traits for a solider in training—and as a result, the week was punctuated with random disciplinary exercises for me. The meals were terrible and when my Army group leader heard me complain, he put me on KP. Each morning, I cleaned institutional-size crockery and my fingers were prunes for the rest of the day. At one point, I must have done something really terrible, because I was punished and ordered to write out, in rocks on a large field, that I would never talk back to an officer again. A few Australians were watching me walk back and forth between the field and the rock pile, and I convinced them to help me. By the middle of the week the Army staff referred to me mockingly as "Princess," and a few days later they all were happy to see me go. The next year I went off to 'civilian college' and spent my time, well at least Monday and Thursday nights, in a club called the Upstage (with 25-cent drafts). My friend Susie and I would claim a table in the back of the club and, with the five dollar bill we brought, get drunk on 10 bad beers each. Although I rarely missed a class, I never made my bed—even when my parents were visiting because why start pretending at 19 years old. My only physical activity was dancing to the classics of the early 1990s and an occasional trip to the gym, but even that was just a cover because the trainers who worked there were really cute. We wore clothes that were wrinkled and ate whatever was left over from our last take-out. And we only became disciplined about school work when it came to crunch time (a trend that would continue into graduate school for me). We had such a great time and loved it so much that 10 years later, my old roommates and I still sit around, have drinks, and talk about our college years. But according to David Lipsky in his recent book, Absolutely American, the cadets at West Point are just as happy as I was in my little Pennsylvania college town. Despite the ordinary complaints, Lipsky says that the cadets were among the happiest students he'd ever come across. Even at the end of the book, after all the cadets travails through school and hardships had mostly happy endings, I still wasn't convinced. I wanted to talk to some cadets on my own and not hear the edited, watered-down PR version of West Point life. So, I called West Point and tried to arrange a campus tour and a chat with some cadets, but oddly, on the day that I asked to visit, there were no cadets available to see me. Could it be, on the random Friday that I wanted to visit, that all 4,000 cadets were all busy washing their stubs of hair? For a mere $7, I could take a tour of the campus and learn about the historical significance of all the buildings, but the West Point tours are conducted by a company that is under contract with the school, so still no dice for meeting young cadets eager to grow up and be big generals. My prospects to talk to a real-life current cadet were narrowing, and I began sifting through the West Point Web site looking for a clue or loophole. Then I realized that a quick and dirty AOL search would bring me just an Internet connection away from the people that I was longing to talk to. Before I started instant messaging unassuming cadets, I quickly reviewed their profiles and noted that several of the 'Personal Quotes' made reference to the core values of West Point, "Duty, Honor, Country." So, I selected the user with the most military-ish profile and shot him an instant message... I wondered if he knew what he was missing by not going to a civilian school? Does he date, go out and have a social life that resembles a more ordinary college experience? Was the curriculum different? Could you be an English major at West Point? Was the discipline ever too much? I asked this 20-year old cadet if he loved West Point, if it was all he wanted and all that Lipsky wrote about, if he was happy about his decision and if, knowing what he knows now, he would make the same decision again. As I had suspected, his answers revealed that while he does like West Point, he didn't really know anyone who 'loved' it there, including himself. At times he would like to tell people to fuck off when they give him orders. He did know what he was missing but didn't offer any details about his own social life, except to say that his high school relationship only survived the first 3 months of West Point, but, he reminded me, that if he hadn't liked West Point he wouldn't now be a Junior there. He was busy studying for an exam in his Nuclear Reactor class (or some such class they I doubt they offered at my college), so I let him get on with his studies. I guess it's just the kind of person I am, but I like making my own decisions about nearly everything, which not coincidentally is my biggest issue with life in a military academy. Many of the basic decisions are made for cadets: clothes, food, schedule... things that I love having control over. I enjoy that moment every morning when I stand in front of my dresser and rifle through the shirts wondering what to wear: Belt? No belt? Ironed? Not ironed? Appropriate or not appropriate? I am wild and untamed when it comes to breakfast. No one gives me orders that are finite; even in conversations with bosses and editors, I can negotiate. I haven't a set schedule, and that suits me perfectly. I guess I am the opposite of the Army, which is not to say that I am anti-Army, but I just don't get it. For me, a former English major, it's like trying to understand a complex math equation: the strong desire to be part of the military life just doesn't come together in my mind. At 17, I was busy dying my hair black, hoping to get into any college that would take me, and writing bad poetry about unrequited love that reflected the many hours I spent listening to The Cure and The Smiths. But then again, who cares if I get it. Maybe I should just respect the decision, or in the most simple terms, just shut up and be grateful, because better them than me. For all of our sakes.
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