I recently read In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of the Westpoint class of 2002. It was excellent. It gave me a great sense for what my life will be like for the next few years and the kinds of challenges I will be facing. There was one quote in particular I really like:

“’Duty, Honor, Country’ was the academy’s motto, and everyone talked constantly about honor and commitment, loyalty and patriotism. All that was true and good, gut striped of it’s pomp and circumstance, the place was really about love. Love of your country, love of your classmates and friends, love of the future officers you’d someday serve with. Most of all, West Point was about learning to love the soldiers you would someday lead, the privates and sergeants, knuckleheads and heroes alike, who might, just once, in a life-justifying moment, look to you for leadership in some great battle on a distant shore.”

I think that describes well what Army officer ship is about. Making a difference for your subordinates is what makes being an army officer so fulfilling.

One of the negative parts of Army life discussed in this book is family life. I have been dating an army brat lately and she didn’t seem to mind military life. However, this book talks a lot about the pain of separation and having to constantly move around. There was one particularly heart wrenching story about what one Lieutenant’s wife went through after he was killed a few weeks into his tour in Iraq.

I was really impressed by the descriptions of Westpoint and the people in it, but I am glad I chose to do ROTC rather than go there. Westpoint is great if you want a military career because you develop so many connections and it really immerses you in military life. It gives you strong ethics and a great warrior code. At the same time, you don’t develop socially much while you are there because they give you very little personal freedom. In ROTC, you will get comparable training but also the full undergraduate social experience.