Greetings and Salutations,

Life as an Army ROTC cadet is a unique experience all in its own! And before I begin to include you in my experiences Ill let you in on the little secret of what its all about.

For those of you who are not 100% clear about what ROTC is...it stands for Reserve Officer Training Corps. It is a program that is offered at the junior level (High School-no military commitment) and at the senior level (college-military commitment optional). Not all ROTC programs are Army. There is one for each of the following branches; Marine, Air Force, and Navy.

An average day for a senior level ROTC cadet is one of honor. We practice the 7 Army values throughout our lives, not just when in uniform. 

My typical routine is as follows: We conduct Physical Training on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 0600-0700. Each PT session is broken down into target workouts. ie one day we may go for a "long" run or we may conduct interval training, which consists of push ups, sit ups, leg lifts, laps around the track and much more. Each training session, our goal, is to keep the workouts well-rounded yet focused on helping each cadet improve their APFT scores. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have in class lectures about the responsibilities of a leader and how to communicate effectively with different personality types. Each class is broken down by the grade level and specifically altered to meet the requirements each cadet is held to. Each class also lasts an hour and twenty minutes. On Thursdays, we wear the Army Combat Uniform (ACU) to every class and then commence in field training exercises. During this time, Thursdays from 330-520, we train hands on. We run missions, engage in land navigations and work hard to make sure that we can succeed when the time comes to "earn our strips" while at LDAC. 

I believe that this may be a bit of an overload, so for now I will sign off leaving you with this bit of information. let it sink in and we will continue this conversation very soon!

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for many more posts!