Five Days in Annapolis

I have never been in the JROTC or taken a formal military science class or attend a military-centric school. That said, I'm off to Annapolis tomorrow for a five-day taste of the Naval Academy. I don't know what to say about a naval career; I've heard to keep an open mind about it.

Over Spring Break, I was looking up internship programs, the federal STEP (Summer temp. youth program), and other summer activities in general. Frankly, the application for the Navy program was not too hard. The hardest part was class rank. It was not an objective number from my point of view; our school doesn't supply it. In that case, the USNA stated to estimate. I lowballed my estimation for class rank, in deferrence to the math whizzes in my class and some others who applied with numbers 3, 5, and 7.

--I also applied for the USCGA Aim Program, but an apparent computer glitch prevented me from submitting my portfolio of paragraph essays.--

I applied later than my peers. When I first heard of their intent, one had already received a letter of acceptance. "First round pick", we say. I received a similar letter on formal stationary soon after the deadline. I suspect some of my other classmates received theirs as well. They haven't been vocal about it, though. As the school mantra goes, "As GPA's are competitive, so is everything else".