Voices of Experience ....
|
|
Strengthening Retention
Voices of Experience .... |
Students, Brothers and Sisters!
Hear these voices of experience ...trust yourself ...and stick it out no matter what!
I had the opportunity to take my nephew to West Point on a trip a few years ago, after he had indicated some interest in possibly attending. He spent the day with cadets during the admissions orientation program. I think this type of visit, and the overnight visits, are critical for young people considering attending. He ultimately chose not to attend, which is fine with me, because he made a decision from a place of having good information. I suspect many of the candidates who leave early in the training went to West Point out of a desire to please someone else, rather than being motivated from within. My Beast Barracks [Cadet Basic Training, starts with R-Day] roommate's brother quit after three days. They were fourth or fifth generation cadets. My roommate stayed and did well, because he was self-motivated to attend. He told me his brother attended because "he was supposed to."
I think that someone who enters West Point, knowing what the place is all about, will either stay or leave. Maybe we should be doing a better job of screening. This goes beyond just determining whether someone meets the profile. We should also look at those indicators that will give us a hint on what this person will do when the going gets really tough. In my past life when I interviewed people to join my group, I was particularly biased by someone who played contact sports, ran marathons, overcame significant hardships, etc. as some indicators of what that person would do when things get disagreeable. This method of screening becomes difficult when kids have lives that have not been particularly challenging. But ultimately, we want leaders who are not going to throw in the towel when things don't go exactly the way they want them to go. And the way to get these people is to bring in folks with the propensity to stick it out no matter what. Years later, almost all of us realize that West Point taught us and allowed us to serve something larger than ourselves. But, we may not have been able to appreciate this when we were homesick, not getting enough to eat, being yelled at by our squad leader, and enduring the heat and humidity of a New York July. The thing that got us through was the resolve that we were there to complete the course.
I don't think Candidates who quit on R-Day or soon thereafter are surprised/repulsed by a realization that West Point is "the military," at least I suspect very few are. They can't get through the admissions process without knowing rather well that USMA is a Military Academy, not a college. I think what surprises/repulses Candidates is a far deeper realization, probably inchoate, that West Point means loss of personal identity and substitution of another identity, something having to do with "the nation." I think this loss or anticipated loss is terrifying to some -- actually, in its existential form, which this probably is, it is terrifying to many-- and the substitution that is offered for it is not believed/seen or is not felt to be agreeable, so the Candidate bolts. The objective fact of the situation is benign: a substitution for personal identity, by participation in COL Thayer's course and its modern iteration, of a soldier's identity, with a view to an individual representing the United States as an Officer of our Armed Forces, commissioned by the people of the United States, through their National Government, to protect and foster themselves in their corporate identity as the Nation Who is one of their Mothers. One identity is shed, another is led out. There is loss and there is gain. At R-Day and in the days just following it, the gain may be felt entirely or mostly as a potential gain if it is felt at all. When the loss is felt and the gain is not, even as a potential, or when the potential gain is grasped as disagreeable, a Candidate bolts. The situation may be existential. If failure of persistence occurs, the situation is moral, a failure of character, which means a non-Candidate got to R-Day. The individual should not have been offered an Appointment. We need to screen those before they take up a slot. When the situation is existential -- by definition pre-moral -- as I suspect it usually is when a Candidate quits on or soon after R-Day, we need to anticipate and have answer for it, to head it off before it happens. We must be able to see the potential for and allay dread occasioned by an experience of an apparent abyss of selflessness. The loss/gain of identity produced deliberately by West Point parallels that produced deliberately by a monastic novitiate. During a monastic novitiate, in Christian terms, one starts towards "crucifixion" of ego -- the loss of personal identity -- and emergence in the grandeur of Christ/Divinity ("resurrection"). No one starts toward "crucifixion" of the self without a lot of trust in the inevitability of a happy end and the effectiveness of the means to it. A military novitiate, which West Point is, and a spiritual novitiate, which precedes entrance to an monastic Order, are typologically identical. They produce an intensification of identity, an elevation of character and an emergence in Grandeur. The course must be stayed because the end is so desirable, so precious as a platform for the participation of life. We have Seven Mothers: Mother Language, Mother Scripture, Mother Country, Mother Religion, Natural Mother, Mother Earth, Mother Cow. Although monastery and military foster all Seven Mothers, the monastery fosters especially Mother Language and the military fosters especially Mother Country. The fundamentals of life are communication and security. So the surprise/repulsion at R-Day and soon after probably, I suspect, is not because the environment is military but because it is national in place of merely personal. "Selfless service" defines "crucifixion" of ego, which is experienced --initially -- as an abyss of selflessness and, therefore, an occasion for dread, although not necessarily so. Human nature, reflecting its divine constitution, ultimately finds selflessness the sweetest mead and surest elixir. An awareness of this phenomenon may underlay the new recruiting slogan, "An Army of One." On one level the slogan may be taken as appeasement of self-centeredness. On another level it may be taken as confirmation of the principle of monism, which is a virtue, a prius, a source of communication and security. We can place before prospective Candidates "warning orders" to alert them that West Point is serious, that they should examine the facts .... Prospective Candidates contemplate replacing identity as an individual with identity as protector and representative of our Nation. West Point will do that for them. This is a momentous step: acceptance of an honor than which none is higher, based on a self-effacement than which none is more permanent and complete. |
Admissions |
Home |
Top |
From a Graduate: I went to West Point with no family background in the military, and had only a limited idea of what I was getting into. Because of the distance, I did not visit before R-Day.