Recalled to Life

So, I've made it through Basic Training and into the US Navy.

At the moment, I'm "on hold" - something of a transition period wherein a student is at his or her A School, but his or her classes haven't yet started. We speculate that this is designed as a recovery period after Boot Camp, so that by the time you leap into the information-intensive world that your classes will comprise, your brain has realized that its new world is slightly less threatening than the previous one, and will willingly accept information.

Interesting note about Boot Camp - a week ago, when I graduated, I would have listed Basic Training as one of the top five toughest things I've done in this life. Possibly top two. Now, looking back, I can recall the tear gas, getting IT'd, being cussed out for eighteen hours a day, constantly living with the apprehension that if you screw this up badly enough they'll boot you out, being woken up at three a.m. to iron underwear every other night (you think I'm exaggerating), the isolation, feeling as though you're losing your identity...but it doesn't actually seem that bad. I wouldn't want to go through it again (especially the tear gas, yuck), but if I had to, I could.

The human spirit is remarkably resilient, I've observed. You can put people through absolute crud, and once they're out, they immediately begin recovering. I was initially concerned that Basic would turn me into a militant mouse, and it did - for about three weeks. Sometime in the middle of week four, something reminded me of Camp, and I was myself again.

Turner was one of the girls who most encouraged me in Boot Camp. I loved working out with her, because she'd always push me, but we had a lot of fun with it. But, she explained once that, in Boot Camp, "They're in the business of making diamonds. They put all of us through the most intense pressure that we've ever known, and they're watching to see who will crack, who can make it through okay, and who's really going to shine."