Normal Teenage Problems

[Han Tzu]

Dear Small War Warriors,
I’m a sixteen year old high school student. I plan on going to college and then into an officer program, possibly infantry. I would like to know what I should do to improve myself for that position and what I should major in.

Cole

[Cavguy]

Glad to see you here. My recommendations, and I'm sure better ones will follow ...

1) Get in shape, if not already
2) Get good grades
3) Read military history - whatever interests you
4) Read other stuff
5) Major in whatever you want, anticipating for life after the military and also understand the grades you get in college can open or close certain doors for you. Wish I understood that, had to overcome a mediocre undergrad GPA with a 4.0 graduate one. Wasn't lack of smarts, but lack of focus ...
6) Engage some local recent veterans, find out their perspective on military life.

[Han Tzu]

1.I'm trying to get into better shape; though I'm still unfit.
2.I have something like a 3.7, Pre-Calculus Is a bitch.
3.I've been reading the psychological aspects of war including, but not limited to human nature.
4.Currently reading Catch-22.
5.I had planned on something in business, both for the grades and the practical applications. Like you I have no focus, my GPA is on the lower half of the spectrum in a lot of my classes and yet I continue to get the highest entrance exam scores in my grade(250-300 kids).
6.Who, the only veteran I know of that won’t instantly classify me as a hippie(I’m not, it’s just Nebraska) is my brother, who’s a artillery sergeant.

What I really wanted to learn was skills that I could use in the military. From what I learned basic produces cheap, under-educated soldiers. I want things that can be practical for both a grunt and an officer’s lifestyle-and of course thank you for actually responding. Any other advice?

[Adam L]

I am not a military fellow, but I think I have some useful advice.

1. On the issue of getting in shape, I must say that this does take some time. So often I see young fellows about your age hurrying to be fit and simply making a mess of themselves doing so. Here is some advice on getting in shape.
   1. Don't over train: Take it easy. I have known many world class athletes who have set themselves back many months or even years by starting off with too much.
   2. Focus on endurance and smooth muscle: Start off with recumbent biking. If you have the opportunity to swim, DO IT. Swimming is by far the best physical training that you can get. It is low impact and exercises the entire body. If you can't swim, rowing is also good. If you are going to run, make sure you are not carrying excessive weight. Also, learn how to run. Running with improper technique can destroy your feet, knees and hips. You're high school's track coach would be a good person to talk to. Do sit ups and leg lifts everyday, but don't do too much. It takes time to build the strength. There is a lot of info about weight training on line. All I can say is take it easy, you are only 16. You are far from your physical peak (23-29) and you are still developing. A few often forgotten areas that are easy and important to work on are: Ankle strength, foot strength and finger strength.
2. As far as academics go, you have a pretty good GPA. Sorry you are having trouble with pre-calculus. My advice on this is to not be afraid to look to sources other than your teacher and assigned textbook. In my experience the textbooks are dreadful these days. Also, most math teachers are not math people (this is hard to explain if you are not a math person.) Many of the older calc texts (40+ years old) are much simpler and too the point. They are far easier to understand and learn from.
3. Stop reading about the psychological aspects of war. You do not have the psychological knowledge or the life experience to understand this personally or theoretically. At your age you need to learn about a lot of things before you go there. I agree with Cavguy that military history is an area to study. Still, there is a lot to learn in history in general. (Note: Cavguy, I am not in anyone implying that you were saying that he shouldn't study history as a whole.) You're secondary education will give you a very spotty and superficial overview. Also, remember in your studies that there is much fiction that is essential to your comprehension of historical events.
4. Catch-22 is a good book. Still, I think that Cavguy meant that you need to read something really different. Why don't you try something like the Iliad and the Odyssey (use the Lattimore translation.) These epic poems are at the root of the western literary cannon. Also, they are a lot more complex and meaningful than what you have been shown. Try another piece of historical fiction like I, Claudius by Robert Graves. I'm sure you will learn a lot and get a kick out of it. How about something like The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh (He was a marine before he was LAPD.) (FYI - this is a cop novel) Ender's Game is a good book that is on the Marine Corp reading list if I am not mistaken. If you wish to stick with modern historical fiction, try All Quiet on the Western Front.
5. You have a lot of time to choose your major, but having an idea of the areas you would consider will help you choose where you would like to attend college.
6. Why would they classify you as a hippie?

What I really wanted to learn was skills that I could use in the military. From what I learned basic produces cheap, under-educated soldiers. I want things that can be practical for both a grunt and an officer’s lifestyle-and of course thank you for actually responding. Any other advice?

Learn to think and educate yourself. The ability to go into a situation and be able to asses, analyze and react will help you greatly in any field civilian or military as will the ability to educate yourself.

Adam L

[Entropy]

In addition to what others have said, I think it would be a good idea to join an organization where you can get real-world teamwork and leadership experience. This will also help you in civilian life. If getting fit is a problem then look into a hiking/backpacking club or similar outdoorsy or sports-related activity - that way you can kill two birds with one stone. Unlike what you see in the movies, the military is all about teamwork, so people skills are important, particularly if you want to be an officer.

[Schmedlap]

I did not decide to join the Army until I was 18. Like everything else that I've done since then, I went into it blind. I was going to enlist, but my teachers begged me to go the ROTC route instead. So, I did. Being the only person in my family to attend college, I had no idea how to choose a college, pay for it, what to major in, etc. You know what? It didn't matter. A degree is a degree in terms of getting into the Army. Nobody in the Army will ask you what you majored in, nor will they care if you tell them. I never met anyone who cared about my major or where I graduated from.

When I was in high school, all I knew was that I wanted to be in the Infantry. My preparation for college consisted of absolutely nothing, other than taking a year off after high school to work and save money to pay for college. While in high school, I drank heavily, got into a ton of trouble, had awful grades (but good SAT scores!), and my extracurricular activities were just fall and winter sports. When I went off to military school, a lot of my peers had done JROTC in high school. Their only advantage was that they knew how to march around. Talk about a useless skill. You will learn everything that you need to know about the Army from the Army. Don't worry about trying to get a head start on it. You can learn how to read a map, use a compass, do terrain association, and estimate your pace count in a few hours in basic training. You don't need to figure it out now.

Looking back, I would have gotten into less trouble and drank less. Other than that, I see very little consequence to what occurs in high school. Unless you're trying to get into an Ivy League school or West Point, your grades are not super important. I think you only need to worry about two things.

1) Get in shape - focus on the basics of pull-ups and running. If you can do pull-ups, then you can do pushups. If you can do that and run, then you can probably do lots of sit-ups. That puts you ahead of the vast majority of your peers once you get into ROTC/Academy. You are young and enthusiastic, so you will probably want to put together some insanely complex and ambitious workout plan, but it really is not necessary. Pull-ups and running. That alone will put you in the 90th percentile.

2) Take a foreign language. I suspect your high school offers at least one. My advice is to take anything BUT Latin because nobody speaks Latin. Learn a language well. When you learn a language, you also learn about the culture that speaks it. The more you learn about other cultures, the more you analyze your own. Analyzing your own culture is the most useful way to understand other cultures. This process will better prepare you to interact with other cultures, which will be necessary regardless of what type of war we fight or operations we conduct. Plus, once you learn one foreign language, learning a second one is easier. This is one of the few valuable, practical skills that you can acquire in high school. If your other classes suffer at the expense of you mastering a foreign language, I say: so what?

Don't worry about choice of major. Your first two years of college will largely be core curriculum of more English, math, science, and history. You don't need to choose a major until you're halfway through college. Besides, you're only halfway through high school. Your interests will change.

[Adam L]

I
My advice is to take anything BUT Latin because nobody speaks Latin.

No one speaks Latin, but even a basic understanding of Latin allows one to pick up almost any romance language with ease. Latin doesn't take long at all to learn anyway. It also will improve his English grammar a great deal. I'm not necessarily suggesting he take Latin, rather that quickly going through Wheelock's Latin would be a good idea.

Adam L

[Schmedlap]

My rationale is that learning a foreign language is valuable, largely, because of the understanding that one develops of the culture that speaks it. This is an incredibly eye-opening experience, even if you eventually forget the language (as I did after studying French and Russian).

[Stan]

My rationale is that learning a foreign language is valuable, largely, because of the understanding that one develops of the culture that speaks it. This is an incredibly eye-opening experience, even if you eventually forget the language (as I did after studying French and Russian).

I concur 1000% ! This is not something Cole will pick up while pumpin' iron with the local VA.

My best language teacher in high school was a native German. He managed to incorporate culture into the existing curriculum and spent a lot of time on patterns of living.

[John T. Fishel]

Cole--

I'm an old soldier and an old college professor. My daughter is only 10 but will soon be reaching the point where you are.

For all the disagreement among us on details of our advice there are some common threads. Read widely, study a foreign language, get into shape slowly but methodically. To this, i would add, do as well as you can in high school. There are advantages to getting into a highly competetive college like West Point or the Ivy League for a future career both military and non military. Those advantages can be overcome by later hard work but starting early is a help. I would also add travel to the list of things you ought to try to do, especially to foreign countries.

Reading: I'd suggest Thucydides and Donald Kagan's modern study (the one volume version) of the Peloponnesian War. Anton Myrer's Once an Eagle is a classic novel of soldiers. Definitely read Nathanial Fick's One Bullet Away. Fick is interesting because he majored in Classics at Dartmouth College, became a Marine officer serivingin both Afghanistan and Iraq, left to pursue graduate degrees at Harvard both an MBA and a masters from the Kennedy School and is now CEO of CNAS (where john nagl is President).

Good luck

JohnT

[Adam L]

To this, i would add, do as well as you can in high school. There are advantages to getting into a highly competetive college like West Point or the Ivy League for a future career both military and non military. Those advantages can be overcome by later hard work but starting early is a help.

I agree with this 100%. The reason I push for a language like Latin, which is primarily a very focused study of grammar and the structure of language, is that by far the most common skill that is lacked by college students and professors is the ability to write competently. I have observed this in many of this countries finest institutions over the past few years (These schools include: Williams, Union, Middlebury, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Berkely, Wesleyan, Wellesley.) Sadly, I must say that in my experience many, if not most, of the students who are graduating graduate still lacking this skill.

I should point out that it is not just grammar that I am complaining about, it is the ability to write a proper essay. They often seem incapable of logical analysis.

Reading: I'd suggest Thucydides and Donald Kagan's modern study (the one volume version) of the Peloponnesian War.

Use this version when reading Thucydides.

Adam L

[Adam L]

My rationale is that learning a foreign language is valuable, largely, because of the understanding that one develops of the culture that speaks it. This is an incredibly eye-opening experience, even if you eventually forget the language (as I did after studying French and Russian).

True. I normally have not studied a language formally. I often find myself reading in translation. Then, I become frustrated with the translation and put myself through a crash course in the native language of the text. Normally, this is so I can understand an important or key fragment in the text. I grew up with a lot of people from all over the world. The language wasn't really necessary to absorbing a lot of cultures. My K-3 school class (20 students) had students from 10+ countries (non-english speaking countries.) I had a classmate who spoke 11 languages at the age of 6! I come from a family that has a lot of languages. That is until my parents. My mom's family, especially her grandparents, would never speak any of the plethora of languages they spoke around her. They wanted her to be a normal American girl. LOL!

I should note that I grew up playing chess. My teacher was Russian. His teachers was Russian. Everybody was Russian. I spent a week at chess champ where they refused to speek English to me except when we played Scrabble at night. LOL!

If the fellow were a bit older I would tell him to date women of many cultures. Dating a foreign grad student can a be a lot of fun and a great way to learn about foreign cultures. (Don't even think about it kid. You can see if you can do this when you are an undergrad.)

Adam L

[marct]

Hi Cole,

Some great advice already posted....

On the Latin issue, I would suggest you take it, mainly for the benefits to you use of written English. A couple of other works from the classical world you might consider reading are Sallusts' The Jugurthine War, Tacitus The Histories, and The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. For a break, there is some very well crafted, albeit somewhat "dark", SF by Tom Kratman (who posts here occasionally): A Desert Called Peace and Carnifex. Also, if you haven't read it yet, take a look at Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the book avoid the movie!).

On what you do your degree in once you hit college, people are quite right - no one will care (and, BTW, that operates outside of the military as well except for the professional degrees like engineering). Half of the trick to getting a degree is to follow your passions. Personally, I didn't the first time I was in university; I went through five different majors before getting kicked out and, when i went back, I ended up in two (actually three) different disciplines.

A final note: see if you can find any really good yoga instructors. Yoga is excellent for stretching, balance and breath control and, if you get a really good instructor, they will help you learn how to use it for meditation. believe me, having the ability to "set aside" many emotional reactions and still your mind will prove to be very useful .

Cheers,

Marc

[Steve Blair]

On what you do your degree in once you hit college, people are quite right - no one will care (and, BTW, that operates outside of the military as well except for the professional degrees like engineering). Half of the trick to getting a degree is to follow your passions. Personally, I didn't the first time I was in university; I went through five different majors before getting kicked out and, when i went back, I ended up in two (actually three) different disciplines.

I just want to second and third Marc's advice about degree programs. One of the biggest issues I see (and I work with an AFROTC program) are kids coming in with majors that they picked in order to have a better chance at an AFROTC scholarship. They don't tend to do near as well as those who major in something they actually enjoy and have an excitement about or ability for. Study what you love, and you'll make it through classes with bad professors (and they ARE out there).

[Tom Kratman]

That's not exactly true. While it is certainly possible to get infantry, as Han suggests he wants, with any degree, some degrees tend to push the board to push the prospective officer to other branches. Worse, and this happened to one of my platoon leaders, certain degrees (he was Mechanical Engineering) tend to get one involuntarily rebranched as a captain, depending on the latest personnel policies. Rebranching may not be in effect at the moment (I frankly don't know if it is), but I've seen it pop up in one form or another about 4 times between 74 and 06, so it's always out there.

Latin? Mmmm. I took it for six years. No, it wasn't exactly voluntary except insofar as the high school I went to required it and I volunteered for that. It's not useful in itself, no, but it is - precisely because it's not self-useful - an excellent discipline drill and intro to all the other Romance languages. Unfortunately, we have few if any non-madrassa high schools that offer languages that are militarily useful at the moment.

I did not decide to join the Army until I was 18. Like everything else that I've done since then, I went into it blind. I was going to enlist, but my teachers begged me to go the ROTC route instead. So, I did. Being the only person in my family to attend college, I had no idea how to choose a college, pay for it, what to major in, etc. You know what? It didn't matter. A degree is a degree in terms of getting into the Army. Nobody in the Army will ask you what you majored in, nor will they care if you tell them. I never met anyone who cared about my major or where I graduated from.

When I was in high school, all I knew was that I wanted to be in the Infantry. My preparation for college consisted of absolutely nothing, other than taking a year off after high school to work and save money to pay for college. While in high school, I drank heavily, got into a ton of trouble, had awful grades (but good SAT scores!), and my extracurricular activities were just fall and winter sports. When I went off to military school, a lot of my peers had done JROTC in high school. Their only advantage was that they knew how to march around. Talk about a useless skill. You will learn everything that you need to know about the Army from the Army. Don't worry about trying to get a head start on it. You can learn how to read a map, use a compass, do terrain association, and estimate your pace count in a few hours in basic training. You don't need to figure it out now.

Looking back, I would have gotten into less trouble and drank less. Other than that, I see very little consequence to what occurs in high school. Unless you're trying to get into an Ivy League school or West Point, your grades are not super important. I think you only need to worry about two things.

1) Get in shape - focus on the basics of pull-ups and running. If you can do pull-ups, then you can do pushups. If you can do that and run, then you can probably do lots of sit-ups. That puts you ahead of the vast majority of your peers once you get into ROTC/Academy. You are young and enthusiastic, so you will probably want to put together some insanely complex and ambitious workout plan, but it really is not necessary. Pull-ups and running. That alone will put you in the 90th percentile.

2) Take a foreign language. I suspect your high school offers at least one. My advice is to take anything BUT Latin because nobody speaks Latin. Learn a language well. When you learn a language, you also learn about the culture that speaks it. The more you learn about other cultures, the more you analyze your own. Analyzing your own culture is the most useful way to understand other cultures. This process will better prepare you to interact with other cultures, which will be necessary regardless of what type of war we fight or operations we conduct. Plus, once you learn one foreign language, learning a second one is easier. This is one of the few valuable, practical skills that you can acquire in high school. If your other classes suffer at the expense of you mastering a foreign language, I say: so what?

Don't worry about choice of major. Your first two years of college will largely be core curriculum of more English, math, science, and history. You don't need to choose a major until you're halfway through college. Besides, you're only halfway through high school. Your interests will change.

[Tom Kratman]

Your check is in the mail, Marc.

Hi Cole,

Some great advice already posted....

On the Latin issue, I would suggest you take it, mainly for the benefits to you use of written English. A couple of other works from the classical world you might consider reading are Sallusts' The Jugurthine War, Tacitus The Histories, and The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. For a break, there is some very well crafted, albeit somewhat "dark", SF by Tom Kratman (who posts here occasionally): A Desert Called Peace and Carnifex. Also, if you haven't read it yet, take a look at Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the book avoid the movie!).

On what you do your degree in once you hit college, people are quite right - no one will care (and, BTW, that operates outside of the military as well except for the professional degrees like engineering). Half of the trick to getting a degree is to follow your passions. Personally, I didn't the first time I was in university; I went through five different majors before getting kicked out and, when i went back, I ended up in two (actually three) different disciplines.

A final note: see if you can find any really good yoga instructors. Yoga is excellent for stretching, balance and breath control and, if you get a really good instructor, they will help you learn how to use it for meditation. believe me, having the ability to "set aside" many emotional reactions and still your mind will prove to be very useful .

Cheers,

Marc

[Schmedlap]

This thread is starting to resemble THIS.

Let's back up for a moment. A 16-year-old wants to join the Army.

[jmm99]

Dynamic Planning for COIN in Afghanistan would be enough to convince anyone to avoid PowerPoint and become a pacifist.

So far, no one has outdone Niel:

from Cavguy
1) Get in shape, if not already
2) Get good grades
3) Read military history - whatever interests you
4) Read other stuff
5) Major in whatever you want, anticipating for life after the military and also understand the grades you get in college can open or close certain doors for you. ...
6) Engage some local recent veterans, find out their perspective on military life.

Merry Christmas

Mike

[Stan]

Hmmm, I joined when I was 17

And, that recent Joint Staff SNAFU locked up my Mozilla browser

Merry Christmas Folks !

Regards, Stan

[SWJED]

Dear Small War Warriors,
I’m a sixteen year old high school student. I plan on going to college and then into an officer program, possibly infantry. I would like to know what I should do to improve myself for that position and what I should major in.

Cole

Cole,

Are you a guy or a gal?" I ask because you mention infantry but your e-mail addy - only known to site admin types - indicates you are female. Infantry and several other combat arms and combat arms related fields are closed to females and I think you might know that - maybe not - but this is an upfront Council and I'd hate to think our members might be wasting time here. What say you?

Dave D.