1. Please provide a brief description of your STEP Signature Project.
This Marine officer candidate bootcamp consisted of various exercises to evaluate a candidate’s physical and mental endurance, leadership, and bearing for becoming a Marine Officer. This included lots of marching in the summer heat during drill, sleep deprivation, long academic sessions, and much more.
2. What about your understanding of yourself, your assumptions, or your view of the world changed/transformed while completing your STEP Signature Project?
Throughout my life, I would never really say I encountered hardships that put myself or the people I care about in danger of dying. My stakes when it comes to succeeding more than the person next to me was most likely lower. I didn’t want these lowered stakes to impact my long-term productivity so I went to this program to better understand myself and my capabilities in a higher stake environment.
Through this STEP experience, I was able to better understand my mental and physical limits. I have confidence I will be able to handle obstacles life throw my way knowing I went through one of the hardest 10 days of my life. With how little time us candidates were given to just keep up with the fast-paced schedule, we were forced to be very intentional with the choices we made. One common scenario for all of us was whether to choose to get more sleep or to create more labels which would be put on our military equipment. Other tasks may include organizing a personal space to be able to better make the quick times needed to take stuff out when ordered by our drill instructors. This organization I chose to prioritize the first couple days at the cost of sleep really helped later on in not losing personal items. This is one skill I want to bring more into my personal life and the environment around me. One way it’s already incorporated in my daily life is making my bed when I wake up and I hope to take this further in the future.
3. What events, interactions, relationships, or activities during your STEP Signature Project led to the change/transformation that you discussed in #2, and how did those affect you?
The shared experience of pain and challenges helped bring a lot of candidates together despite the diversity present in our platoon (group). A platoon for us started off with 58 candidates, with three platoons making up a company. Our cohort was composed of India and Lima Company, with myself being a part of India Company 2nd platoon. From the very first day, we were told that to make it through the camp, the idea of I, or the individual would have to be beaten out of us. A prime example of this is not being able to refer to ourselves as “I” or “we” during the bootcamp. Those words were replaced with this candidate and these candidates. Another more extreme example was when we were instructed to mess up part of our belongings. After these situations, it got pretty common for us to wear another person’s clothes or pants. Naturally, being in a situation which forced us to share our belongings with others was a very common way to form connections with others.
Something unique about our platoon was that there was a lot more priors in ours than in other platoons. Priors is the term to refer to those who have previous military experience but want to try going the officer route. Most of these friendly and resourceful candidates were invaluable for those like me who didn’t have any military background. My bunkmate, I’ll call D was a prior who introduced me to liquid IVs, a powder packed with electrolytes. This helped when marching in the heat for hours so I didn’t pass out. Also another candidate I’ll call CAN taught me how to properly roll up sleeves during sleeping hours. There was even non priors like CV where the connection took place in the bathroom talking about his girlfriend situation and how he came from a small town, a completely different situation than me. Many other friends I’ve made were through little actions where we helped each other to not get yelled at or singled out which may be the precursor to brotherhood.
Being able to help others was a privilege though to those who were ahead. A candidate would not be able a second checking someone’s uniform when they are frantically searching for a boot lace they are instructed to hold up with ten seconds remaining. This is where I found my organization played a role in being in that position to help others. One way I stayed organized was to utilize my plastic bags to create an academic bag filled with stencils, pens, etc, clothing bags for extra clothing, and more bags. To top it off, I would put the most important bags on the top part of the footlocker in order to access them faster. Due to this, when our personal belongings were strung throughout our room, I was able to grab and not lose anything too important. It was pretty common for my bunkmate D to ask for my academic bag when creating name tag labels. On some occasions, when our drill instructor is rapidly counting down, I’m actually able to help out those near me make the times.
This experience taught me that when the stakes are life and death, being a team player and smart preparation is a recipe for success.
4. Why is this change/transformation significant or valuable for your life?
This new and unique experience for me is significant by shining a light on both my limitations and strengths as well as a better understanding on what makes up a leader. The government invests heavily in leadership for the military, I would say more than what most private companies invest. The government does this because the lowest level marine officer is already in charge of around 50 marines, where each marine required a large amount of investment and nurturing in order to get to the marine standard. What this means is that the difference between a good leader and a bad leader can fulfill crucial missions for the safety of the United States or lose millions dollars worth of assets and lives due to one bad call. What I’m trying to say is that the military, especially the Marines, understand leadership and take it very seriously. Knowing my limitations can help me better organize myself to be more productive to have the opportunity to become a leader, and to have a bigger impact on this world.
OTHER:
I made a website to get practice getting familiar with the rank structure and greeting marines – https://staticyolt.github.io/AddressMarinesProperly/