By Lydia Rolf
Scriptor
Wylie E Groves HS
1st Place Division 3, News Writing
In-Depth Feature
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Lead captures attention, arouses curiosity
- Topic relevant to interests and/or welfare of school or students
- Extensive, intensive and thorough investigation
- Effectively combines basics of good news and feature writing
- Effectively organized with smooth transitions; carefully outlined
- Sentences, paragraphs of varied length; written clearly, concisely and vividly
- Proper diction/grammar
- Balanced and fair presentation
“Run!” the drill sergeant bellowed into Groves alumna Destiny Savage’s face. “Run!” he yelled again, the first command Savage heard as she embarked on her career, arriving at the United States Navy boot camp in Lake County, Illinois on October 9. The sergeant marched on the bus, drew his face close to Savage’s, and screamed again for her to get into the Pearl Harbor building immediately. Savage sprinted off the bus into the building, her bags falling to the ground as she ran.
Once inside, men and women in uniform ordered Savage and the new recruits to keep their heads down, only permitting them to look at their feet.
Savage is one of the growing number of students who choose to join the military after high school despite family and friends warning them against this path.
“My mom told me I should go to college. She didn’t even recognize the military as an option and many of my teachers also told me I was ‘better’ than that. What does that even mean? How could I be ‘better’ than someone who joined the military to help our country?” Savage said.
Once Savage was in the military, she said she endured both hardship and redemption, challenge and triumph, and experiences she would never get otherwise. Savage did not mind giving up years of a college experience to make lifelong accomplishments.
Savage will never forget, though, the terror of her first night at boot camp.
The new recruits wore bright yellow shirts that Savage described as ridiculous and humiliating and stayed awake for forty-eight hours after arriving. Savage was shaking the whole night, afraid she would be yelled at. Only one night of boot camp left Savage questioning whether she would make it to Graduation Day.
“That first night of boot camp was the hardest night of boot camp for me because we had to stay up for 48 hours straight. I thought I was going to pass out, and I remember wanting to go home already just after the first night. I thought that I couldn’t do it,” Savage said. “I had no friends for a while, and we aren’t even allowed to talk to each other anyway until late at night. I just felt so alone and so unaware of my surroundings. This whole time, I had prepared for the physical aspect of boot camp and I didn’t even think about the mental aspect.”
Despite wanting to quit, Savage spent the next eight weeks in both military classes and physical training: including push-ups, sit-ups, running,and drills. She completed boot camp and graduated on December 14 and will never forget that emotional moment when she shook her officer’s hand and was welcomed to the Navy.
“That’s when it hits you that you’re in the United States Navy, and everyone in that room knew that we had made it,” Savage said.
Like Savage, Ryan Larson, Groves class of 2017, decided to join a military program before college, enduring the United States Marine Corps boot camp the summer before he started studying at Eastern Michigan University. Instead of having a relaxing summer with his friends, Larson wanted to join an organization that would allow him to be productive and more challenged than many students in his graduating class.
Despite this, after Larson arrived at Boot Camp, he was shocked to find it much more demanding than he expected. One of the more grueling tasks for Larson was Incentive Training, or IT. During IT, the recruits perform high-intensity exercises in a sandbox. Each exercise lasts only five minutes to prevent recruits from fainting, but the drill sergeants made sure at least some fainted anyway. The sergeants got around the rule by not allowing rest time between those five minutes. Once the recruits stepped out of the sand box, the drill sergeants ordered them to step back in and begin the next exercise.
“Incentive Training is a very nice way the drill sergeants have of saying they want to make you die through exercise. When we did the sand pit exercise, we never got the break we were supposed to. Once your boots step out of he sand pit, they can tell you to get back into it,” Larson said. “After that, we had classes, which typically ran for a while, and depending on the day, we would have activities that we would do whether it was combat training or going into the gas chamber or learning how to shoot or repel down towers and buildings.”
The days started at 4:00 A.M. and included hours of exhausting physical training and classes that lasted hours both in the morning and afternoon.
“There’s a whole two weeks set aside to learning how to shoot. The first week is called grass week where you learn the fundamentals, and then you have range week where you get to shoot a lot. You shoot every single day,” Larson said. “A lot of the classes were on Marine Corps History and combat tactics. We learned how to work with our fire, first aid, and first response teams, how to use a tourniquet, and things like that.”
After classes, the recruits trained for drills: military marching, rifle maneuvers, first aid, and first response, which included complicated yet practical applications. These days lasted sixteen hours. One of Larson longest moment, though, was his time in the gas chamber, a room in a brick building probably no bigger than a classroom and run by Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear technicians, educated in chemical warfare and biological radiation attack.
“The CBRN techs are the ones in charge of teaching us how to use our gas masks, and they do fill that brick room with CS gas, which is also known as ‘tear gas’, which is basically pepper spray in the air all floating around. You walk into the room with your gas mask on, and you line up against the wall. You do exercises and actually breech your gas mask while doing jumping jacks. You take two fingers and break the seal, and then get to experience the feeling of pepper spray.”
While this left Larson in pain, he appreciated the lesson.
“We do it so we know that the gas mask works, and we learn how to clear the gas mask if you have something in it, and it builds that trust so you know that the equipment actually does something.”
Larson’s former classmate and also Groves 2017 alumna, Charlotte Pierce currently attends the United States Naval Academy. Like Larson and Savage, she went through the Naval Academy’s equivalent of Boot Camp, called Plebe Summer.
“It’s kind of like your doctrinization into the academy and it’s a right of passage. It’s eight weeks of no phone and no technology. You have to cut your hair really short if you’re a girl, and you have to shave it if you’re a boy,” Pierce said.
Pierce’s daily routine during Plebe Summer was similar to Larson’s. Her days included hours of physical training, combat classes, and leadership briefs, where she learned skills necessary to be an officer in the Navy. Some days, she participated in an endurance course, a three mile run through the woods with obstacle courses every quarter mile. Pierce explained that Plebe Summer challenged both her physical and
“I just wanted to hear how they were doing, how my brother was doing, and how my dog was doing. I did not want to open my mouth to talk about my week,” Pierce said.
Now that Pierce has completed the Plebe Summer, she still must follow the Academy rules and does not have the freedom most college students have. Unlike most college students, she is required to attend class. The students must also take differential equations and calculus, two semesters of chemistry, two semesters of physics, one semester of electrical engineering, thermodynamics, and Naval weapons systems. Along with mandating advanced STEM class, the Naval Academy also enforces more strict social norms than most colleges. Students are only allowed to leave campus during the specified times every weekend, only gaining more time away as the students get older.
“As a freshman, you’re not allowed to leave Sunday through Friday. You can only leave on Saturday from noon to midnight. Your second year, you’re allowed to leave on Saturdays and Sundays from noon to midnight, but obviously no underage drinking, it’s a completely dry campus that takes underage drinking of any sort really seriously,” Pierce said.
Although Pierce does not have the same freedoms as many college students, she doesn’t mind. She recognizes that the discipline she is learning will make the transition from college to the workplace easier.
“I don’t get to go out and party on Wednesday nights and then skip class on Thursday,” Pierce said. “I don’t see it as I’m missing out on anything. I just see it as I have to skip that phase of my life.”
Pierce lives on a floor with nine other randomly assigned male and female students at the academy, social restrictions aside, she has made lifelong friends in her hall, friends close enough to be her siblings.
“We bicker like family; we tell each other we love each other like family. There are absolutely no boundaries with each other,” Pierce said. “They’re my lifeline.”
Pierce especially bonded with these the friends at the academy when she got nervous and couldn’t remember the reams of paragraphs the drill sergeants told her squad to memorize. The drill sergeants got close to Pierce’s face and started to yell at her: “You had three days to memorize this! Why don’t you have this memorized? Do you think this is a joke?”
Three minutes after Pierce was scolded, the Plebes were supposed to run across the campus, change their clothes, and prepare for physical training. Instead of preparing, Pierce sat on her dorm room floor and cried and said she wanted to quit. When Pierce’s friends saw her, they ran to her room, began to put on her shoes for her, and encouraged her to continue.
“I was just like ‘I’m done!’, and I sat on my floor and cried my eyes out. After all of the people from my squad put my shoes on for me, and they were like, ‘No, no, we’re not giving up today!’ while I was sitting on the floor crying,” Pierce said.
Like Pierce, Larson grew close to the other recruits in the Marine Corps. Larson had expected to make lifelong relationships because his grandparents met in the military at Officer Candidate School for the Navy.
“You grow so close to these people, and you get to know them almost better than yourself. It’s very strange because there aren’t many things like that in the world where you can tell what someone is thinking before they even think about it,” Larson said.
Although Boot Camp is over and many of his friends are serving all over the world, Larson is still in contact with them.
“I’ve got two friends in Hawaii. I’ve got friends on the East Coast and the West Coast. I’ve got friends in Germany right now. I’ve got friends in Japan and all over the place, and we still talk and let each other know what’s going on,” Larson said.
While Larson joined the military out of family tradition, Savage was attracted to the military for financial reasons.
“I didn’t have enough money to go to college, and I didn’t want to take out a loan and be in debt later, so I looked into it and figured that joining the military would be a good idea for me because they pay for your school,” Savage said.
The Navy pays for Savage’s program to become an electrician. When she finishes school, she will be required to serve in the Navy for six years, where she will be a paid electrician in the United States Navy.
While Savage plans to be an electrician, Larson has become a combat engineer in the Marine Corps. Combat engineers must work with a variety of materials, including heavy and lightweight timber, to construct combat buildings.
While Larson, Savage, and Pierce have all completed at least the boot camp portion of their military training, senior Celia Crompton has yet to start but will join the United States Air Force ROTC program next year. Like Savage, Crompton will receive funds for her education as the ROTC provides scholarships to students in their program. While attending Northwestern University in the fall, Crompton will take ROTC classes and participate in physical fitness for the Air Force, and hopes to join their specialized program called Cryptolinguistics, helping to recognize and analyze foreign communications.
Joining the ROTC program will not be the first time Crompton chose a path unlike most girls her age. She was the first girl to be a part of the Groves Boy’s Wrestling team this past winter. She has also been fencing since she was 12-years-old and will continue fencing next year at Northwestern University, balancing her ROTC responsibilities with fencing practices, competitions, and school work. Crompton believes it is important for people to step out of their comfort zone.
“People have a lot of misconceptions about new things they might try, but they let their assumptions steer them away from paths that would’ve changed their life,” Crompton said. “I don’t think so hard about doing something new or revolutionary, I just do it.”
Wrestling and fencing have taught Crompton to take these risks and to maintain her perseverance, which she believes will help her in ROTC.
“I think that, through wrestling and fencing, I learned how to work hard despite many disadvantages. No matter what they throw at me in the military or at ROTC, I think I can handle it. After so many years of telling myself to keep moving forward, I’ll be prepared for this,” Crompton said.
Larson agrees with Crompton’s philosophy.
“The Marine Corps has definitely forced me to grow up very fast. I am not anywhere close to the same person I was when I graduated high school, and I can attribute that to the Marine Corps almost wholeheartedly,” Larson said.
Savage also learned the importance of professionalism from her experiences in the Navy. Even when Savage is not on campus, she envisions herself as always representing the best of the United States.
“I learned from the Navy that it’s important to carry yourself in a professional manner. I was more of a goofy person in high school, and I’m still like that when I’m in my civilian clothes, but, in mind, I’m always at work, always showing my core values. When I put on my uniform, I’m required to snap to an even greater level of professionalism. Even outside the uniform, though, I’ve learned that hard work can be something that gives me the best sense of myself,” Savage said.
Pierce had a similar epiphany.
“I realized that putting in work is sometimes much more rewarding than blowing off work so that you can have fun, which I think is something that a lot of college kids have yet to learn,” Pierce said.
Larson, Pierce, Savage, and Crompton have chosen different paths than most students in their graduating class. Although this path entails less freedom, they agree that joining the military was the more rewarding choice.
“This is very different from the normal college kid’s life,” Savage said. “I would definitely recommend it, though.” w