Class motto “BY COURAGE AND ARMS”

Week 1, Day 4

Academy Class 2009-1

The first day getting briefed by academy staff

Well, we are into our first week at the academy and it seems like we are coming together as a team relatively quick. I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop…..it’s just too good to be true. Of course, we are still wearing dress attire because most of the recruits don’t have all their uniforms items yet….so the academy staff really doesn’t want us doing push-ups or flutter kicks in our nice clothes. So I figure once we are in uniform, then the positive re-enforcements will start. We have 41 people in our class and we have been warned it will be one push-up for each of us. You can do the math. I can’t wait for that to start….NOT!!!

Practicing formations

The academy is run as a paramilitary training program, which is good and bad. Good because it has structure and organization. Bad, because so many people in this academy have not been in the military and they will push the envelope and see what they can get away with.

We were told from day one, that poor driving habits like tailgating, speeding and for the most part driving like an idiot…will not be tolerated. Well, we have already had one person test the instructors. A recruit was turned in to the training staff for doing just that. Like I said before…it’s only a matter of time before the push-ups will start.

The training room

On the positive side, we have accomplished quite a bit this week. We came together and got our class motto, “By Courage and Arms”. This will stay with us the entire academy. The academy staff will even order a streamer to be hung from the Guidon (that’s the academy flag that we carry everywhere) that has our academy dates and the motto. It may seem trivial to some, but every time we carry that Guidon somewhere we can see our streamer. That’s MOTIVATING!!

Our class motto, it's all becoming a reality

We started doing facing movements (left, right and about faces) and we began practicing formations. Formations are what we use to get from one place to another. What I mean by that is, marching or running as one big unit. That too is very motivating. When you see all 41 of us coming towards you, with the Guidon and doing everything as “One”, it really is something to see. We just started practicing these 2 days ago and already it looks and sounds AWESOME!! Can you tell I am just a little motivated to be a part of this academy?

We will have our first formation run on Monday morning. I will update my blog with how that goes. I included some pictures from class this week so everyone can see what we see everyday and for the next 20 weeks.