By Jillian Berger, Junior Criminal Justice Major and ROTC Cadet
Having grown up with three older brothers and two younger sisters on a farm, I learned
from a young age that the things worth doing in life often don’t come easy. There will always be competition, always room for improvement, and perhaps most importantly, there will always be failure along the way. This mindset gave me the confidence to apply for a scholarship that would go on to reshape my entire college career.
Fresh out of high school, I knew I wanted to do two things: I wanted to get a college education, and I wanted to make an impact on others’ lives. During my freshman and sophomore years, I worked in a hospital on a hospice and oncology unit, where I had the privilege of assisting some of our country’s veterans. In my two years of working there, listening to their personal experiences and hardships, I never met a single veteran who regretted their service. Unsettled at the thought of working the same monotonous job for the rest of my life, I began looking into alternate paths in the military.
As an ROTC cadet, I have had an array of experiences that my younger self would never have dreamt of. Just this year alone, I have been to Fort Moore, Georgia for Air Assault training, Washington D.C. for the Army 10 Miler, and Fort Knox, Kentucky for the RangerChallenge competition. Prior to enrolling in the program, the furthest my feet had ever left the ground was on a swing set. Since then, I’ve repelled off of towers and even rode in a few Blackhawk helicopters.
I can say with certainty that I have not just grown as a cadet but as a person all around. My closest friends, who I would never have met otherwise, are those who I get to share these experiences with. In my freshman year, at the very first lab I attended, two cadets took the time to show me where the patches on my uniform go and how to blouse my boots. Little did I know that this would later become second nature to me, and those two cadets would become some of the people I know best in the world.
As a student, I have developed in ways I could have never predicted. Foremost, I have traded my soft-spoken reluctance for that of resolve. Meeting and working with strangers used to be a major obstacle in my life, that is, until I was given an environment to practice and learn in. Academically, I have also changed as a student. During my freshman year of college, my grades faltered not for lack of ability but rather for a lack of ambition. ROTC gave me a goal, a reason to do better, the push in a direction I fiercely needed.
Just as it is with any lifestyle, there are some days that I wake up and feel like going right back to sleep. When the weather is bad, or the sun has yet to rise, I take my time lacing up my shoes, reluctant to even think about the day ahead. But as an ROTC cadet, I know that everything I’m doing now is to mold me into the best person I can be, a lesson that cannot be taught in the classroom.
