Recognize This!

So, this past weekend was the hardest, taxing 51 hours of my entire life, both physically and mentally. I was pushed to the point were I couldn’t do another pushup, another flutter kick, or pull-up but I made it through alive. Now I’m an upperclassmen with all the privileges and none of the duties, so needless to say, Recognition is much like the Academy: it sucks while you’re going through it but once you’re out it’s incredible.

Alright. Recognition started Thursday afternoon with a retreat parade and dinner. At dinner, the 4* sat and ate at ease, so no talking. After dinner, we all had to go down to the basketball arena to watch AF play Illinois in the NCAA tourney opening round. During the whole game I was just anxious for the unknown that was about to be thrown upon myself and my classmates. After then game, all the upperclassmen left and the 4* had to move to one side of the arena. We got a speech from some people, but I didn’t really pay attention. Anyway, after that, we had to run back up to our dorms. For those of you who haven’t been out here, my dorm is about a half-mile and 100 vertical feet from the basketball place. Well, once we got to our squad entered “Heaven and Hell.” Basically we were split into groups of 4 and taken to different stations. At the stations we had to do all sorts of exercises: squats, lunges, Ranger claps, pushups, sit-ups, crunches, flutter kicks, leg raises, bear crawls, grenades, jumping jacks, mountain climbers, sprints, and other stuff. If you were doing well, you got to take a few minutes break in “Heaven,” where you could sit down and get a drink. After that it was back to “Hell.” And it was hell. This whole thing lasted for about an hour and half. After that was showers and bedtime.

At 0’Dark-Thirty in the morning (about 5:30 AM to you civvies) my roommate and I were woken up by pounding on our doors. I thought, “S***, here it goes.” After the obligatory “Sir, we are waiting for our classmates” while doing pushups, we marched to breakfast were we ate at attention. Next we had a knowledge bowl. We killed this other squad so we didn’t get beat too much after. The next course of the day was the Assault Course. For this we had to have our old school M-14 rifles that weigh about 11 pounds. Mine’s name is Beth, after my old roommates’ sister. Anyway, the Assault Course (or A-Course) was not cool. We had to do unarmed combat which kills your legs, sprint up hills with sand bags, do ladders, tons of grenades, high knees with our rifles above our heads, and more sprints. Needless to say, after the A-Course, I was dead. Next came lunch, again at attention. After that we had the Leadership Reaction Course. This course was easy and pretty worthless, but at least we didn’t get beat during it. Next we had a sweet “Combat Nap,” an hour and a half break to do whatever. But we had no idea what was coming up next.

The next course we had was the Academy Tour. Essentially, this is when the upperclassmen beat you at different locations on campus while they read to you about the significance of the that place. We did sprint on the T-zo (suicides mostly), downhill push-ups and flutter kicks on Spirit Hill, grenades and push-ups at the Class Wall, and low crawls, grenades, high knees, lunges, and push-ups at the Honor Court and Chapel. Just as we were about to switch stations and run down to the Parade field, training for the day was called off. The reason for this? THERE WERE NOT ENOUGH AMBULANCES TO TAKE ANY MORE 4* TO THE HOSPITAL. They stopped training because the Academy ran out of ambulances. I think somewhere around 80 people went to the hospital, but I’m not sure on that. Anyway, after that hell was over we had dinner. Fried shrimp…mmm mmm good. Then we had a speaker at A-Hall. He was okay.

The last thing of the night were “Theme Rooms.” The 4* get in flight suits and are blindfold with flight scarves. We were lead in groups of 4 to various rooms set up to portray situation we may be in during our AF career. One should an interrogation by Iraqi insurgents; one showed prisoners of war, another was flight sim. One room had a coffin with my picture on the table and they read the account of how I died in combat and all the people I left behind. All the rooms were great and had a big impact on me. It gave me a real sense of what I’m here to do and what my future could hold.

Saturday was the last day of Recognition. I was ready for it to be over too! After breakfast we had SAMI prep. This consisted of us not cleaning and changing into 4 different uniforms. Next was “Chutes and Ladders.” This was pretty much like the children’s board game, except with more beatings and less enjoyment. It really wasn’t too bad but when you’re extremely tired, simply walking up a set of steps is grueling. We went back to the squad and had our actual SAMI, aka a SLAMI. This inspection wasn’t really an inspection, but just a reason for upperclassmen to throw our stuff all over our rooms and completely mess them up. Basically my room was trashed. Oh well. Then there was lunch, followed by the Run to the Rock. That was cool because it was just us and the firsties. It kind of served as a way to pass the tradition of Recognition for them (the last class before us to do it) to us.

Finally we were done. We all got cleaned up and into service dress. Our rooms had been cleaned by the juniors and sophomores. The rooms actually look nicer than they had ever been before. Finally we got to our prop and wings ceremony. This is definitely the coolest thing during Recognition. All the 4* were in the TV waiting. Then an upperclassmen would announce someone’s name, “Cadet 4th Class Samuel K. Holbrook…Recognized!” At that point, I walked out the door and reported in to an upperclassmen. He congratulated me and shook my hand. I took a right and started marching at attention down the center hall of the squad. The whole squad was dark except for a single light behind the Viking 9 flag at the end of the hallway. Along the walls stood all the upperclassmen, wearing service dress and white gloves. If they salute you, they respect your. So, I was hoping someone would salute me. As I’m walking, I got near the first group of people. Then, I see all these white gloves raise and salute me. I kept walking and the other groups did the same thing. It was really cool. The last group was the seniors. As I approached, the all drew their sabers and saluted. Then they made a tunnel our of their swords. I walked forward, saluted our AOC and shook hands with some other people. Final I turned toward the C1C Sealy, the guy I’d chosen to pin on my Prop and Wings. After I get them, I headed up to the SAR to wait for everyone to get done.

So that’s Recognition. I had to leave some stuff out because this is already way too long, but you get the picture. If you really want to hear about, I’m sure I’ll see most of you during the summer or something. I’m glad I went through Recognition. There’s a great sense of accomplishing something that difficult and challenging. Now I know that I can push my self farther than I previously thought…and drink a gallon of milk in under 15 minutes.