2008-2009: James Gentile

Happy Holidays

Yeah so I just finished my first semester of college.
Wow.

Going through the semester day by day seemed pretty long. But in retrospect yesterday felt like Rook Arrival Day, and I was just getting my name tags and keys. I've come a long way since August 17th in every way, and all for the good.

So for now I'm on break till January. It's kind of weird no having  to do anything like squaring the halls. I keep wanting to call room at ease when someone comes in, or even table at ease when someone sits down when I'm eating. Some weird tendencies I've picked up along the way. But for now I'm taking advantage of sleep, music, talking whenever I want!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanza

Busiest month of my life

Yeah so November was pretty brutal for me.

Paper on top of paper, and the preparation for finals.
I honestly have to say that Thanksgiving break really messes up my desire to do school work. But you gotta drive on right? So my english class dumped like 3 papers on me, one was a research paper, then an argumentive paper, then some other random assignment. In history I had to develop a bunch of researched information for a paper I never have to write - makes sense right? not!
My Naval Science final came early and despite the fact that everyone was doing miserable in the class the final was easier than any test i've ever gotten in the class which confused me a lot.

As for right now, I decided to take a break from studying and write this up. Sorry for my lax posting.

Coming up this week is only two more days of the semester then a reading day and then finals.
I can't wait for that though even though it's finals, - i can sleep more or less however much i want. :)

On a side note it is snowing a decent amount now. Though i've been told this is really nothing significant

Happy Halloween

So today I had a room inspections - went pretty well. I feel bad though of my two room mates, only one was actually in the room for it. My other room mate and I were down at Plumely armory practicing for the Navy Marine Corps ball. We're both State Flag bearers. The practice was pretty decent we didn't mess up too bad, hopefully tomorrow we'll be perfect.

No trick or treating or anything today and i didn't get to dress up.. oh well. what was never had was never lost right?

That's all I got for now

Until next time...

Snow in OCTOBER

I forgot to mention yesterday that it was snowing. It was a weird sight, for no reason other than that in New Jersey we wouldn't see the first snow until maybe mid November. Not only that but it was a decent amount of snow. if it's snowing this much already I couldn't imagine how white a Christmas here is Mahwah has a white Christmas very rarely.

The cadre tell us as well as the professors that snow this early is strange, and that we're in for on miserably long and cold winter. I can't wait. It's too bad i don't snow board or anything.

Tommarow is halloween. I'm hoping i can get dressed up - not too much. Just something comfortable. we would normally have to wear the Winter B's which require shirt stays which are the most irritating device of clothing known to man. I'm hoping to wear the ACU bottoms, a B shirt top ( no shirt stays) and maybe a beanie.

Tommarow is also Regimental Room inspection - SWEET - not.

Navy Marine Corps Ball this weekend!

So I knew we had a Navy Marine Corps Ball coming up.
I didn't plan on going to it - just another 25 dollars to spend. Then I found out I was voluntold ( same as volunteering only you don't have a choice) to be a Flag Bearer. I'm from New Jersey but ended up carrying Alabama's flag and had no idea what it looked like until i got it. We spent mil lab today practicing the march on and off and exactly what we'd be doing during the ceremony. It's pretty good so far, we all have it down pretty well just need to fine tune it a bit.

the Last two weeks have been the same old - except I had mid terms. They wern't the big deal i thought they were and did better than I had expected. We were told that coming up was a huge milestone in rookdom. It's the end of Rookie Basic, which is the first 12 weeks of training at Norwich. I can't believe how quickly three months have passed. only two weeks until we finish that. Amazing.

Other news is that this week we switched over to the Winter B's ( pictures are in the Corps of Cadets Uniform section of the website) and i love it. Not only are they warm, but they're not white, don't stain as easily, but they're also easier to maintain. The bad part you ask? the tie tying it sucks, and takes me forever to do.

Until Next time.

Parents weekend and regi Ball

So It's Tuesday morning and I forgot to post about this Sunday night. Oops.  Well it was a good weekend let me tell you. I got to sleep for a change. It never really occurred to me before coming here how precious sleep was, nor did i realize that my concept of sleeping in would change from 11:00 am down to 6:30 or 7:00 ( which i haven't been able to do in the past few months.

    As for parents weekend, it's pretty simple, parents come up, walk around with you for a bit, you go to a football game, the drill competition, the banner competition ( which my company won!), and the jodi compeition. The banner was our crowning achievment, the jodi itself was good but the marching was pretty bad, no one really knew it. But our banner was immaculate. A lot had to do with the cadre  some of which are origin members of my company so they have the most pride, and want to make sure we're doing everything right. above all else they motivated us to work as a team. We did just that. We came out on top and we had the BEST banner. I'll try to upload a picture of it at a later date.

    The rest of the weekend was spent sleeping and sitting in the hotel room calling friends and listening to music, privileges i won't have here for a LONG time. But that's O.K. that's what I'm here for i suppose.

I'm running short on time now- I got to run to class

Until next time

Rook of the Month

Hey all,

Yesterday was the competition for Rook of the Month. It's like CO but on a gigantic level, with a PT test, and room inspection.  The platoon spent Friday night cleaning our representatives room. I think I can speak for everyone when I say I have never in my life cleaned as meticulously as that. The inspectors might disagree, but I don't think there was a single speck of dust in that room. the floor was immaculate and the racks were nice and tight. The kid who went for us did absolutely amazing.
That was the bulk of the night Friday and the entire competition took until about 1200 yesterday.

So like I said in my last post, I thought I'd lose half of my platoon due to the Army Field Exercise. I was wrong, it was more like 2/3. Yep, there were 13 of us out of 30. As for the Army kids, it probably was a bad weekend, it rained a lot and got pretty cold at night. But nonetheless it still has to have been pretty dang fun.

One week until my field exercise!

'Till next time.

Co a No Go

So I didn't win CO. But I did make third. My uniform was about as perfect as ACU's ( Army Combat Uniform) can get. And I knew a good amount of the rookie knowledge. The uniforms were what most people were kicked out for, so after the initial inspection of everyone, there were only three companies left standing. Boy did I feel great. I thought I had it, then after several questions, and me belting out answers as loud as I could ( that's how you get points, correct answers presented loudly or even sometimes incorrect answers said loudly and with confidence). The cadet asking the questions then said it would come down to DNC ( Drill and Ceremony) So there was a lot of right faces, about-faces, present arms, etc. It got to the saluting and then an order arms and I was told I slapped my thigh on the command of Order Arms. DOH!
It's alright though, I placed third so I'm not too mad, neither were my cadre.

This weekend I'm probably going to lose about half of my platoon due to the army ROTC's Field Exercise. it's gonna be a little strange and one of my room mates will not be here, for the entire weekend. The first weekend in october is the Navy ROTC's Field Exercise, and I CAN'T WAIT. it sh ould be pretty cool.

I'll have more about it soon.

It's Been Awhile

Hey all,

Sorry it's been awhile since I last posted. Lately I've been busy with academics and Corps stuff. Classes are so much better at college than they are at high school. First off, they are not all day every day. Some days you might have two other days four. Not that bad. Highschool was really boring to me because it was the same schedule EVERYDAY! Some days are longer than others here, but you get through it. The hardest part is trying to get to chow  before your earliest class, which is hard if you have PT and a 7:50 class. That means you come back from PT at about 6:45, spend the next 20 or 25 minutes showering and dressing, then going to formation, then probably not even getting to eat! To make that harder, some times you have morning calls and have to be showered and dressed by 7:00. It's really hard when you're in the Class B uniform( you can see it on the Corps of Cadets Uniforms on www.norwich.edu )because it has to be ironed and starched.

The other hard part about being a Rook is staying awake during class(even if the class is not boring), which as of late i've been failing. OOPS. If you come here as a Rook and don't like coffee, you'll soon find it is your best friend.

Next week I have CO which is a competition between rooks from every company. It tests you on your Rooky knowledge and Drill and Ceremony. You are also evaluated on appearance which means you have to trim any loose strings, shine your shoes, men have to shave ( and shave VERY well) girls have to have perfect hair. Hopefully I'll win.

Until Next time.

Wow.

It's been a long time since I posted, my apologies.
It was a tough week, but a fun one none the less. I got a lot of emails about doing another post and the hardest part about that is finding the time. Last week time wasn't a word in my vocabulary unless it was prefixed with No before it. Every minute of every day seemed to be timed out .This is the best way for strangers to become friends. Taking away the element of time seems to have been the best social lubricant. THere was NO time to be awkward, there was just things to be done, and the only possible way they can be done is if you worked together.

Rook Week is what you take out of it. You can take anything out of it you want. For me it was great. Tough but fair. The best day of them all was the Mil-Skills day. All of the recruits went from station to station, campus wise, and did different things. There was  a land- navigation exercise, which is pretty much a large- campus wide scavenger hunt. There was also the rappelling tower, a huge fifty foot tower that you rope down from. I was scared. The guys running it were asking for people scared of heights. I raised my hand thinking they'd let me go down the 35 foot section. WRONG. The man in charge said " Today we're gonna conquer some fears" So we did. The next thing I know I'm on top of a fifty story tower, getting ready to lower myself down. The hardest part is always starting. Kind of like Rook Week. Once you get over the edge of the tower, it gets much easier. There were also other days were we did PT (Physical Training), learned how to fold our clothes and make our beds.  The week ended on a high note. We did the Dog River Run. Again, it's what you make of it. It's simple you run up a river for about a mile, get dirty along the way, and you pick up a rock. Some tried to find the largest one they could, others a small sentimental one. I chose a big one... too big. So i had some help bringing it back.

This week was the start of the first academic week, and it went to fast. I've never liked school much, the days fly by because it's not the class after class regimented, boring schedule. For instance all my core classes are done by 11:40.

I'm running out of time so I have to cut this short,

But Rookdom is what you make it.

Jim Gentile