The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
#054 Inside the Naval Academy: An Insight into Gray Space During Plebe Summer
Ever wondered what "gray space" is and how it fits into the life of a midshipman at the Naval Academy? Join Christian Blanchard, Jeremiah Harding, and me as we peel back the layers of our Navy journey, bringing you an inside look at the unscheduled yet pivotal moments of Plebe Summer. From the hilariously chaotic to the profoundly impactful, our stories will give you a fresh perspective on how these less structured times shape a midshipman's path.
We share the why behind seemingly trivial tasks like "rack races" and the exacting standards for making beds, all designed to instill discipline and readiness. Our tales extend to the physically and mentally grueling aspects of training, like standing on the bulkhead and mastering drill practices, which foster unity and precision among plebes.
Our journey also revisits the tough lessons of handling rifles, the dreaded rifle punishments, and the importance of maintaining rifle serial numbers. We reflect on the scripted yet soul-stirring experiences of Plebe Summer, from the camaraderie built during ITEs to the solemn moments in Memorial Hall, honoring the sacrifice of past graduates. This episode is a mix of humor, heartfelt reflections, and keen insights that offers a comprehensive view of life at the Naval Academy.
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.
Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast and the USNA Property Network Podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a boutique residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community PCSing to California & Texas.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
Connect with Grant on Linkedin
Academy Insider Website
Academy Insider Facebook Page
If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, have an idea, question or topic you would like to see covered, reach out: podcast@academyinsider.com.
Ever wondered what "gray space" is and how it fits into the life of a midshipman at the Naval Academy? Join Christian Blanchard, Jeremiah Harding, and me as we peel back the layers of our Navy journey, bringing you an inside look at the unscheduled yet pivotal moments of Plebe Summer. From the hilariously chaotic to the profoundly impactful, our stories will give you a fresh perspective on how these less structured times shape a midshipman's path.
We share the why behind seemingly trivial tasks like "rack races" and the exacting standards for making beds, all designed to instill discipline and readiness. Our tales extend to the physically and mentally grueling aspects of training, like standing on the bulkhead and mastering drill practices, which foster unity and precision among plebes.
Our journey also revisits the tough lessons of handling rifles, the dreaded rifle punishments, and the importance of maintaining rifle serial numbers. We reflect on the scripted yet soul-stirring experiences of Plebe Summer, from the camaraderie built during ITEs to the solemn moments in Memorial Hall, honoring the sacrifice of past graduates. This episode is a mix of humor, heartfelt reflections, and keen insights that offers a comprehensive view of life at the Naval Academy.
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.
Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast and the USNA Property Network Podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a boutique residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community PCSing to California & Texas.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
Connect with Grant on Linkedin
Academy Insider Website
Academy Insider Facebook Page
If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, have an idea, question or topic you would like to see covered, reach out: podcast@academyinsider.com.
Welcome to Season 2 of the Academy Insider Podcast. Academy Insider is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that serves midshipmen, future midshipmen and their families. At its core, this podcast is designed to bring together a community of Naval Academy graduates and those affiliated with the United States Naval Academy in order to tell stories and provide a little bit of insight into what life at the Naval Academy is really like. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much for listening and reach out if you ever have any questions. The Academy Insider Podcast is sponsored by the Vermeer Group, a residential real estate company that serves the United States Naval Academy community and other select clientele in both California and Texas. If I can ever answer a real estate related question for you or connect you with a trusted Academy affiliated agent in the market which you're in, please reach out to me directly at grantatthevermiergroupcom. You can also reach out to me on my LinkedIn page, grant Vermeer, and I'd be happy to respond to you there. Thank you so much, and now let's get back to the episode.
Speaker 1:Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Academy Insider Podcast. Today I'm joined by, quite literally, my two best friends in the world, but also two of my company mates from the Naval Academy, and this episode is going to be all about gray space. We're going to share some of our funny stories, our recollections. Even in preparing for this podcast, we've been cracking up, as we've been just recounting all the stuff that we went through, both as plebes and as detailers, and so this episode is going to be all about that. Before we jump into it, I just want to give an opportunity to both Christian and Jeremiah to introduce themselves. So we'll start with Christian, if you don't mind giving a little bit of background about you, how you ended up at the Academy and where you're at now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I'm Christian Blanchard. I was a member of class 17 with Grant in 26 companies. So during plebe, summer, november, company 26 platoon. I studied aerospace engineering at the Academy and I was on the silent drill team, the Jolly Rogers, for the first couple of years. Then I was a NARP thereafter. I had a blast with these guys. I think we had one of the best companies in the brigade for my entire time there, especially our class. And I've got a bit of a unique story. I had a medical thing pop up right at the end of my time at the Academy. I received my degree. I wasn't able to commission and I've been on a bit of a journey since then doing some work in defense contracting. I work for Recreational Equipment Incorporated REI now and have a great time doing that, but potentially down the line looking to get back into the aerospace stuff. So these days probably my favorite thing is still to talk with old company mates.
Speaker 1:Indeed Jeremiah.
Speaker 3:Hi, hi, guys. Uh, I'm jeremiah harding. Uh, I was also, uh, november, uh 26, uh, with these guys. So class 17 went through with all these guys. Uh, in fact, uh, christian's actually my brother-in-law, so I see him quite often.
Speaker 2:There's one in every class, that's a big one, not not just sister, twin sister yeah that's what we like it even more yeah, there's one in every class um, but uh, I, uh.
Speaker 3:While I was at the academy, I studied history. Um, fantastic major. I love my life being group three, so shout out to any group threes out there. Um, I was on the ultimate team all four years, but, other than like, whenever we did ultimate for the most part it was I narped pretty hard too, as well. Um, I commissioned, went marine corps, marine corps infantry, uh, and from 2017 until, uh, october last year, um, so, a, so, just under six and a half years, marine Corps infantry Great time, loved it. But on to bigger, better things. Hopefully going to be going to business school in the next year or so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Congratulations and for everyone listening, you heard them both use the term NARP. If you're not familiar with the term NARP it stands for it's common in theme with Naval Academy, but also just military humor, which is just very self-deprecating. A NARP would be a non-athletic regular person. We're going to jump a little bit into the topic of today, which is all about gray space. This is something that you're going to hear your plebe talk about during plebe summer. You hear this term gray space, and you may be like what does that even mean? I don't understand. They're mentioning all this gray space stuff. What the heck is gray space? Is there a space in the hall that's gray? And it's not quite the case.
Speaker 1:So when we jump through and I'll kind of turn it over to these guys to kind of add some input and opinion here as well but just from a basic informational level, gray Space at least when we were going through it literally references the Brigade Master Training Schedule or the Plebe Summer Regiment Master Training Schedule.
Speaker 1:So when I was the Regiment of Command of Plebe Summer, there was literally this massive Excel spreadsheet that had 30 tabs for all 30 different platoons and it ran through for the entirety of the summer, their daily schedule right, and so you had pep in the morning and then, for example, if November coming 26, platoon had to go to the O course, well then in that master training schedule they had a colored block kind of ranging the schedule and it was like, hey, this time is blocked out for the O course, for drill.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day there was, you know, a blocked out schedule for the drill period and there were all these things that made up your day schedule. But if you had no scheduled evolution for that day, no scheduled activity that would range or require the involvement of some additional Naval Academy staff or things that were going on, then you were left in gray space because, quite literally, your block in the daily calendar was gray there's nothing scheduled. This is gray space, meaning you have nothing left on the schedule. And so from this perspective I kind of almost want to turn it over to Christian now as a detailer, kind of from your perspective as a detailer, when you had nothing on the schedule, what were you thinking about, like, what was your approach to gray space and what were you trying to do to fill the time in that gray space period?
Speaker 2:Sure, so I was a detailer. One of my favorite things I ever did at the Naval Academy was I was platoon commander of November Company, 26th Platoon in the class of 2020. And from with regard to gray space, there were two things. There were things that I had to think about that the regiment told me that I had to think about. It was still less formal than actual scheduled and directed evolutions. There was a checklist of certain trainings that we had to accomplish and they ranged from everything from you know certain aspects of the ACCA, or what an academic schedule looks like at the Naval Academy, what the academic period structure is, from period one to 10, throughout the day tours of academic spaces, and then to things like you can't download illegal videos on the Naval Academy's internet site Everything. There was long checklists of those kinds of trainings that were directed and scripted that we did have to accomplish. But the other half of Gray Space, and what was really the fun part, was a lot of autonomy and room to kind of think creatively about how we can personalize training for our specific platoon. And I say our and us a lot, because it was very much a team effort, not just within the platoon.
Speaker 2:I had four squad leaders under me and a company commander over me for November Company. But we were also partnered with our sister company was 25th Platoon, the Bear sharks, during the academic year. So we collaborated very heavily on the company level, guided by a company officer and a senior enlisted leader, and, at least at our level, whenever we were detailers in November company we planned out gray space very intentionally and sometimes from the police perspective it may have seemed a bit off the cuff. Shining shoes is a good example, though I'm sure we've got some stories about. But that was like the night before we were going to be doing a shoe shining evolution in gray space. We discussed what the topic was going to be and we had a brief outline and talked about which detailers are going to be here and leave that evolution. Even when things do seem, you know, impromptu during PLEAP summer they are almost always given a lot of thought and planning by the detailers. Certainly detailers in November Company did that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think what's really interesting along the lines because Christian mentioned there's a certain level of things that have to get done over the course of the six week plebe summer period, right, or the seven week plebe summer period, right, you have to tour the academic spaces, you have to do all the required trainings, et cetera. But it leaves a lot of time for this gray space for complete detail or discretion. Now, again, from the regimental perspective, there were guidelines that they had to fall in between. Right, you couldn't, you couldn't start jumping out there again left and right lateral limits.
Speaker 1:There again, you know, for, for, for good, or you know, whatever your personal opinion is the there's, there's more regulation over what happens at the Naval Academy. Now, right, it's a little bit less of of the wild west right and hazing, it's not a thing anymore. Right, like this is not a thing anymore. So there are strict boundaries again, like you're saying, left and right lateral limits of where you can go, but there's still a lot of room to move laterally. We'll just put it that way. There's still a lot of room to move laterally.
Speaker 1:That allows different platoons, different companies, to establish their company culture of like, what they are, what they do, what they want the experience to be Right. And so this is where I'm going to turn it over to the group now to kind of talk about. When you were going through Christian like as a platoon commander for 26th platoon, did you take what we did as plebes and did you try and either recreate that or use it as the baseline of the foundation of what you wanted to instill in the next incoming plebe class for our company and continue the 26 company culture? Um, how did you approach that situation and how did you use gray space specifically to do that?
Speaker 2:the answer is yes, absolutely the.
Speaker 2:We had a really intense plebe summer.
Speaker 2:We had some detailers that really really pushed us hard, and I think they weren't the only reason, but it really forged us and we are about as tight 10 years down the line, I think, as company mates can be, having gone on and lived the rest of our lives.
Speaker 2:So that was a major motivation for me and the rest of the detailers in our block to impart what our plebe summer, many aspects of what our plebe summer was. We surgically excised certain aspects of it that were not great and really served no purpose beyond making folks feel bad. We didn't do anything like that, but we did cultivate a pretty intense atmosphere, I think, and members of the class of 20 that I've kept in touch with, I think really responded well to that again, because they got some really awesome humans in that class. So probably, I think, just from when the plebes wake up in the morning this isn't technically gray space, but from day one between the first set detailers and the second set detailers, the most important thing that we passed on was the best friend song the best friend song you can go look this up on youtube or on spotify.
Speaker 2:So some companies like to really pump their plebs up in the morning and play like some super cool music. They'll play metallica or they'll play like some mellow music because it's like sunday and like let's wake up and have a nice day. Our detailers every day. They didn't start it till second set. We did it first and second set for these kids, um, and it is, I guess, a k-pop song by some group. I can't what's that?
Speaker 1:I think toy box.
Speaker 2:Toy box yeah, it's horrible and it's just this like high tempo, very uh nonsensical song, uh, that woke us up every day of second set. So those are the kinds of things that we impart. I don't even call that torture, but it was definitely the kind of thing that bonded us. We're still still laughing about it these days and I'm sure class of 20 is too.
Speaker 1:I just I, I'm cut. I'm cutting you off there Cause I we just got to dive into that a little bit more.
Speaker 2:I'm still traumatized by that song to this day.
Speaker 1:I'm like I just my my physical quite literally right, like I just remember cause the dumpsters being in or being where we were right in, where we in six wing there, uh, when that was going on, um, we're in six, three, right, you have the dumpsters right out to the other side, so you would have the garbage trucks pulling in and back in and you hear the beep, beep, beep, and that would wake you up, like right at 5 am and then you're just like you couldn't like fall asleep, just like fully, and so you're just like groggy and sick and you just know that like, oh, it's, it's about to happen, right, it's about to come, and you just don't know when, but you know it's soon. You're just like laying in bed listening.
Speaker 2:It really would not hurt our feelings if you paused right now and just went to look up this song. Right, it's best friend song by toybox, that first part it's acapella and it's loud and it's high pitched where they go na, na, na, na, na, it's loud and it's high-pitched where they go, na-na-na-na-na, it's brutal and just like started every day. Got you out of bed. For sure, Got you out of bed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you're saying, it was quite literally that Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Out of nowhere and you were already half-awake and you knew it was coming. And then, as soon as that happened, that first six seconds of acapella, you're safe. You just knew all chaos was about to assume. I just remember Ermanita, dude, jericho Ermanita. I just remember, as soon as that happened, just hearing that track, baton banging on the walls.
Speaker 2:Wake up. I don't know where you got that pipe from. Man, Was that like?
Speaker 1:a shower pipe. I thought it was a track baton literally, but I don't know that thing was solid.
Speaker 2:He didn't strike anybody with this pipe. He just used it for sound effects and hit doors and stuff.
Speaker 1:Just for sound effects. And they're banging on doors and getting it. Oh my gosh, that was the most.
Speaker 2:Before.
Speaker 1:I pass it on to Jerry.
Speaker 2:We definitely brought that kind of intensity from the first moment of the day brought that kind of intensity. From the first moment of the day, rack races. We fit as much as we could into that first. I think it's 30 minutes before pep that also. You know, the plebes might not notice it, but that's kind of a warm up for pep, right, that's waking up, your muscles are getting warm and then you've got to drive or a jog over to the pep field.
Speaker 2:Like none of that's accidental. I think a lot of things just seem like they might not have a point during the summer and there's a spectrum detailers there's a bottom 10% everywhere, but whenever you have, I mean the vast majority of detailers in the brigade with the training that they get. Certainly what we manifested in 26, you know, in November, company was, you know everything was, was intentional. There was a point behind all of it, even the best friend song yeah, even the best friend song.
Speaker 1:Oh man, what a good, what a good warm-up and intro into that's not even gray space, but it just, it contributes to the gray space, it contributes to the gray space I swear, but I swear it does.
Speaker 1:um, and you mentioned, you mentioned the term rack races, and so I'm going to use this as kind of the transition now into what we'll consider some of the more traditional grace-based activities, right, and so I'm going to pass it to Jeremiah. Now, jeremiah, you might just explain to us what a rack race is, and then, on top of that, some of the other common um, again common grace-based activities, whether it is a rack race or a uniform race, or uh, I don't need all of all of the races in, in, I'm gonna turn it over.
Speaker 1:You just give us a little explanation on some of the on some of the time dude the time hack our time bank is scary, I that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what they were.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so a rack race, right. So what you're supposed to do every morning when you wake up, right and being part of this whole attention to detail and the discipline that gets instilled in us over a bleep summer is when you wake up in the morning and then you remake your bed. That way it's nice and tight, wonderful, crisp hospital corners, the beautiful 12 inches of white sheet that you see before you know you got a nice like six inch sheet, a folded over uh bed like everything's supposed to look clean, crisp. Your blue magnet the lines that are on the blue magnet are all completely perpendicular to
Speaker 3:the bed. Um, so like there's, it's pretty. Every morning, if you sleep under your sheets, you have to remake your bed. There's no way to leave and not get in trouble for the fact that your bed's not made. So you make your bed every morning. So what we would do if there was gray space is you would do rack races, and a part of it, you could say, is to make sure that we're spending less time making our beds in the morning, because we get better through repetition. But uh, the detailers would give us a time hack. Hey, you have two minutes and 30 seconds. Uh, be back I think that's.
Speaker 3:We were in like that you know it was three minute range by the end of it yeah, you know like, hey, you got, you got three minutes. Everyone needs to go remake the rack, go, and then they go. And so the detail we bolt off the bulkhead, square corners.
Speaker 2:Sorry, this is taking me back. That is wild.
Speaker 3:Over a place I lived on. He said go, and I almost went kill. So, like most of our stuff for 26, splatoon took place on 6-3. Me and two other rooms there were three rooms total for us that were down on 6-2. Every time there was a rack race, a uniform race, any type of time-hacked event where we had to go back to our rooms, it always took us longer because we've got to run all the way down to the stairwell, go downstairs, do whatever and then run back. Anyway, rack race it was go downstairs, do whatever and then run back, right? So anyway, rack race. It was unfair and you're supposed to.
Speaker 3:Everyone remakes their rack, everybody, and it's got to be perfect and pristine. You remake your rack and you've got detailers that are going there looking in rooms making sure like, okay, they are doing it, uh, and then everyone runs back and then they go one, did you make your time hack, you know, did you get back in under three minutes? Everyone has hit their bulkhead about face and is facing the right way in under three minutes. Or then they go and check oh, some sloppy made racks, things like that. So then there would be punishments if it wasn't, which usually meant okay, we're going to do it again, and so it was a type of repetition, A lot of repetitions yeah, but it got if it wasn't, which usually meant, okay, we're going to do it again, Right, and so it was a type of repetition.
Speaker 3:But it got you really good at doing it really quick and you learn like tricks and stuff like you know to like help yourself, like actually make your rack quicker, how to do like a better hospital corner over time, yeah, Things like that. So that's like a rack race. A uniform race is. For the most part we might be in white works, the completely white uniform that we wear during pleb summer, and then underneath our white works we're always in our blue rim and some Usna shorts. But they might say, hey, we're going to do a rack race. For us at the time it was blueberries, I think now everyone has type 3 camo.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everyone's type 3. Yeah, everyone's type 3 now.
Speaker 3:So they'd say like, hey, everyone has to get on their blue digital uniform, the NWU's Navy Working Uniform, and you guys got three minutes Go. Everyone runs, we run down. You get changed into this uniform. That includes like blousing boots and like tying your boots.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was the toughest one. There's a lot of there's a lot of the boots.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, getting an nw use is by far the worst one it was.
Speaker 2:It was so bad so I'm sure they were cutting corners and like their boots. You know me, I was doing everything perfectly double knot I mean, what's crazy?
Speaker 1:what's crazy about the uniforms I'm sorry to cut you off. Right is again, we weren't allowed to what we call rig uniforms. This is why getting an NWU was always the worst. And so, like you, couldn't roll your sleeves and so rolling your sleeves takes forever, dude and so they'd be like, all right you got to get a new uniform.
Speaker 2:There were two kinds of NWU races, right yeah, because they'd NWU's with rolled sleeves. With rolled sleeves. We let some groans out, dude, because that is. That's probably one of the toughest uniform things to do, aside from keeping whites clean is to get a good roll on your NWU sleeves.
Speaker 1:Fast, right, like fast, and trying to do it. Oh man, I just yeah, dude, and I think it's always funny. I'm going to pass it back to Jeremiah here, but I think it was always funny because, again, detailers always find a way to like somehow kind of make it relevant. They'd be like all right, if we're doing rack races today, you would have this like really dramatic speech. I just remember esquire coming down like into the p-way, being like I was walking through rooms today while you guys were at pep and your racks look like absolute trash. He said, and guess what we're gonna do to help you get better at that? We're gonna do some rack races.
Speaker 2:We're gonna do some rack races was always such a bring down, because that would be like after the best pep. You know, we just had like a great time and we like showed up for major antonelli and we're feeling good, and then our detailers did that all the time. I think, just like they've always found a way to like bring us back down.
Speaker 1:I mean, what was crazy is right, Especially with rack races. I just telling these stories is like bringing back, like, quite literally, christian mission, almost like physical, physiological reactions yeah. When we talk about rack races and like people sprinting off the bulkhead, all I hear in my head is that circle. Cause like everyone's just like sprinting and trying to cut four corners, like you got to run off the bulkhead. Make the immediate right turn. Then you read it right turn into your room, dude.
Speaker 1:And then my favorite is just the screeching of chairs because, again, in order to make a rack for anyone who's listening, basically, what happens is you have to take your, take your bed mattress off of the raised off the raised, uh like thing and you would put two chairs. You put two chairs separated a certain distance from each other and you would lay the mattress like on top of it, right? So you, as a roommate crew, you knew by the end of time, you knew, or it's like, all right, grant you're the chair guy, jeremiah you're the mattress guy and christian you're the first like sheets guy, right? So, like you're sprinting back to your room, you're pulling out the three chairs, you're lining them perfectly, as jeremiah is like going and getting the mattress off the bed and like putting it down. And now you guys are like adjusting sheets, like dude it's a whole operation dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a NASCAR pit stop. It is NASCAR pit stop. It's no joke.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is so like, yeah, you have things like uh, rack races and uniform races are probably the two that get done, probably the most, but there's other things that could be done too. Like, hey, this is going to test your guys' attention to detail and how much are you guys in unison and not individuals? Everyone needs to go back to the room and bring back one pen. Alright, boom, you have 30 seconds. Everyone runs and they come back to the bulkhead and everyone's got a pin. All right, hold out your pins. Everyone's sitting there, I got a pencil here, but everyone's holding out their pin.
Speaker 3:And then they're going down the line checking people's pins and, like all of us got issued like these super cheap, the, the big, like super cheapo pins, like that's what was issued to us, that's what everyone had in their desk to begin with. So you would think that's the one that we all grab. No, some people would grab their pen that like got sent to them in one of their care packages. That's like a clicky pen. That's got like six different like pen colors on it.
Speaker 2:We were perfect, otherwise they couldn't believe the detailers. This is the kind of thing we're like now that I look back on that, having been a detailer. It is just so far-fetched how that would even happen that it's really surprisingly a low-key. One of the funniest, most outrageous things that happened all summer yes, um, but yeah, for the most part, that's.
Speaker 3:That's, that's most of your races and stuff that you would do. Um, the most predominant are going to be your uniform and rack races.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And I think you know. What's funny is we will categorize. I feel like the majority of detailers are going to use gray space as a period to do what we'll call EMI extra military instruction, right. And so, again, this is where you have so much latitude as we're talking about, like, with left and right lateral bounds you have so much latitude to go in what's there. You have the ability to determine what it is that your platoon of plebs needs the most extra military instruction in, right.
Speaker 1:And so you know, for a lot of times detailers are like, oh, all your racks, all your beds, they look like trash, right. Like we're gonna, we're gonna do rack races. Or like, hey, you guys, uniforms are not good. Or hey, we were late to the last formation because it took you forever to get your uniforms on. Like we're gonna get some practice getting like putting on uniforms, right. And so you have all of that.
Speaker 1:Now, again, the majority of the times, like, detailers are just like no, no, no, like these are not fun and there's a certain level of repetition and we just like, we're just going to do it Right, but we're going to, we're going to say it's for these reasons to, you know, to kind of get there, um, but it's kind of based on that, that extra military instruction, uh, premise, we'll call it, we'll call it a premise, right, and so, um, part of that is rates as well. So, kind of, one of the things that is a mandated part of plebe summer is the memorization of certain rates, and you have, kind of through the course of the plebe summer, different rates you have to learn again when you show up on i-day you're gonna have to know, uh, like your chain of command, um, the mission of the naval academy. And then, uh, there's a couple others. Yeah, there's a couple other ones, right, but again over the course of the Naval Academy, and then there's a couple others. There's a couple other ones, but again over the course of the summer you're going to have to memorize more things During gray space. You also have a lot of rates challenges.
Speaker 1:The one that sparks the most memory to me I don't know if you guys remember this one is like we would have to go verbatim, like speak verbatim, a particular rate, but we would have to go one by one, everyone down the platoon, right, and so they'd have us all lined up and they'd be like all right, the mission of the Naval Academy is. And then they like point at some random plea. They'd be like Midshipman, fourth class Harding. You start and you're like all right, and you go the. And then the person to the right of you goes mission, yeah, and like all the way down and that was always a pain because you just knew like somebody was gonna mess it up, just like the laws we made we never got through it.
Speaker 1:Man, uh, probably not there's no way there's no way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh my god, yeah, so like all those rates were encompassed, so like I still got my reef points. Yeah, uh, circa 2013, 2014 reef points right there.
Speaker 2:But yeah, like this entire thing, small, small font you're going to demonstrate how we're supposed to hold it, so yeah, yeah, you want to cringe a little bit.
Speaker 3:Nice arm parallel to the deck while you're parallel. Well, I guess it'd be left hand right so you could turn the page with your right hand. I was left hand.
Speaker 1:No, you're right, it totally was left hand yeah, nice, and parallel to the deck we don't hold things in our right hand you got that, uh, yeah, and with that, yeah, I mean that's a lot of, that's a lot of gray space too.
Speaker 1:I almost forget about that sometimes. Sometimes, a lot of gray space is quite literally just standing on the bulkhead, like standing so here's a good term for all parents listening Standing on a bulkhead. So in Bancroft Hall you have like the tiled floors that are in your P-way, in your passageway, in the hallway, and when you're standing on a bulkhead you have your heels on the tile line that switches, because it's like dark gray tile that runs along the walls like one set of tile, and then it's kind of the checkered or like light gray, light white tiling in the center of the, the p-way right, and so in order to be standing on a bulkhead, you have your heels on that line, uh, between the change of color tile. So basically you're standing against the wall, more or less like when you've hit a bulkhead, and so a big piece of pleb summer and a big piece of gray space, honestly, is sometimes just staying in there.
Speaker 1:You know, quote unquote studying your reef points. Now, with all that being said, I don't know how of the probably a hundred hours of my life that I stood on a bullcat and was supposed to be reading the reef points. It's so hard to focus but you're on while your shoulder is like bothering you and you're tired and you're like sweating and you're doing this stuff like you're just like staring, you know. I mean, you're just kind of like staring at a blank page. You're like like not looking around but just like staring into space, like what is going going on? What am I doing?
Speaker 2:From a detailer's perspective is when detailers are trying to figure out what to do. That is definitely a fallback sometimes. Please just study rates Study rates. And then they're like geez, I need water.
Speaker 1:I need to kick back.
Speaker 1:Oh, man. And now I'm going to pass this one back to Christian because also another big use of grace-based time is to practice drill. And again there's a big piece of the plebe summer process where there's quite literally a platoon drill competition and each platoon competes in a drill competition. So a lot of times you can use that grace-based period to get repetitions and practice drill. And so I'm going to pass it back to Christian here and be like hey, how often did you got, did you make your plebs practice drill? And kind of, what was your thought on using drill in in gray space periods?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm the drill guy. I uh, I mentioned that I was on the silent drill team. That's a. I'm assuming Jolly Rogers are still around. That was ceremonial drill. We spun rifles like Cadet Kelly and it was a lot better. But during plebe summer, both as a plebe and as a detailer, I got a lot of satisfaction out of that evolution. Just Just to define it real quick I don't want to gloss over any terms that we're like used to, so drill I'm going to do my best for an off the cuff definition is a. It's a command and response evolution in which you have a leader and then a group of people. The leader issues a command and then the group a platoon in this case responds with some kind of movement, and that is the broadest definition of drill. That's good.
Speaker 2:It can be done with or without rifles. In our case it was almost well, I say almost always done with rifles. It was almost well, I say almost always done with rifles. But if you ever go to the Naval Academy or you go see your plebes and they're at like lunch formation, there are platoons and then companies and the battalions and then the brigade commander. Ultimately that issues commands for everybody to in face or left face, right face, and then March, and then everybody marches according to a cadence, beat by the drum, and so just wanted to make sure everybody's on the same page about that.
Speaker 2:During plebe summer um, drill does a lot of things, I think, and uh is is largely a really positive thing whenever it's done right as part of military indoctrination and across the board, at boot camps and everything. Drills still holds, far as I'm aware, a really important part in forging a group together, um, teaching you through repetition how to follow orders precisely and immediately and to do it in unison with your classmates, with your platoon. In this case, during cleve summer, there is a rifle drill competition at the end of first set and at the end of second set, um, and obviously by the time of second set, um, and obviously by the time the second set one comes around, everybody's pretty sharp, you know. So, um, I guess just, uh, kind of from the plead perspective. First, I just have one kind of sharp memory. Really one of my favorite times at the naval academy, just as a whole, was drill practice in the evenings on warden field.
Speaker 2:So the parade deck at the naval academy is this huge multiple acre grass field where parades and a drill practice happened and, man, just summer cicadas at sunset out on warden while we're doing drill. There is a big push from um, from regiment leadership, during plebe summer to make drill practice a very non-intense thing. It is like surprisingly explicit like this is supposed to be very educational and we want it to be something that builds the plebes up. You guys can go be intense in the hall. This is not an intensive training exercise. This is deliberate and educational and should build everybody up and forge them together, and I think it really did that for us during the summer. The competitions themselves are basically the same thing, just a little more complex. During or for the second set one, whenever I was platoon commander, I was carrying out what's called sword manual instead of rifle manual. Um, so I'm in front of the platoon with a sword and I've got certain moves, moves, I've got certain uh motions and commands that I do, and then the pleads respond like I'll call poor arms.
Speaker 2:And on arms, the plebes go one, two and they move their rifle in that motion. All the angles should be identical. They should do that motion in exact. Uh, you know, in unison there are a bunch of other commands and there's a script that we go through and at the end say dismissed or something, and the plebe scatter yeah, um, we did focus a lot on on drill, during gray space I think, when we were plebes and whenever I was a detailer, for sure, yeah, yeah, um, because it is just like such, it's so military, it's not, it's not. You can't like chalk it up to anything, it's just like oh, it's just some dumb rates that we have to remember. Like it's meals again. We got to know four meals in advance.
Speaker 2:It's not a drag like that to me and I think you know down the line, midshipmen get a little worn out with drill, but during cleave summer I think a lot of folks, if it's presented in the right way, do get pretty motivated about it.
Speaker 2:So that can be anything from going to grab your rifles and practicing movements just in the hall while everybody's on a bulkhead to everybody. Go grab your rifles and practicing movements just in the hall while everybody's on a bulkhead to everybody. Go grab your rifles and we're going to march outside and we'll go out to um red beach man so many vocabularies red beach or smoke park. We'll go outside so that we can actually get into a four by ten formation and really practice and practice and practice, because the competition is a big thing and um, during plebe summer, like there are like a lot of like competitiveness between companies becomes a really, really big deal yeah what's cool about drill is it's platoon based, so there is kind of a company level award, I think, for the best company, but it's platoon based um training and that was a really cool time for us to also impart 26 company culture, just a 26 platoon.
Speaker 2:It's really important that the companies um perform and perform evolutions together throughout plebe summer. But every you know, every plebe summer company is broken up into platoons um and being able to do that without 25 and then 25 being able to do it without us, those are some kind of key points and it was nice for us to also, during our plebe summer, be distinct and have some sort of alone time. That inherently wasn't in very, wasn't very intense, it was productive. We're building toward a competition to like perform and get scored on, and I don't think we did too well during our plebe summer um and I think we were like top five whenever I was platoon command something like that we did not.
Speaker 2:Uh, backward march. Very well, wrong, like underlined it twice, otherwise we did okay, but that lost uh, yeah, and it's.
Speaker 1:It's just, it's just so funny to, like you said, the culture of each company is is very heavily dependent on, again, the people who have been there before and establish it and then on the detailers to kind of build that and really initialize that during plebe summer. Yeah, and so it's funny because, again, our detailers were very it was a heavy marine corps service election group right and I think this is a second set especially right and so I think it's all of them.
Speaker 1:Adjust on leatherneck all of them had just done, literally just on leatherneck. And then which is the marine corps training?
Speaker 3:I think, almost I think, all of them ended up going Marine Corps. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, which is which is crazy? Right, because this is the, this is the funny thing and this is what I really want to emphasize to parents listening as well, right? Or even plebs, is your experience from what we're saying can be so different from what we're talking about or so similar, depending on your cadre of detailers that are going to happen. Right, I was talking with my girlfriend, again, who is completely separate company, different experience, and I'm just going to tell a story to kind of really emphasize this message. Right, because I just remember we were doing this thing called shoots and ladders, which our detailers had so fondly created. The name for this evolution called shoots and ladders where they made us in the book.
Speaker 1:This is. This is not one of the Naval Academy approved terminologies that we've been talking about. This was a 26 company detailer thing from 2013. It was. It was a special creation for us where we would have to fill our backpack full of books, like the jane's book and all the thing, get it filled up nice and nice and heavy, uh, and then we would have to run, because we started on third deck right. We would run up to the top, up to fourth deck, down all the way down to the basement and then back up to third deck and then go back and hit a bulkhead right. And, as we're talking about these things, there was a certain time hack that we'd have to hit. They'd be like all right chutes and ladders.
Speaker 2:You have a minute and 15 seconds dude, I swear we got down to a minute 15 seconds one time.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what I was thinking right, and so you're going. And so I just remember the story because like we're getting beat down, dude right, like we've been doing this for an hour, like we've been running stairs for an hour plus with a backpack full of books and literally across the hall was Oscar company, 27th platoon, and they were literally sitting sitting on the floor painting poster boards for the track smoker Right. So like our details are over there and like our detailers were not shy about like being very vocal, they're like you see those guys over there paint poster boards, taking the easy way out.
Speaker 3:You guys are out here like running.
Speaker 1:You guys are building this blah blah blah, but like I mean it's so crazy that again I just want to re-emphasize the lateral bounds that happen in plebe summer and you can land anywhere on that spectrum of how your experience is. And what really prompted me to say that was talking about rifles and, like you know, doing drill, but also because of the uh, you know, post leatherneck high marine corps guys, there was a high emphasis on rifles in our company right during plebe summer and probably the most devastating thing of all time was coming back from an evolution and walking back on our deck and seeing like three or four rifles just sitting in the P-Way with a detailer standing next to them.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to turn it over to Jeremiah here to let the people know about this term of ripping rifles. But, jeremiah, do you mind running us through what it means to rip a rifle and kind of what's associated with that, because this is also a term you may hear during the pleb summer process.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if these guys end up ripping a rifle, that means someone's rifle was left unlocked.
Speaker 3:So when we get our rifles issued to us and then we also get issued this gun lock, it looks like a regular padlock that you twist and turn, like you would use in high school yeah cable lock, uh, but it's got a long um wire on it and you have to feed it through your rifle receiver a certain way, uh, because you can't have a lot of slack on it, um, so you have to feed it through a certain way and then you lock it and you're good to go. Well, uh, if you forgot to lock it properly, or like it's kind of if, if you didn't push hard enough and really hear the click it may not have locked you and you didn't check it.
Speaker 3:Uh, a detailer could come by and be like hmm, that that lock looks a little fishy, there's a little too much metal showing on the the end tip, and if you just get, he or she gives a little tug uh, oh, someone's rifle's not locked. So then they grab that rifle and they check everyone else's and then our rifles are sitting there in the middle of the poa and what that meant is like we are about to go do some lovely rifle pt and that could be, I mean, they. It can be so creative, whether you're like you know something as simple as like all right, just hold your rifle out with one hand.
Speaker 3:Uh, over the head, all the way down to like stuff, everyone's brutal everyone down at four arms and you're holding it there for like three minutes all the way to like hey, everyone, knife hand on your, your receiver, and you're gonna hold the receiver down with your knife hand while you're also holding the rifle right like and at present, and you, everyone, has to hold the receiver down and like it's got some, there's some spring to it, right, uh, and everyone's.
Speaker 3:You just see everyone's arms shaking as their hand slowly goes up because you can't hold it. Um, all the way to like down in uh front leaning rest push-up position, uh, with your rifle on your hands, because you're not going to let your rifle touch the deck. And you're sitting there, uh, doing push-ups with with your rifles on your hands, like it was. It was always if we saw there was a rifle out in the p-way or multiple like oh, there goes, the afternoon did y'all ever lose yours?
Speaker 2:did y'all ever get your rifle ripped?
Speaker 1:my, my rifle, my rifle never got ripped.
Speaker 2:Thank goodness I that that may have been the tipping point for me.
Speaker 1:If my rifle got ripped, dude, I may have been gone. I may have been in tango company real fast well that was the thing.
Speaker 3:The rifles that were issued to us. They have serial numbers. It was made sure that we knew whether we wrote it in our reef points or whatnot.
Speaker 2:Do you remember your rifle serial number?
Speaker 3:Everyone remembers your rifle serial number or memorized it. I didn't.
Speaker 2:I don't remember it now.
Speaker 1:I'm certain you do Christian.
Speaker 2:It's there forever. It's a core memory.
Speaker 3:I probably have it written down somewhere, but, like when you got out into the P-Way, they would. Then, if they had your rifle ripped and it was out there, they would read off the serial numbers and if they read yours, you're just.
Speaker 1:The sinking feeling. Yeah, the sinking.
Speaker 2:I'm the problem. I'm the problem. Yeah, toledo had mine one time. She was walking around and I did something very uncharacteristic for fourth-class Blanchard. I argued with her oh yeah, dude, we came back from some evolution and she had a rifle. There were a couple. She had a rifle at right shoulder and she said it was mine and I hit a bulkheadhead and I was like no, ma'am, it's not, there's no way.
Speaker 2:And she like got really upset. I was like ma'am, I have no idea how that happened. I could not admit that I had not locked my rifle. And they one thing. I'm curious your your memory about this, jerry. But we could earn things back. I don't know if this is something that you were going to get to Grant, but in that instance we were trying to earn my. I was trying to earn my rifle back and I think eventually, since I couldn't like earn it back the way that they wanted to, my whole squad earned my rifle back, which is very embarrassing, but we did it as a squad and, uh, that reminded me of earning time back. Do you have any memories of earning time back?
Speaker 1:oh, I never. I never remember earning time back, dude, but kind of kind of what you're talking about here, which I think is is we talk about all the time hacks and the evolutions that we had during pre-summer. It's like, hey, you have three minutes to do a rack race. Let's say we got back on the bulkhead at 3.24. Then they would add do you remember the chalkboard in the hallway where they kept our time bank? And so if we did, they would add those 24 seconds onto our. We went and we did an ITE.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you remember that it earned the time back for us.
Speaker 1:That's how we earned the time back. That's how we earned the time back was doing an ITE, and so I'm going to turn this over to Jeremiah really quick. Do you mind explaining to the people what an ITE is? What an ITE is?
Speaker 3:So an ITE intensive training exercise. Basically it is something that has to be approved. This isn't something that your detailers for the midshipmen get to do all willy-nilly. They have to write up a CHIT like a special request, kind of detailing exactly what they're going to do, kind of what for and where it's going to take place, and you go and do it and it is just a very intense physical evolution. So for us, the way it worked when we were plebs over plebs summer is our detailers loved the squash courts and the racquetball court. They would take us to the courts and it was just a super intense physical evolution that would take place.
Speaker 3:And it's scripted right. This isn't just your detailers coming up with whatever they want to do. This isn't just your detailers coming up with whatever they want to do. It's scripted about what they can do. For hey, you do 20 push-ups in unison with a minute rest or whatever it is. So they're not just pushing people beyond their limits and just doing whatever comes to mind. It's scripted about what they can do. But for us, as plebs, during plebs summer, when we're in it.
Speaker 3:You couldn't tell. You just thought like the world is ending. We're sitting there getting just destroyed At the same time, like we're on these like wood squash courts that we're doing pretty much just all sorts of like body weight calisthenics, everything from jumping jacks, arm circles, pushups, whatever. But it's on like a wood squash court and so we're sweating all over the place. We're nasty, sweaty everywhere, and so we have some of the detailers are sitting there with mops just going through and mopping up all the sweat.
Speaker 2:So that no one was like in an instruction that there should always be at least two detailers with a mop for ites. I don't like, I'm not kidding about that, I'm pretty certain that was in the instruction.
Speaker 3:It was like it's cause you're sweating so much, like that that floor will get slick. But yeah, it was a. It was a fun time. Looking back now, you remember those times. Yeah, it was pretty intense, it was great it was fun.
Speaker 2:I want to piggyback off of Jeremiah because of a couple things. He said that it's scripted and that's really important. Right, because this is such a high coming from the perspective of a detailer. What you're doing is really there aren't a whole lot of environments in human life where this kind of behavior is normal or acceptable. Right, you're pushing yourself as a detailer to a place like power-wise and emotionally, that is exceptional. And ultimately we are also just a bunch of teenagers or 20-somethings. So having this script is absolutely essential to keep Plebe Summer safe. But I think a lot of folks hear that and think that that somehow diminishes the intensity or even the meaningfulness of Plebe Summer. It should be more traditional and we should give detailers the room to make certain decisions, and ITE is not the time to give 20-something-year-old kids the room to make their own decisions. And I think all three of us can attest to the fact that that script does nothing to diminish the intensity that you can still achieve.
Speaker 2:Especially in the squash courts, just sound wise. That is a lot, man, it is very loud and it echoes, but that's just an important point for me to drive home to folks who might think that way, because the script is there to keep it standardized and safe um jerry did say something about, not you know, I know this isn't exactly what you meant, but you said it's not designed to, like, push people to their limits. That is true in like a sense, but you certainly get pushed to your limits in an ite at times in a
Speaker 2:safety perspective. Yeah, exactly, it's not unsafe, but you can certainly get pushed to your limit with regard to muscular fatigue and emotionally. This is and this is a small note that I wanted to make because one of our detailers was kind of famous. He was my first set detailer for fourth squad. He is just this like infamous legend in our class and he was a very cranky guy, I think, to say the least, and you know, nobody much cared for him and you know he was kind of what I imagined like a pure, just like old school DI kind of guy that was not fair and was just really mean and I think you know rightly our memories kind of guy that was not fair and was just really mean. And I think you know, rightly our memories kind of tainted because of that.
Speaker 2:But during probably our first or second ITE in the squash court, I was really just like kind of losing it. I was pushed to my emotional limit for sure, and that was kind of tied into how intense the exercise was. But it's loud. We're all in this together, we're being punished. The detailers are yelling at us, that's. The thing is like there was no restriction on volume. That like the kind of like the volume and like the anger that detailers can impart and that does so much in that moment to like really push you. And so we were doing arm circles and that's all.
Speaker 2:It was man, and I just know like I must've looked so pitiful. My face was just, I wasn't like crying but man, I was just like, and almost exclusively the detailers were walking around like getting in our faces and fussing at us and my squad leader comes up to me. He like sees me and it's like it's tight, but he walks like five steps right to me and gets right in my face and he said you know, I can't remember his exact words, but he said you're fine right now. All this pain is in your head. You need to calm down.
Speaker 2:And it was in as calm a voice like that, like we were sitting across from each other as a coffee shop and man, it's one of those things. Many small memories have a permanent effect on you from plebe summer. But if I'm struggling in a workout today, I've put on a little bit of extra pounds over the years. If I'm struggling and kind of bonking on a run or something that comes back to mind, like this pain's just in my head. I went through that with all my classmates we did it together and one of the meanest guys ever kind of has this really um positive place in my memory and you know again, still has a permanent effect on the way that I kind of live my life to this day yeah, no, absolutely, um, yeah, and so that is a really important piece.
Speaker 1:And again, we talk a lot about the impact that you can have with really small actions, uh, at the, at the Naval Academy especially, but just just in life, right, like you never, you should never underestimate the impact you can make on someone's life with small action like that, uh, but it's really heightened. And I think this is where, again, this is where the Naval Academy is. So in just military bootcamp in general, but please somewhere so such as you get put in these situations, right, like you get put in these high stress, high emotional, high intensity situations where, literally, the small action of someone, it puts you almost to the like we're saying the pushing, like the brinking point of just like your sanity and just like your comfort in the moment. And it gives people an opportunity to demonstrate like real leadership through very simple action. Right, and I think this is like the premise of the Naval Academy.
Speaker 1:We talk about it being a leadership laboratory. This is a conversation I have a lot. It's not what they teach you at the Academy. That's a piece of it. There's a curriculum. The leadership curriculum at the Naval Academy is fantastic, right, it provides you with the foundation.
Speaker 1:What makes the Naval Academy so special is it puts you in real world events with real human dynamics, and you can really start to test what leadership style really works for you. Right Again, like we're talking about, there is a script to that situation that ITE has a script, but based on the detailer involvement, the level of interaction, the intensity, volume, et cetera, that builds the environment. That is what contributed to I won't say his name, but that detailer's ability to make an impact on you by just walking up and saying those words, by changing tone and just being genuine in that moment. And so this is what makes the Naval Academy so special is it puts you in these real world events where people again it's funny because it really is this made up world You're in your own little unicorn world, plebe, summer, like all these things, but it creates real human emotion, real human dynamic and real leadership situations.
Speaker 2:Right, and so so stick around to, because 100%, 100%.
Speaker 1:And so, um, you know, again, the ITE is what we'll consider more of the negative or more of the punishment, uh, based physical training. But what I want to end with is potentially some of the most profound moments you can make during gray space, which is this idea of a DPT, or discretionary physical training, and so, um, you know I've actually written a blog about one that that really meant a ton to me and then I'll pass it to you guys for come sign some of the things that you remember as well. But for me, so, our detailers and we've talked a lot about them in this, in this, uh, in this podcast I'm so grateful. Again, it feels, feels funny saying it because I was about ready to leave during Pleap Summer. I tell this story a lot, but they made it extremely difficult, but I think they created our class to be what I think was probably the closest company in the entire brigade. I agree, our friend group. As a result of everything that we had and our experience during Pleap Summer is tight, it's extremely tight and, um, our detailers were amazing. Our detailers were amazing, and so one of the things that stuck around most with me and helped me resonate and helped me understand why they were the way they were is we had a discretionary physical training where we did a cemetery, and so there is a cemetery on the Naval Academy campus over in Hospital Point and during one of our gray space periods, we're normally we're used to getting I'll use this term, I don't mean it literally beat down right Like rack races, constantly uniform races, constantly getting dropped, doing pushups, doing flutter kicks, you know, doing the chutes and ladders, whatever it was.
Speaker 1:I just remember one time they called us out and they said, hey, getting PT here, we're going to just going to go for a little jog, right, and we we go on a jog to hospital point and they bring us to a tombstone, and it happened to be um, for this young gentleman named Nick Tarr. And Nick Tarr was a classmate and a company mate of our detailers, right, so the class of 2013, the 26th company of the United States Naval Academy. Nick Tarr was a friend who passed away during his time as a midshipman, right, and our detailers brought us out there and they told us Nick Tarr's story. They told us about their relationship with Nick and what an absolute warrior he was, right, the type of personality that he brought, his desire to go into the Marine Corps, wanted to be an infantry Marine, like they're like. This is. This is a guy who, um wanted to, wanted to serve his country more than anything in the world, and the reason we're so tough on you is because we want you guys to be as close as we are, right, like our class loves each other. This is an extremely cool thing and Nick Tarr is the reason why we are the way we are and we want that to be carried on to you as well. Right, and so I just remember like having that, and so I just remember having that moment, after all the different things, and being able to come back and be like holy smokes, like I get it. I get it Because we joke about, like, when we're going through, like there was part of me that was like man, I wish I was part of 27 Platoon.
Speaker 1:This is great. Let those dudes paint. No, like, let me get over there, dude, I'm not artistic, but I'll paint some poster boards for you right now. Um, I just. It was amazing and it was utilized to be that discretionary physical training period. Um, to really install that, that message. Right, and our detailers did a really phenomenal job. Right and um, right and um again I. I just think back. You mentioned ashley palito, but again, buster what excuse me? Buster, our boy, buster, buster worthington, um dan lee, lance duggar, nolan sullivan, josh escobar, parker pearson. Like our detailers were incredible, right and I don't know if they'll ever hear this right, but just genuinely from the bottom of our heart and I know this is a sentiment shared throughout is like we acknowledge that we probably had the hardest, one of the hardest plebe summers of any of the class of 2017 people and we are so grateful for it and, like I am generally so happy for our detailers and I think they did an amazing job and they pushed boundaries.
Speaker 1:They weren't messing, they pushed some boundaries and again like you're saying, we tailored some things when we became detailers to adjust it a little bit, but they were great. They were great and I think they made it special.
Speaker 2:I agree I don't think we'd be as close without them and I have gotten the same impression from the folks from class of 20 that I've stayed in touch with. I think you kind of impart things in four-year chunks, right, like class of seven. Class of 14 had that effect on us. We had that effect on class of 20. That kind of there are four given like company personalities at the Naval Academy at any given time and it's changing a bit with company shuffle. Shuffle.
Speaker 2:That's not the way that we did things and I think there are a lot of great things about shuffling companies um or shotgunning, but uh, I think, um, they gave us something really special and I don't, I don't regret any of it yeah, uh, thank you for that correction.
Speaker 1:Class of 2014 I messed that up. I said 2013 already that I said 13. That was my fault, yeah class of 2014, um class of 14. So uh, yeah, and then again a couple other things. I remember jeremiah specifically, like going to go into memorial hall as well, like during our gray space period. You want to touch on that story just briefly yeah, um so.
Speaker 3:Uh, at one point during cleve summer we all got handed a very small slip of paper. I actually still had it in my reef points, had my name on it the name the name of uh, someone else on it and we were handed it and we weren't really told much about it until whatever point of the day when they're finally like hey, everyone, get out your piece of paper. Um, we're gonna go to memorial hall. Uh, so at the naval academy? Uh, it's this wonderful hall right at the front of Bancroft Memorial.
Speaker 2:Hall, I was thinking about it too.
Speaker 3:It has yeah.
Speaker 3:And the rotunda from the entire all the way back to when the Naval Academy was formed in 1845, all the way up to modern day, there is a stone tablet for each class with the class crests for each of those classes on it, and under the class crests are the names of all the midshipmen that passed away in the line of duty, and so it's especially humbling to see when you're walking through it and you start seeing at the times when the US was in times of conflict or war, and you really start to see like wow, there's three or four tablets just for this class of names for people that passed away, and maybe not as many in peacetime.
Speaker 3:So it's really, like I said, it's really humbling to see. But we all got a name and we went in and our job was to go find that person and what that taught us to do, or what that really got us to do, was to go through, look and really read each of these tablets and you really got a sense of like how many names you're reading as you go through Memorial Hall really puts into perspective like us at the Plebes at the Naval Academy, what we're signing up to do, what the ultimate sacrifice could possibly be that could be entailed with the job that we are agreeing to take up. So it's an extremely humbling experience that we got to do and that's something that they could do in that gray space period.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely All right. Well, we're going to get ready to wrap up here, so it's to not extend the listeners too long, but I hope out of this episode again, we probably could have talked for about four hours on this stuff, and there's stuff that I'm sure we missed. Basically what we talk about when we get together.
Speaker 1:When we literally get together. When we literally get together, we've shared nothing but these stories. So if you're listening to this and you have a question about something that we said, please reach out to me. We'd be more than happy to further expand upon something or explain anything. But I hope this was both a little bit educational about some of the you know what makes gray space gray space, but to what I really want to leave you with again, which is that gray space can be extremely variable. There are a lot of different experiences people can have during gray space, and that period during space, gray space, is really what's going to make their plebe summer experience. Again, some people choose to go a little bit more reflective instructional route. Some people choose to go a little bit more the Marine Corps route, right, which was a little bit of like what our experience was right.
Speaker 1:And so, again, one way is not necessarily right or wrong. It's just a different approach to how you utilize gray space and that will that will greatly impact your Naval Academy experience, right, and so, as you're getting ready to either go into plebe summer or you're a parent who's listening to try and understand your son or daughter's plebe summer experience, there's not one way gray space is done and you know how it does get done. It will make a big impact on your experience, but you're gonna have different stories, you're gonna have different experiences, and so I hope this was just a good baseline foundation of understanding what we're talking about and then being educated enough to again ask good questions to your son or daughter about like, oh hey, what did you guys do during gray space? Did you do any DPTs? Or like did you experience your ITTE, how was it going to? Right, and so again prompted questions like that can be super helpful. But again, just in recap, our gray space was pretty intense when we were going through Plebe Summer and I thought that had a lot of positives.
Speaker 1:We did not paint, we never painted. We showed up to the track smoker, uh, poster board less Okay. So, um, we cheered with our voices, um, but uh, but I think it was a great again, a great experience, and so, uh, for anyone who's listening, if you have any more questions about gray space, let me know. Otherwise, uh, Christian Jeremiah, thank you so much for taking the time to to come in and share these stories and share these experiences again to help, hopefully, educate the next wave of of midshipmen going through Right, and so appreciate you being here. I'll see you soon.
Speaker 2:All right guys, All right?
Speaker 1:Uh, any questions, let me know. Otherwise, hope you enjoyed the episode. Have a great day. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Academy Insider Podcast. I really hope you liked it, enjoyed it and learned something during this time. If you did, please feel free to like and subscribe or leave a comment about the episode. We really appreciate to hear your feedback about everything and continue to make Academy Insider an amazing service that guides, serves and supports midshipmen, future midshipmen and their families. Thank you.