Personal Narrative: Basic Cadet Wing

I remember standing there, trying not to pass out. Luckily I had stayed hydrated and the sun’s heat was not going to be the factor that makes me miss out on this moment. I have been waiting for about two years for this instant to come and here it is: Being accepted into the Cadet Wing. With over fifty days of basic, a whole year spent preparing me to be a respectable cadet at the preparatory school; I was finally getting those shoulder boards I’ve desperately wanted more than anything. And as my Flight Commander and Element Leader pinned them on, there was an underlying feeling of despair. I knew that Basic Cadet Training was the “easy” part. With that ending it could only mean one thing: The Academic year was about to begin.
Whenever I heard …show more content…
At the Preparatory School and in high school I did not believe in planners. I had this idea that I can manage to remember everything I needed to remember without writing anything down, or at least placing these important dates on a sticky note that I always lost. Being here I realized I was wrong. Too much occurs in one day for a random sticky note to be enough. I came to the conclusion after missing quizzes and a few assignments that I needed to plan and become organized. From the moment I bought a planner and began to write what I needed to down in one place, I’ve noticed improvement in spending my time wisely. It reminded me of test and quizzes I had soon, which meant I needed to make time to study. Volunteer opportunities that I had signed up for months ago were coming up soon and so that time was spent on that. I have a Silver weekend this and next weekend so I need to make time to study Sunday. These are just the few examples of what having a planner has helped me achieve.
One of the main and most important parts of my own plan for success here at the academy is to have the right mindset. For the longest time I believed that if I was not good at something, it was simply because it wasn’t in my genes or some higher power thought “Hmm… I think she should be good at this and not this. Perfect.” And though I managed to recover from failures, I still deeply feared it. I wasn’t as comfortable as I thought …show more content…
You have to constantly practice and push forward in order to become good at something. This also means you have to be completely willing to accept mistakes and failure and accept it as a learning experience and fuel to push on. One of the areas I’ve seen this personally, which proved to me that this way of thinking is true, is through boxing. When I lost my first fight, I had automatically assumed it was because I was not meant for the sport. Especially seeing some of the other girls become better than me so fast, I was seriously thinking of dropping the sport. But after sitting through the lesson on Growth Mindset in Learning Strategies, I took that loss as just a push to work harder. It was a hard hit to my ego, but I don’t think that aspect really matters anymore. It’s how hard I can get hit and manage to get up and fight