Reflection Of Three Formal Interviews As An Army Officer

Upon graduating from the United States Military Academy, I will commission into the Army as a Second Lieutenant and serve as an infantry officer. Knowing this, I have set out to gain a good understanding of what is expected of me upon my arrival at my unit. One way to gain this understanding is to continuously conduct interviews with the past and current members of the infantry branch. By conducting these interviews, I have the ability to learn a lot about what is expected of me and where junior officers have failed before. Thus far, I have conducted three formal interviews with two Staff Sergeants and a First Lieutenant, who serve within the infantry branch. For this paper, I have chosen to reflect upon the interviews I conducted with First …show more content…
He is a great base of knowledge for the infantry branch and despite his initial attitude, he really wants to better the Army anyway he can; including talking to cadets about the Army. With this in mind, my next question to Sergeant Houle was, what is the best recommendation that you could give to a cadet who is about to commission as an infantry officer? His answer was to not "come in all headstrong". To elaborate, he hit again on the fact that the majority of people in the unit that I will arrive in will have years of experience over me; even at the lowest levels. He also encouraged me to seek out the existing platoon leadership, platoon sergeant, and squad leaders, and find out what they feel has worked best in the past and what they would like to see changed. Based off his response, I believe I am fully capable of recognizing that I am not the most experienced in the unit and that initially, I will be in a learning role. I base the belief of the fact that this is what I did upon arriving at West Point. No one in my immediate family is in the military and I had zero experience with anything in relation to military life. Despite the fact that in high school, I was top in my class and captain on a few teams, I knew I had to stay humble and learn from those around me if I wanted to survive here. I know for a fact that I am capable of doing the same when I get into the operational