Getting Cold Feet About The Corps

By Keith McCusker NU '04

I can close my eyes today and flash back to standing in that crowded parking lot. It wasn’t full of cars, it was full of people. Young men and women in khaki pants, white button down shirts and black ties, mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers, sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends, and other assorted family members all holding back the tears. We had been given our 10 minutes to say goodbye to our families, and that time was almost over. Thousands of thoughts rushed through my head but all I could manage to get out was “I love you mom, I love you dad, I’ll be fine.” And with this being one of hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life, I turned away from the people that have always been for me and walked off alone to begin my rook experience at Norwich.

I want to backtrack to my summer before rookdom. I had just graduated high school, and was enjoying my summer off. I was living life on cloud nine and enjoying every minute of it. I had an easy job at a supermarket; I hung out with my friends all the time, and had an awesome girlfriend…summers on the Jersey shore didn’t get any better. As the summer went on, things started to change. All my buddies were going off to summer orientations, getting info about who their cool new roommates were going to be, and chatting about what fraternities they would join when they got to college. I felt left out of the loop. I never had a summer orientation to talk about, I didn’t know who my roommate was going to be, aside from one of my rook buddies, and I wasn’t joining a frat, I was joining the Corps of Cadets. Boy did I feel like an outsider. Something deep down inside me keep reassuring me that I was making the right choice. I knew I wanted a different college experience, and would be a better person because of it.

As Arrival Day got closer and closer, while my friends were getting all new clothes for college, I was off getting 12 pairs of white undershirts, 12 pairs of black socks, 12 pairs of white socks, etc. Its just wasn’t what everyone else was doing, but I never wanted to be like everyone else. That’s what I loved about Norwich, giving me the opportunity to do something different with my life. We packed up everything in the car and headed North to Vermont and to a defining moment in my life. We pulled onto campus and I can still remember the first cadet in uniform I saw that day. He looked so prestigious and so confident, and I knew I was making the right decision.

Trust me; you’re not the only one out of the incoming rook class that is second guessing your decision right now. I know I did myself, but deep down inside I knew Norwich was where my life was headed and that it would prepare me for life beyond college. Arrival day is right around the corner, so you have to trust yourself and your choices. It’s not going to be easy; if it was easy everyone would do it. You chose to enter into the Corps of Cadets for whatever reasons that maybe, and those reasons are not going to change. If in life, every time things got challenging I turned tail and ran away, I’d find myself living in a cave somewhere a hermit. Just remember the words my Cadet Colonel said many times during my rook experience, “The only easy day was yesterday.” I can close my eyes today and honestly say that I would do it all over again in a heart beat. I loved my rook experience at Norwich and you will too!