College is a time of change and challenge for every incoming freshman. Most struggle with the toils of making friends, getting laid (for guys, at least), and trying not to screw up too badly, accademically or socailly.

However, a very special type of freshmen comes to schools, such as Virginia Tech every fall; the ones dumb enough to check the little box on the application labeled "cadet". For this freshmen, the first months of college will be all of the accademic strains of college, minus all of the fun social parts. A freshman cadet's life will consist of shining shoes, making beds, OCD-style dusting, and doing everything possible to avoid upperclassmen. In attempt to avoid a trip to the head, male freshmen resort to use of the room's sink. While their civilian counterparts begin the year with full human rights, freshmen cannot listen to music, hang poster, move their furniture, have hair, wear civilian clothes, or have any fun for the better part of the year. They must march through hallways, greeting everyone who is higher ranking than them (aka everyone). In short, life is waking up for PT (around 0530), putting together an inspectable uniform, hiding in the dorm room until it is time for class, getting through the hallways as fast as possible and avoiding upperclassmen at all costs, then repeating again on the way back from class.

As bad as life is, many cadets find comfort in the fact that they are getting a free education, courtisey of the American tax payer. And that after college (if they somehow survive), they will skip the turbulent job market and go strait to a platoon, squadron, or ship. Furthermore, they find that freshman year only seems to get better and that by the end, they have accumulated a store of rediculous stories and experiances that their civilian comrades will probably never fully understand. 

I will give you a taste of one of mine:
When you live in a military environment, such as an ROTC program, time is pretty important. You can skip classes, but skipping the morning flag raising without an excuse will bring consiquences. God have mercey on you if you somehow miss PT in the morning. It had been a strenous week. I had awesome'd my way through a 20 page history paper and woke up to turn it in that day. I went to sleep early that night, firugring PT the next morning was going to suck. I had hydrated that night and layed all of my PT gear out so that I would be 100% ready to go with minimul thought the next day at 0530. The night passes…0530 comes and goes withoutout me waking up. At 0550, my squad leader comes in and gets my ass out of bed and within 3 minutes, I'm hauling my ass out the front door. My company is already working out…I'm in deep shit and know it. My platoon gives me a strong mroning and tells me I have to show up 15 minutes early next week. When I returned from PT, I found the reason I had slept in; my alarm clack had fallen and landed on the snooze button. By the grace of god or someone else, the lieutenant in charge of my company wasn't there that morning. Last year, a freshman had done the same thing I had. He ended up in the lieutenant's office in push up position while the man yelled at his alarm clock…buess how long it took for the alarm clock to answer? Longer than the poor bastard could hold push up position.

I hope to continue this if it gets enough hits. College Humor, as a site, is awesome at relateing the adventure of my civilain counterparts, but I feel like we, who don't get to experiance any of this, get left out. I'm going to refrain from using names and such.     
-Ut Prosim