What a productive day! I got my calculus problem set done, suffered through 2 hours of physical training with the venerable USMC Staff Sergeant assigned to our unit, went to all my classes, jammed out to some amazing music(always a bright moment in the day), had a great dinner, and got a 2 hour nap. So let me piece all of this together:

This morning is my day  to sleep in - I slept in until 8 am this morning, which is a nice change from the 0630 physical training on the other days. I woke up at 8, went to the main Yale dining hall (Commons) and loaded up on probably two or three pounds of scrambled eggs and egg whites. Gotta love the protein.

I had a scavenger hunt in my writing seminar, and I successfully navigated the daunting Sterling Memorial Library, which is a 15 story tower housing well over 4 million volumes. It sounds like a small feat, but I've learned to celebrate the small victories. High-fives with my classmates were abundant and plentiful.

But let's be honest with each other, the best part of my day by far was the physical training with our USMC Staff Sergeant. We did two rounds of the circle of death, and then we did what he called "Parris Island Suicides". So he set up 6 cones along stretch of grass the length of a football field; we had to sprint to the first cone, do that exercise (which happened to be Burpees, or I call them up-downs) 25 times, sprint back to the start, but OH NO, it would be too easy to go to the next cone, so we had to redo each earlier cone every time before getting to the next cone. By the time we got to the sixth, we were sprinting a football field, doing 25 diamond pushups, burpees, diamond pushups, squats, 100 seconds of flutter kicks, and lunge jumps. It wasn't the exercises that were so challenging, it was the pace. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the field was covered in broken glass from fans smashing their longneck beer bottles after games on the field. Pushups on broken glass gives you a new outlook on life, I promise. And now it gets even better.

SSgt. told us before the start that the person finishing last would get a nice prize at the end...well by the last person he meant the last seven midshipmen. I finished 3rd out of 24 Midshipman, but of course you don't just sit there and watch your shipmates get punished, you endure it with them ( which I was honestly 100% good with...I'm not the person to sit and watch anyways.). I ended up sticking with one of our Marine option Midshipmen who was having a particularly rough time. We finally got him through the entire gauntlet and then we were done. I did realize just how far down you can dig to help your comrades through a bad situation. Granted, this is just physical training, but I can definitely see how this transfers to the fleet. I mean, the Navy just had 2 MH-60S helicopter pilots die a few days ago in the Red Sea. Pilots need to be able to potentially endure many hours or even days of staying afloat in high seas. To be honest with you, it was great team building exercise. No regrets.

To show you what the afternoon looked like, I snapped a picture on my phone while walking away from the Yale Bowl:

For dinner, Ms. Peggy gave me her typical sweet greeting and I proceeded to eat a rather large amount of cod and peas/carrots.  Then I headed back to my suite and woke up about 2 hours later...it was the good kind of nap where you think it's morning when you wake up. 

As a side note to end this, I'd like to share a quote given to me by my Vietnam veteran U.S. Marine neighbor back home: "If everything can go wrong, then everything can go right." 

Goodnight, Y'all.