If long distance relationships weren’t hard enough in college, imagine your boyfriend enrolling in the most well-known of commissioning programs. West Point Military Academy provides a 47-month journey with the goal to produce leaders in our Army. Enrolling in military school also means you’re becoming property of the U. S. government. So basically, the government owns my boyfriend. No big deal, right?
Understanding military terms
It’s like a different language, but you have to learn it! Freshmen are called plebes, sophomores are Yuks, juniors are Cows, and seniors are Firsties (I’ll never understand these). I’ll always remember what military ESP is because that’s when my boyfriend is able to call me during the week; it stands for Evening Study Period, but it’s usually the first break at the end of a long day for the cadets. OCP is the camo uniform that military students usually wear, while “white over grey” is a more formal uniform. There are so many more terms, I’m still trying my best to learn them all!
Their room will ALWAYS be cleaner than yours
As college students, I personally think my roommate and I keep our room pretty clean. Once a week we do a really good cleaning, but it’s a totally different story for my boyfriend; he cleans every day! Military students have to keep their room up to standards at all times. AMI (another military term!) is the morning room inspection, which just requires the school day morning standards. There are other room inspections called SAMI that are CRAZY strict. One speck of dust, and a student will lose weekend privileges.
FaceTime will become your best friend
I’ll never take technology for granted again! Being able to see and talk to my boyfriend after a long week is the best feeling. Over the summers, most military students don’t have access to their phones, so my boyfriend and I just wrote letters. We still write letters, but now we’re usually able to facetime every week.
Some days are harder than others.
There’s good and bad days with any long-distance relationship. It definitely gets lonely when you can only see your significant other at months at a time. Sometimes I’ll think about how much easier it would be if my boyfriend went to a normal university, but then I remember that what he is doing now is so much bigger than that. He’s always wanted to serve our country and I could not be prouder. I think I’ve learned to appreciate my boyfriend more, given the limited amount of times he’s allowed off base. At the end of the day, I love being a girlfriend to a military student.