As a whole experience of my training with my Army Recruiters and my fellow future soldiers I had ups and downs yet I am happy that I still manage to keep going with the training program until now. Being part of the Future Soldier Training program gave me the opportunity to somewhat feel and go through some similar kind of training that my recruiters already went through when they were in boot-camp. The best part of it was learning about the US Army itself because I entered the training program being scared and not as much knowledge about the Army, where all I knew was about wars, guns, dying, and much more but as I would go every week i learn something about the Army that's changing how I should see the Army because its almost the same exact opposite of how I use to look at it. As of my hours it was not hard for me to achieve because I still needed to go to my training since I am now a future soldier.
Some personal gains that I got out of training is about time management, working with different people, not giving up, and I have gained more confidence. With time management, it all began when I went to my very first training because I was actually late where one of the highest rank Sergeants within the San Francisco area put me on blast for being late where he specifically said "if one of you guys are late, everyone's late" and while he was saying these words he was straightly looking at my eyes to the point where I knew it was my fault why we started our training late. And from then on I managed to not be late to any of my training. Working with different people was also an accomplishment for me since I was with different age groups and where I was also the youngest one in the training program. Yes, I have worked with different people before but this was new for me because we literally had to work together as a team to complete a special task because if we don't we were somewhat had to pay our leader some physical workouts if we didn't. And lastly gaining confidence was an important gain for me because now I know I can tackle almost anything in my life with my head held high onto achieving it. And now I am not as scared because the things that I am doing now and what I'll be doing in my future is something that is scary yet I am ready to tackle it with all my heart and mind. The best part of my experience, and even until now is how I can say I am part of that 1% who decided to join the Army.
A challenge I went through was feeling intimidated in the beginning and the reason why was that in some of the trainings I was the only female and adding to that was how I was the shortest and youngest of them all. Within that point I felt as if I would not achieve on the workouts and other physical test that we would do in the program. But when I was getting used to it I stepped back and told myself that I can actually do this because I just had to believe on myself and just keep going and don't give up. And now I believe that giving up is just in the mind and with a person giving up, they will not get anywhere with their life. Time management was also a challenge for me in the beginning because I had a hectic schedule with school where I had to think about making time for this training because this will eventually become my future. And the hardest challenge that I think I went through with this experience are the physical workouts, especially passing the physical test because my body is not used to the workouts that we would usually do since in the past I haven't really worked out as hard as I do now yet with the training my body is now slowly going through a phase of being stronger to be able to achieve the workouts that we do in the training program. Where it also makes me happy because it's also making me be conscious of my health and body.
