Ouch! Go ahead, rip that band-aid right off. The subject would probably be its own huge [-]psychoanalysis[/-] thread.
It's true: I owe a lot to USNA. For starters I met my spouse there, although she spent the next seven years trying to decide if there was anything worth salvaging. She says she went to USNA because it was one of the very few colleges where her parents couldn't just phone her up or drop by to visit anytime. (Lord knows they tried.) It was also a great way for me to escape my family.
USNA taught me how to persevere in the face of adversity, although I was pretty darn stubborn & obstinate to begin with. I'm very good at ducking or absorbing shotgun blasts to the face, too, although I'm not sure what type of life skill that may be.
USNA also taught me a lot of leadership skills (almost as many negative as positive examples) that I'd never have learned anywhere else. And I certainly had the opportunity to take charge of many more taxpayer weapons systems & budgets than anyone in their right mind, let alone the Navy, should have trusted me with.
USNA taught me an exceptional degree of [-]deprivation[/-] frugality and an incredibly low standard of living that makes [-]federal prisoners[/-] most LBYMs look like Paris Hilton competing against Donald Trump for Brewster's millions. And the submarine force was a combined masters/PhD/postdoc in the subject.
So yeah, you're right dammit, USNA is probably right up there at the top of the list.
But I don't have to be happy about it. And I'll spend a lifetime recovering from it. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to my friends, let alone my kid.
Here's a conundrum: if a military academy is the key to ER, then where the heck are all their ER'd alumni?
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