A Personal Account of The Experience of Participating in The Jrotc Summer Camp

Special Summer Camp for contributing my personal

Sometimes our expectations are different from reality. Last summer, I participated to the JROTC summer camp. I expected I would have a fun time playing volleyball, swimming and making new friends. But in addition, the summer camp gave me the opportunity to learn many valuable skills. I was looking forward to participating the JROTC summer camp for a whole year. I was very excited to go because I knew that it would be a unique experience for me. The first day I was in the camp, I felt ambivalent. I was afraid because I would be separated from my own friends; but I would learn to be independent and would make more new friends. The first day of the camp we just had fun with each other. The raining began on the second day of the camp.

The beginning of the training day was tough for me. We woke up at five oclock in the morning. It was ridiculous for me. When I am at home, I usually wake up at ten oclock. We had an hour to prepare ourselves and clean up the dorm after we woke up. We had a clean-up competition everyday. The second horrible experience came next. We had to march for two and a half miles to the mess hall to have breakfast, then march back to the dorm. It was extremely miserable when I was marching two and a half miles with my new pair of boots.

The training courses were arduous. We had to do a variety of army training. The one which contributed the most of my personal sense of achievement was Land Navigation. We had had a lesson to learn how to read a map and learned to use a compass before we did the mission. We were divided into a group to learn and a group to do the mission. Our group consisted of three people. I worked with my other two teammates. I didnt know how to use the compass at the beginning. Also, it was difficult for me to get along with one of my teammates in the mission. During the mission, we had to go into a small forest, then we used our compasses to find some designed points from the map. After that we had to find roads to walk back to the terminal point. I was the person who used the compass. One of my teammates thought I didnt know how to use the compass so she was afraid of getting lost.

Therefore she refused to go with me. I was very depressed at that time because my teammates didnt believe in me. But our instructors and the other teammates trusted me. One of the instructors said, Trust yourself. I know that you are all right. You are the best one to do this job. He gave me confidence. We finished the mission with one of the instructors because of my teammates lack of confidence in me. Although my instructor went with us, he didnt say anything. He let me lead our team. Finally, we finished our mission. I was so glad that I could complete our mission with my leadership.