Wonder

Seventy-four is the number. Yesterday it was seventy-five. And this is my day as some of the other cadets and I just wait and wait and count while we do our everyday routine at Texas ChalleNGe Academy.

We have no mirrors, so we wonder what we look like; we have no control over our food, so we wonder what we will be eating; and we wonder about who is coming in for the afternoon shift. We wonder about what our friends and families are up to back at home. It’s a cute little part of our daily life.

As the time unexpectedly flies by, I have found that I have unintentionally built friendships with people who were strangers at one time. The days just fly past. All the early mornings, all of the schoolwork, and all of the cadences become part of our routines. But that’s when the really hard part sinks in.

We ask ourselves are the hardships of TCA worth it. We wonder if all the late downtown nights when we came home at five in the morning were worth it. Now at five in the morning we are up, hearing that the first exercise will be the bend and reach. We hear ourselves us saying in unison, “Ready, Exercise.”

We wonder what parts of TCA will stay with us when we return home. We wonder if we will be changed people when we go home, and we wonder if the change will last. We wonder if we will have become a “hirable person?” It would be an absolute waste of five and a half months if we return home and go back to our same ways. TCA has given us so much. Mostly, TCA has given us the opportunity to learn to respect authority and the chain of command.

TCA Vela tells us that “Motivation leaves, but drive is forever.” And that is what we are learning here. Every day here is repetitive, but it teaches us patience. I have learned to love the countdown and almost dread going home.