50 Posts for 50 Years of USNA — Post [18] My roommate and I were not leaders. At least not officially. In my senior year at the Naval Academy, we were ranked dead last in our peer group for leadership positions. She was second to last. I was last. We had both endured our share of come-arounds as plebes, and neither of us was particularly motivated to inflict on others what we had resented receiving.…
4 CommentsTag: institutional change
She Served
Published May 23, 2026
50 Posts for 50 Years · Post 17 · Memorial Day 2026 On our induction day in the summer of 1977, the speaker on the podium delivered the standard warning to the assembled plebes: “Look to your left.“ Look to your right. One of you will not be here at your commissioning. For the roughly 90 women who entered that day, scattered among a class of 1,000, the math proved almost exactly right. About a third…
Leave a CommentThe White Chit on the Door
Published May 11, 2026
On hospital corners, room inspections, and the note that stopped my heart — then filled it. Before I was anything else at the US Naval Academy, I was a steward of a small rectangle of space, my room. The room inspection chit taught me things I never would have thought to wonder about. How to make a bed with hospital corners. How to stow your gear left to right, dark to white. Nothing adrift. Nothing…
Leave a CommentJe Ne Comprends Pas Le Wiz
Published May 4, 2026
50 Stories for 50 Years | #14 There are class ranks, and then there are rooms that don’t care about them. French class was one of those rooms. At the Naval Academy, class year is everything. It shapes how you walk, where you eat, and how you are addressed. I was a plebe.That word meant something, something loud and specific and constant. It meant you were at the bottom, and the bottom was a place…
Leave a CommentThe Law I Couldn’t Keep
Published April 27, 2026
Plebe Summer tested everything I thought I knew about my body and my will. The academic year tested something else entirely. I was up before dawn for swim practice. Even after validating some courses, the math and science requirements were formidable. A roommate conflict added friction to the hours I was supposed to call rest. But none of that was the heaviest weight. The heaviest weight was private. I heard myself curse. I heard myself…
5 CommentsWhy celebrate?
Published April 20, 2026
One Woman’s Lived History from the Second Wave I’m interrupting the distant past for a glimpse of the more immediate past, the 50th Anniversary of Service Women at the Academies, and specifically the USNA Women’s celebration in Annapolis. More than 800 women and men, spanning five decades, gathered to mark this milestone. What unfolded over four days was the result of more than a year of effort, a true labor of commitment and care. There…
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