Viking_Yearbook_90

Leader~ hip Training For the cadets in PSU's ROTC prograll). taking part in their first big FTX (field training exercise), you eat the tasty MRE's (meals ready to eat), do everything SOP (standard operating procedure), and hope you come back in ONE PIECE. Spending a weekend crossing rivers on rope bridges, "reconning" enemy positions and then planning and carrying out successful ambushes may not sound like a typical week– end for college students. But for the student soldiers in PSU' s fledgling Reserve Officer Training Corps, life as a college student is anything but typical. During the first weekend of May, third– year cadets in the PSU-ROTC program traveled to Camp Bonneville outside of Vancouver, Washington, to participate in their first full field training exercise. According to Eric Hodos, a 21- year-old English major, being in the military is more of a career opportunity, a way of paying for college, than a political choice. "When you get down to this stuff here," Hodos said while on a recon patrol, "there's no real philosophy. Ideologies don't count out here." The purpose of PSU's ROTC sounds simple enough: select, train, motivate, graduate and commission the future officer leadership of the U.S. Army. How that is accomplished is another story. Besides such activities as weekly drills and the occasional weekend training exercise, cadets take a full class load including at least one class a term in military science. But it's in the field, not the classroom, where book learning and hands on experience come together. In the field cadets learn how to make decisions in often stressful situations, plan and implement missions and when to lead and when to follow. They also learn how to best manage their time, the importance of staying physically fit and how to be team players. "The way you train is the way you're going to actually do it, so we've got to train over and over," said Lt. Col. Robert E. Graham, the com– mander of PSU-ROTC. "It's just like studying for a test. You don't study, you don't do well. The 83