SATURDAY, APRIL 29th

Well, things have improved, slightly. The drill sergeants have become more interested in training us than yelling at us as of late. We've been going out to the range every day for the past few days and we will continue to do so for another week. Open sights on an M16 while shooting a target at 300 meters is not very easy. We need practice.

On the bay leader side of things, I'm not sure I'm doing very well. 60 "men" in this bay, but there's probably 10 of us that get along. That's difficult enough. I feel like a camp counselor for high school dropouts. On top of that, though, is the fact that our barracks need to be clean. Not just cleaned up, "military clean." Clean everywhere. Many of my compadres just moved out of mom's house, but I doubt their mothers would approve of their behavior here.

On the personal side of things, I've been reflecting a lot on what the hell I'm doing here, though I'm trying my best not to think about it because I really don't have a good answer. All I can really think about is "Dear God, I hope the rest of the Army isn't like this."

Then, of course, I feel guilty being this miserable because of a decision I made on my own. I want attention. I want letters. I want sympathy (something my drill sergeant has told us "is found in the dictionary between 'shit' and 'syphilis'." Every day you screw up and every mistake is magnified to nearly unspeakable proportions by the drill sergeants. It's hard to not come to the conclusion that I am failing miserably here.

Not everyone here feels this way. Some guys simply don't have anywhere else to be or have anything else to do. They are easily motivated. They get frustrated, but try harder because they need this to move on with their lives.

I'm still searching for my motivation. I don't like to speculate about it much. Maybe it will come later. By then, maybe it will develop into something worthy of going through this.

Anyway, I'm obviously pretty down right now. But I'm just about half way through the Basic Training portion of this. I can't wait to graduate and get back home.