How to Make a U.S. Marine

Imagine you’re barely out of high school and instead of going to college like everyone else, you realize you have a different calling. You join the toughest and most elite military branch to test yourself, and to build yourself into a warrior. And you’re not even old enough to vote yet.

That was my reality at 17 years old. Before going in for basic training I got myself prepared. I went to the gym everyday and ran four to seven miles several times a week. I spent time learning about the Corps and visited my recruiters often.

But no matter how much you mentally and physically prepare yourself, when you actually arrive at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot it’s the scariest culture shock of your life!

There’s no time to adjust or think. No time to hesitate. The sheer chaos of yelling drill instructors and confused recruits puts you so much in the present moment that time seems to go into slow motion. Senses are heightened and adrenaline is pumping like a mile a minute drum roll.

Even though things seem like their moving in slow motion, things are actually happening at super speed. Before you know it, all the clothes on your back and personal belongings you arrived with are stuffed into a small cardboard box. Any sense of individuality is stripped from you. Everyone gets the same gear, same clothes, and made to look the same. You get the fastest haircut of your life, leaving you bald and feeling even more vulnerable. It’s like they’re sheering sheep, but instead it’s your head.

You’re rounded up from station to station like cattle. It’s cold, drill instructors are screaming their eyeballs out, and everyone looks as if they’re questioning their decision of signing their life away. Comfort, confidence and individualism are replaced with confusion, anxiety, fear, helplessness and the feeling of utter insignificance.

It’s the perfect model for control, the necessary element to break you down emotionally.

Welcome to Marine Corps Basic Training, Phase One.

The first month is all about uniformity, learning to adapt and play the role as a link in the chain. Screw up and you get punished, but your platoon gets punished more. You’re capacity to think and process is irrelevant here. It’s all about reacting and responding.

Don’t react the right way or fast enough? Then expect to be surrounded by a group of fierce drill instructors and repeat actions over and over and over again until your instinctive reaction turns into a trained response.

You’ll learn to perform at a high level under an intense amount of pressure. You’re programmed into trained mechanical responses. Think you can outwit the system? Think again. Drill instructors are trained experts at picking up signs of weakness, contempt, and nonconformity.

Phase One was carefully engineered by the government’s top military and psychological experts in order to break you down so they can build you up by Marine Corps standards.

The second month of Basic Training focuses on an aspect that differentiates the Marines from the rest of the military branches in the world, field training.

By Phase Two you’ve adapted to the system. If you haven’t, you get dropped and sent back to repeat it until you do conform. Physical demands are increased. Weapons and tactical training is more intensely implemented. Rifle qualification time!

A key aspect of Marine Corps training is their elite rifle training. Every Marine is efficiently trained in marksmanship. You must qualify at least as a Marksman. The next notch up is a Sharpshooter and the highest is an Expert Rifleman.

Rifle qualification is a key milestone in Phase Two. The standard in the Marines is an entire class higher than the Army. For example an Expert Rifleman in the Army is only the equivalent of a Marine Corps Sharpshooter. I can proudly say that I am an Expert Rifleman – Ooh Raah!

By Phase Three they’ve started to build you up by Marine Corps standards. You’ve adapted to the chaos of fast paced pressures. You’ve gotten a taste of field training and have developed physical and tactical aptitude. It’s time to polish and test all those skills.

Oh, and get ready for the gas chamber. Perhaps the most memorable experience of Basic Training!

By the time you’ve completed a final physical test and an exhausting military hike, called a hump, you’ve developed incredible discipline and traits that only someone who has gone through it can truly comprehend.

One of the greatest moments of my life is walking the parade deck at MCRD and earning the title of United States Marine.

That experience shaped my life and laid a foundation of principles I live my life by.

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