Family doesn't stop at blood. At a senior military college, you're given the opportunity to form a family that you wouldn't find at a normal college. Given is the light way to put it, it's sort of shoved into your hands. You have to take it though, without this family, you will struggle through your first year alone. These are the people who pick you up when you're on the ground, and will knock you down if they see you're getting too full of yourself, a bluntness that is needed and appreciated by most. Inside jokes that no one would even want to understand are shared. These are the people who you laughed with, even if life was tougher than ever where you were. You worked together, built together, failed together, and succeeded together.
Every year near Thanksgiving at Norwich University there is a huge dinner. Everyone is in uniform, but there is a unique pattern, certain groups are wearing specific shirts. These are those families that were formed their freshmen year. They might be in different units, buildings, even states now, but so long as a few are still at the school, they will come together to eat as a family. Platoons of sophomores meet up where they used to form up every morning during Rookdom,, and stand in the gutter like they used to when they were Rooks, Their old cadre fall them in and march them to chow, and file them in like they did a year prior. It truly is a trip down memory lane. Any differences are put aside, cadre eat with their "kids" as they put it, an affectionate term from those who made sure their Rooks were fed, clean and going to class. Even those who are abroad are included with video phone calls to join in with their family thinking of them so far away. Food flies, people cheer, pictures are taken on the same stairwell every year. Rook cousins and siblings embrace, and plenty of shenanigans ensue. After this dinner, some of those rook siblings or cousins will most likely tag along with each other for an actual Thanksgiving dinner if going home isn't an option.
Some of these rook siblings haven't seen each other all year, and to be able to sit down and reminisce, recreate old memories and make new, is something most normal colleges aren't able to do. Nothing builds bonds like adversity, and that very adversity is what creates the prosperity of life long relationships in the future.
