“Mom! Mom! I see Adam! Hi, Adam!” Andrew waved his hands frantically, leaning over the rope into the field. “Adam! Adam! Do you see me?”

My heart broke for Andrew, so confused and hurt at his big brother’s glazed expression.

I asked Adam later why he hadn’t winked or somehow subtly let Andrew knew he saw him.

“Jobson,” Adam told me. “If anyone had seen me drop military gaze, I would have been in a world of pain for weeks.”

I don’t doubt it.

I wonder how many of the plebes I run past go to bed thinking about their little brothers. Most likely they go to bed too tired to think at all.

It may seem unnecessary to be so stringent with a group of 18-year-olds. But Plebe Summer is the indoctrination to four years at the Academy and years of service afterwards. The Academy stresses development “morally, mentally and physically.” Plebes learn to let go of emotion, to respect their superiors and each other, to think quickly under stress and be in top physical condition to do so.

“The components of Naval Academy life serve to build the whole person,” says the USNA website. As I jog away and head home to shower, I know the plebes sweating in the field behind me are on their way to greatness.

On this Independence Day, as America wrestles with decisions about its next move, watching the plebes struggle through their summer makes me sprint a little faster. If they can take seven weeks of hell and come out better people, I can finish my morning run and my country can get through anything.

Kristi L. Jobson ’06, a Crimson editor, is a social studies concentrator in Lowell House. She will have a little extra spring in her step during her morning run on this Fourth of July.