Brown says that she never considered the military until her sophomore year of high school after taking a field trip to West Point.

“The whole idea of serving my country and the leadership training and opportunities, really appealed to me.”

She kept the idea in the back of her mind until the end of her junior year of high school. Then, when she was more convinced that she wanted to join the military, she began to broach the subject with her parents.

“Mom said, ‘no.’ And my dad was really surprised.”

She then spent the better part of a year trying to convince them of her decision.

“I didn’t grow up in a military family,” Brown says, so the idea just “never occurred” to her.

During high school, Brown spent nearly a semester convincing them that she wanted to be in the military and, more recently, a year and a half convincing them that she wanted to be a Marine.

After a spending a year in Harvard’s ROTC program and a summer program that allowed her to explore options within the Navy, Brown decided to transfer from the Navy option to the Marine option in her unit at Harvard.

“My mom said definitely no Army but started feeling okay with Navy [before I came to Harvard] ... then I came here and decided I wanted to join the Marine Corps. So my mom says I cheated.”

Brown is quick to defend her parents’ reaction to her decision, “They have nothing against the military, they’re just concerned for my safety.”

During the ammo lift, Brown reaches her max ammo lifts after about a minute and takes a break sometime in her two-minute test. Afterward, she modestly says, “I got 88. That’s the max for girls so...”

“Sixty was the max for girls,” Sergeant Evans corrects her proudly.

CATHERINE BROWN, MIDSHIPMAN

The final event of the test is an obstacle course.

“It’s a lot of effort in a short period of time,” Giorgis says of it, recalling his last test a month ago.