The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience

#092 - Naval Academy 101, Understanding Foundational Information

• GRANT VERMEER • Season 3 • Episode 92

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Ever wondered what it's like to be part of a world where college life meets military discipline? Welcome to the unique realm of the United States Naval Academy, where tradition, education, and service blend seamlessly.

In this episode, we peel back the layers of the Naval Academy experience, offering you an insider's view of this extraordinary institution. From the bustling campus known as "the Yard" to the intriguing history behind the term "midshipman," we're covering it all.

The Naval Academy: More Than Just a Campus

Discover how the Naval Academy functions as both a prestigious college and a military base. We'll explore:

  • • The vibrant campus life, including Division I sports and summer camps
  • • The connection between the Academy and the Naval Support Activity Annapolis
  • • The unique blend of civilian and military faculty and staff

Decoding the Midshipman Experience

What exactly is a midshipman? We'll unravel this mystery, touching on:

  • • The active duty status of midshipmen
  • • The origins and evolution of the term "midshipman"
  • • How the midshipman experience differs from other military training programs

Key Takeaways:

  • 1. Understand the dual nature of the Naval Academy as both a college and a military installation
  • 2. Learn about the facilities and training opportunities available to midshipmen
  • 3. Gain insight into the unique status and responsibilities of a midshipman
  • 4. Discover the historical significance of the term "midshipman"
  • 5. Appreciate the distinctive blend of college life and military discipline at the Academy

Whether you're a future midshipman, a proud family member, or simply curious about life at the Naval Academy, this episode provides a foundation for understanding this extraordinary institution. Join us as we navigate the waters of this one-of-a-kind experience!

The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.

Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast and the USNA Property Network Podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.

He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a boutique residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community PCSing to California & Texas.

We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.

Connect with Grant on Linkedin
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If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, have an idea, question or topic you would like to see covered, reach out: podcast@academyinsider.com.

Speaker 1:

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Academy Insider Podcast. Today's episode is all about the foundations of the Naval Academy. We're going to be talking about the Naval Academy campus, the yard, and kind of breaking down some of the things and especially how it actually integrates and works with the naval support activity in Annapolis across the river, understanding this blend of college campus plus military base. And so we're going to break that down and talk some of those aspects. And then we're going to talk about the history of the term midshipmen and what a midshipman actually is, what it means, their status and as an activity service member at the Naval Academy. And so join me in learning about some of this stuff. I really look forward to it. Thank you so much. Good luck on this plebe summer journey. Feel free to stay in touch and let's make it happen. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Before we jump in, I do want to highlight that Academy Insider is powered by my for-profit business, the Vermeer Group. We do real estate consultation and connection across the country for service academy families. So if you're thinking about buying or selling a home, I would love if you reached out to me. It would support me and support Academy Insider and I'd love to get to talk to you about real estate as well. So thank you so much, let's jump into it. Hope you enjoy the episode. All right, hey everyone. I'm so excited to be joining you with this new wave, a new plebe, summer coming in and everyone around, and I really wanted to make the focus of this episode all about the foundations of the Naval Academy lifestyle. It was like setting the very baseline about the Naval Academy and the Naval Academy campus and about what the term midshipman is, and so I'm excited to break this down and continue putting out more content through the summer, and if you have any questions again, you can go to wwwacademyinsidercom. Backslash, ask G If you want to ask me a specific question. I'd be happy to work on those throughout the course of this summer. So I'm very excited about it. But let's jump right into it.

Speaker 1:

Which is the Naval Academy? It's both a college and a military base. I'm sure if you went out for I-Day or if you visited before, you're able to see this, but I want to highlight and talk a little bit about some of this dynamic as well as your understanding the Naval Academy campus, because at the end of the day, it's a college, it's an institution right, it's a public institution, there's going to be a lot of civilian faculty and staff. You know there's going to be military faculty and staff as well. But I really want to focus on, like, the college aspect of it, which is, again, we have a lot of division one, sports, which means during the summers especially, there are a ton of summer camps. You have a bunch of kids coming in, not just summer seminar but like maybe basketball, maybe lacrosse, maybe tennis. They're all going to have camps for kids, right, and so there's a lot of activity going on in the Naval Academy campus.

Speaker 1:

It's a staple for the Annapolis community that's open to the public. There's a ton going on there and that includes, again, for actual games, the fact that we're a college and there's sports going on. You know plenty of Annapolis locals and ecas that are going on at the academy and so it's an interesting one because, as you've seen again, it may be tough to drive onto the naval academy campus to like actually get on base because it is a military base. But if you go through gate one, our main gate, there is a visitor center and there are a ton of opportunity for people to be able to come and visit the naval academy. So you get this like interesting blend of the college and the military base, but at the end of the day, as I brought all this up, it's still a military base.

Speaker 1:

And what's really interesting is I don't know again if you came to the Naval Academy for just I-Day or whatever the case is, but literally across the river, across the Severn River, is the Naval Support Activity Annapolis, which is another Navy base, support facility that is manned and operated by, like full-time active duty, like quote unquote real military folks who are providing operation support, personnel support, actual like ships and boats, like. So there'll be these things called YPs, the Yard Patrol craft, that kind of sail, and we use to teach midshipmen how to actually drive a ship, and those are all stationed at the Naval Support Activity in Annapolis. All the fun terms you're going to hear over a cleave summer the O course, which is the obstacle course, the E course, which stands for endurance course all those things are not on the Naval Academy campus, they are across the river at the Naval Support Activity in Annapolis. And so, again, it is a military base, but a lot of our military facility, military training, actually happens across the river at the Naval Support Activity in Annapolis and so, and then, from that perspective, is, as we dive into what makes up all these incredible things.

Speaker 1:

There's a NEX over there. Nex this term that you will hear over and over and over again through the course of military life is the Navy Exchange. It's like the Navy department store, which there's no tax that's applied there because it's on federal land, and so there are a lot of things. The NEX is an incredible place to shop. The NEX has a gas station over there which is you're probably going to find a lot cheaper gas than the vast majority of the places that you live on, you know. On the next, there's a commissary for food and grocery shopping. If midshipmen want to bring food, you know again, probably the cheapest that you'll get and bring it back onto, you know, and save it in your fridge Again, probably not as likely or relevant for pleads, but especially upperclassmen to be able to go get some fruits and milks, or whatever the case is, and keep it in a fridge there. So, again, a really cool thing that you will get to experience, and if you don't venture to the other side of the river you may not see it Right.

Speaker 1:

And so those are like these really cool aspects of the Naval Academy as a college and as a military base and as a military base that is supported by another actual, like real quote, unquote, real military base just across the river to do all the trainings. Again, that's where we shoot guns. Like when you go and do your rifle and pistol qualification, you're going over to the range at the Naval Support Activity in Annapolis, right, like all of those things actually happen across the Severn River at NSA Annapolis and so a lot of really cool stuff being brought up there. This merge, this blend, this almost like mix in Twilight Zone it really is a Twilight Zone Like nowhere else, no military base besides your service academies are this mix of like college and military base. It's like such a weird Twilight Zone. It's its own unique experience and world, and that goes for like the midshipman rank too. And so this is where I want to take the second half of this quick conversation about establishing the foundations of, you know, the Naval Academy.

Speaker 1:

Experience in life is that midshipmen are active duty Navy personnel, but 100% they are active duty Navy personnel. They will get an active duty CAC, which stands for common access card. It's your military ID. They are active duty personnel and their rank will say MIDN or midshipman. That is an actual rank, even though it feels weird. Again, it's a training, it's an officer training, cadet type rank, but it's a Navy rank and again, at the end of the day they are being paid monthly and we will do like an actual breakdown into the future about midshipmen pay and how that works. But they're being paid monthly, they're subject to the UCMJ, which is the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is military law, and so they're subject to all of the same things of being an active duty service member and so you know, that's this idea of being a midshipman.

Speaker 1:

But at the same time, no time really in the military are you ever going to be a full-time student unless you go to some grad school programs where, like, you're going to get a holiday break, a Christmas break, right, like you're two and a half weeks, three weeks of leave over that time, guaranteed every year. You know you're going to take that. You're going to get a spring break to be able to go on leave. You're going to have, if you want, a full block of the summer to go on leave. Like you still get some of those same aspects of being a college student despite the fact that you're actually military. Now you're still going to do military trainings over the summer. You're going to go on your summer cruise, you're going to go on Prochmed, you're going to take advantage of these professional training events and there are a lot of opportunities to do that.

Speaker 1:

But this, again, what I really want to get across is that this idea of midshipmen is such a blended world between college student and military. It is different than being an ROTC midshipman. It's a lot different than being an ROTC midshipman. It's a lot different than being an ROTC midshipman just from the actual experience. But I just wanted to highlight some of these blends between, again, this idea of the Naval Academy being a college and a military base. It's a military training institution, but in that being a military training institution, you're a college student, right? You are in that student officer training, cadet type situation. So yeah, so that's like a kind of the breakdown there.

Speaker 1:

This, what I want to talk about is a little bit because, hey, as a military support squad, as a parent, you know a grandparent, aunt, uncle, family, friend that's just trying to understand this experience a little bit better. You know, let me know if you like that term, support squad. I'm trying to like put something concise to really encapsulate everyone who wants to support a midshipman, encapsulate everyone who wants to support a midshipman We'll do a little deep dive into, like this term midshipman Because, again, if you were at the Air Force Academy or you're at, you know, west Point, you're a cadet, right, like that's the term cadet, and I think cadet is way more well known as, like again in this training, a student training to be an officer, like you're a cadet and that's not the case. We don't say cadets for students at the Naval Academy.

Speaker 1:

You are a midshipman and kind of the history behind that I want to break that down just for your knowledge and about everything is that initially this term midshipman, like way back in the day, at the origins of the United States Navy, midshipmen were experienced sailors. Right, they were enlisted sailors, but they were the experienced sailors. They were the high performing sailors that were working in the midship section of a ship. So, as a result, like they became the midshipmen, they were the sailors that operated in the midships aspect of the ship. Now, as that developed over time, those sailors usually turned into officers. Over time they became the naval officers. You had these sailors who were put amid ships to work in the midsection of the ship and their pathway usually ended up with them becoming a naval officer.

Speaker 1:

Over time, again, that continued to transition into where that midshipman term and midshipman rank was specifically to identify personnel who were on their pathway in a training pipeline to become officers, to become naval officers in the ship. And then, of course, when the Naval Academy gets founded in 1845, that term midshipman carries over to the Naval Academy and so again, this term midshipman has a history in the Navy and it's kind of what's been established now as the full-on, real rank of students at the Naval Academy, and so that's where we're at. It should be really cool. Again, I just think this idea of midshipman in the Naval Academy is really cool. I'll highlight it again it's the twilight zone of the military, it's its own unique world, it's operating in a bubble, and so as we teach and learn about the Naval Academy and the Naval Academy experience, there'll be things that don't directly translate In fact, a lot of it won't directly translate into what they actually do in the Navy. But I want to educate you about this experience and kind of get through it all. So again, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me at any time. I hope this sends like a quick, cool little background and foundation about, like, the Naval Academy, the yard, the campus, and maybe this is a good piece. I'm sure you've heard it multiple times from people telling about you, but you know the Naval Academy campus, we call it the yard, and so, again, if you have any questions about the yard, about any of the facilities, about everything that operates and exists over at Naval Support Activity Annapolis and how that actually ties into the Naval Academy experience, feel free to reach out and let me know.

Speaker 1:

Otherwise, congratulations, congratulations to everyone. I know that your midshipman has been going through the Plebe Summer experience now for a little over a week. Congratulations. I hope you're starting to maybe get some letters home and I hope those are okay letters. If they're not okay letters, that's okay, and if they're not okay letters, please feel free to reach out to me if you want any support.

Speaker 1:

Again, I infamously have sent home a couple letters during plebe summer that were not great, and so I can definitely talk through any experiences there, but I appreciate it. Thank you all so much. I hope this was again quick, entertaining, enjoyable and I'll be continuing to put out more stuff here through the summer. I really appreciate the support. I hope you all have a great day, thanks. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Academy Insider Podcast. I really hope you liked it, enjoyed it and learned something during this time. If you did, please feel free to like and subscribe or leave a comment about the episode. We really appreciate to hear your feedback about everything and continue to make Academy Insider an amazing service that guides, serves and supports midshipmen, future midshipmen and their families. Thank you.

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Grant Vermeer

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