#123 Summer Training At The Naval Academy - On the Yard (011)

Your kid’s “summer break” at the United States Naval Academy might be the most important part of their year, and it’s definitely not a break. I walk through how Naval Academy summer training actually works from May through August, why it exists, and how it quietly shapes service assignment decisions across the Navy and Marine Corps. If you’re a parent trying to make sense of leave, cruises, internships, and constant schedule changes, this is the big-picture map you’ve been looking for. 

We start with the structure: zero block after finals and before commissioning, then the three main summer blocks leading up to reform. From there, I explain the standard setup most midshipmen follow: one fleet cruise, one professional training event (PTE), and one block of leave. We talk about what a fleet cruise is meant to teach, how PROTRAMID provides early exposure to surface warfare, submarines, aviation, and the Marine Corps, and how later summers become more targeted based on career goals. 

I also break down PTEs in plain language, from USNA programs and mandatory summer school to fleet exposure training, funded internships, language immersion, and specialty schools. Along the way, I share the mindset that makes summer training work: be considerate, be curious, be engaged, and remember that you’re stepping into someone else’s operational world. Subscribe for deeper dives, share this with a USNA family, and leave a review with the summer training question you want answered next.

The Vermeer Group is a residential real company matching military families with trusted real estate teams across the country.  If you have any real estate questions at all, please text Grant at (650) 282-1964 or email grant@thevermeergroup.com

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

This podcast is independently produced and reflects the views and opinions of its creators. It is not officially affiliated with, endorsed by, or representative of the United States Naval Academy or its affiliates.

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. 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 residential real estate company that matches service academy families with trusted real estate teams all across the country.  Text (650) 282-1964 with any real estate questions.

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Transcript

Welcome And Purpose Of Overview

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Academy Insider Podcast. Today's episode is gonna be all about summer training. We're not gonna do a deep dive into any of the specific trainings, so I apologize for that. We will get to that in the future, but I wanted to provide an outline and a rundown of how summer training works, what the structure's like, why we do summer training at the Naval Academy, and just provide context to the overall perspective of like the next three months between May through August and what happens in a midshipman's life to provide a little bit of context, a little bit of perspective, and a little bit of understanding for you as family members and parents. And so I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you have any questions, please let me know. Otherwise, enjoy the listen. Have a great day. Thank you so much. Before we get started, I want to make a quick disclaimer to make sure everyone knows Academy Insider and myself, Grant Premier, are in no ways official representatives of the United States Naval Academy, the Navy, andor the Department of War. What I'm doing here again is just trying to provide a little bit of context perspective and understanding for the Naval Academy journey. But my use of the Naval Academy and conversation about them does not imply endorsement from the institution. If you ever have any questions directly for the Naval Academy, I encourage you to reach out to them directly and the Public Affairs Office. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And I hope you have a great listening episode. Summer training was some of the most fun that I had during my entire time in Annapolis. Just genuinely. That's why I'm so excited for this episode because when we talk about the Naval Academy and the Naval Academy experience, I just think summer training encapsulates the entirety of the experience. You're not a normal kid. You're not gonna go home and spend three months at home, you're not gonna work a real retail job over the summer. You're going to have like military internships, right? And for me, again, I look back on my time in Annapolis with really fond memories of summer training. I did a surface cruise out of Norfolk going into, again, between my plebe year and my youngster year. You know, we went underway. We were on a ship out to sea. And then on top of that, we got to pull into Quebec and spend like five days in Quebec. And what a freaking fun time that was. You know what I mean? Like when I look back at all these, it's just such a cool opportunity that you have during summer training, right? Like that was my first taste of being on a ship. That was my first taste of getting to have a port call somewhere in a foreign country. Foreign, it's in Canada, but you know what I mean, right? Like it, I mean, it is. And so, like, what a cool opportunity. It was just a blast. Then later on, I got to have internships. I did an internship at the Center for Cyber Warfare at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Like rough life, right? Three and a half weeks out of the summer, I went to Monterey, California, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I swear to God, like that's where my wife and I intend to retire at some point in our life. Like it's just an incredible place. And so to get to spend three and a half weeks at the Naval Postgraduate School doing really cool work, you know, at the Center for Cyber Warfare. I was working on a drone swarm project. Like it was just a really cool opportunity. Then you go into like Prochemid. I gotta, again, take a really awesome opportunity to like get underway on a submarine, go underway again on another ship, to go up in planes and in helicopters during aviation week, and then play Marine for a week. And again, like those things were really fun for me because I quickly discovered that one, I was not made to be a Marine. All right. I'm a little, I'm a little different. I'm a little different from the personality type of a Marine. Do I think I could have adjusted and been a Marine? Absolutely. I I love, you know, and I had incredible mentors in the Marine Corps. And I think there is a special aspect of that Marine Corps ethos and a spirit of core and and all those things. But you know, all that kind of went out the window when you got to sleep in a in a sack in the forest, there are bugs crawling on you. I was like, nah, man, like this ain't this is not for me. This is not for me. But again, you just have all these super fun things that happen. And again, I remember during my pro-mid, you know, again, I when I, you know, when you're 18, 19, 20 years old, you know, all I could remember was like watching Top Gun. And I was like, man, I'm gonna be a jet pilot. Like that would be so sick. Like, I'm gonna wear my aviators, I'm gonna do all this stuff. You know, you're cosplaying Tom Cruise basically over your summer trainings, and you're wearing your flight suit and you think it's the coolest thing in the whole world. And I remember going up for my first flight, they put you in a little trainer jet. And again, not an F-18, not an actual like operational fleet jet. It's like one of the training jets that they use for the instructor pilots and the pilots going through like the flight pipeline. And I remember going up in that thing, thinking it was gonna be the coolest thing in the world. And that pilot, like, he was like, Hey, all right, like what do you want to do? You want to take a uh take this thing for a spin? And I was like, Man, yeah, like show me what this thing can do. Like, I want to have fun up here. And there were a couple times where we just you know pulled back on the on the stick and like you know, we pulled some G's going up. And I mean, we're not talking anything serious, we're talking two and a half, three G's, like this is not crazy stuff. And I was just like, oh my gosh. And he started doing barrel rolls in the sky. And I I just remember being so sick to my stomach. Like so sick to my stomach. And when we came down from that flight, I was motion sick. Like I was ill for a uh literally like 36 to 48 hours. I couldn't eat anything, I didn't want to do anything, and I was like, all right, well, yeah, I guess I'm not gonna be Tom Cruise. I'm not, I'm not cut out to be, I'm not cut out to be a jet pilot. And so again, all these like crazy, fun, silly stories, all this stuff happened during summer training for me. That's why I'm excited to talk about this episode because these things are incredible, right? Summer training is a big part of what makes Annapolis so awesome. You know, just to be going over all this different stuff and get exposure to the fleet is incredible. Now, again, I just want to make a quick reiteration of two things. One, this is just gonna be an overview of like the summer training program at large. We're not gonna do a deep dive. We will do deep dives into the different training blocks and things that you can do into the future, but this will be more about summer training at large. Uh, the second thing, and I know there was already a disclaimer, I just want to be very clear that I am not an official representative of the Naval Academy. This is not an official word from the Naval Academy or the PAO's office. And if you have any specific questions or or like concrete details, please reach out to the PAO's office and have those conversations directly with the Naval Academy again. I'm just a grad sharing his stories, trying to provide prof perspective, context, and understanding to the midshipman experience. And I hope I continue to do a good job of that to make you feel connected to the midshipman journey. But okay, so the summer training at large at the Naval Academy. Again, this is not a real break like normal college kids get, right? Like this is legitimate military training. This is a, again, an internship for the military. It's like what you were potentially gonna be walking into when you are going to be graduating, commissioning, and entering the fleet, right? You're gonna see different work environments are like. You're gonna be able to help decipher what things are important to you, what things you enjoy and help with your actual service assignment process. Part of this summer training program is just about exposure. It's about showing people what they may be interested in, what they actually want to do when it comes to time to put in your preferences for service assignment. And so kind of getting that aspect of what you want to do after graduating is really important, right? And so, again, in that vein of your meaning to get exposure to the Navy and Marine Corps at large, um, you know, really what it comes down to for midshipmen is like, how can I best set myself up for service assignment in my Navy and Marine Corps career? Right. Like those are the things that you should be approaching summer training with the mindset about how am I gonna best set myself up for service assignment in my Navy and Marine Corps career? Like those are the things that you should be considering. Those are the things that you're thinking about, those are the things that you want to get out of the summers. Now, are there opportunities to like maximize the fun and the enjoyment of summer training and take advantage of really cool opportunities? Absolutely, absolutely, right? Like it doesn't need to be so strict to specific things. Like you should take the opportunity to do summer trainings that are enjoyable and things that you would want to do. But at the end of the day, again, the primary mission of these summer training opportunities is for Mitchim to kind of figure out how to best set themselves up for service assignment and their Navy and Marine Corps careers, right? That's that's that's the whole purpose of this place, right? That's the whole purpose of the Naval Academy in general, is to prepare young men and women to go be officers in the Navy and Marine Corps. So taking summer training in that vein to achieve that objective is kind of the primary mission that we're looking at. The summer is broken up into four blocks. So you're gonna have, again, in classic military fashion, if you haven't seen the episode about Bancroft Hall and like military stuff in general, you start on zero, right? Like you start on zero deck. That's the first floor. Same thing. It's gonna be broken up into four blocks. You have zero block, which is basically after finals are complete and before commissioning, right? It's like that May 11th to May 22nd time frame in general. Again, those dates shift every year based on the calendar, the schedule, commissioning, everything like that. But you're looking at after finals and before commissioning, that like 12 to 14 day period, roughly in mid-May, is what makes up zero block. You then have your primary blocks. So zero block is kind of like this hybrid thing that we'll talk about in a little bit that kind of like fits your need to get certain things done. But the three primary blocks are first block, second block, and third block. First block being again right after commissioning, so the end of May through mid to late June. You have the second block, which is gonna go roughly from like the end of June through late July, you know, mid to late July. And then the third block is kind of that end of July through reform in August, which kind of happens in mid-August. And so you have those four blocks. You have again zero block, first block, second block, and third block. And during those blocks, you'll be able to do distinct and individual military trainings that we'll kind of talk about. A standard summer training for midshipmen. Again, everything that we're gonna kind of talk about in this episode is the standard, what 80% of the midshipmen are gonna be doing. Are there one-off opportunities? Are there special requests? Are there different things? Yes, absolutely. And that may relate to your son or daughter or to the midshipmen that you know. I hope this episode is really just about providing a foundation of what the standard is, which would allow you to ask questions and figure out if there are one-off opportunities that are being had by your midshipmen, right? But at the end of the day, your standard summer training is gonna be one fleet cruise, we'll call it a fleet cruise. We'll talk about what that is, one professional training event, you're gonna hear that spoken as PTE, right? Like you're gonna have one fleet cruise, one PTE, and then one block of leave. Those are gonna make up your three primary blocks. If you don't want to take leave, like you don't want to use a block of leave, you want to do something else, we'll talk about how that works in the future, but you don't get like extra leave. So again, you could potentially switch that block of leave for additional training, but you can't be like, oh, I don't want to do the professional training event. I just want to go home for another block of leave. Yeah, too bad. Yeah, too bad. Welcome to the military. So again, your standard summer training, you're gonna have one fleet cruise, you're gonna have one professional training event, and you're gonna have one block of leave during those three blocks. Now, what is a fleet cruise? Like what makes up the fleet cruise? And so, again, this has actually changed a little bit since I was a midshipman, right? Again, this goes back to me not being the exact representative of the Naval Academy. Things are constantly changing and adjusting. So, again, when I talked about my pro-tremit experience at the start of the episode, that happened between my youngster year and my second class year, right? It happened after my sophomore year and in the summer going into my junior year. Now that's been changed to the first summer. So, again, after your plebe year going into your youngster year, so after your freshman year, going into your sophomore year, you will participate in what we call Pro Trimit. That is your one option for the fleet cruise. You don't get any other options. Like, that's what you're gonna do. You're gonna do Pro TriMid. And basically, now again, we would have it where you would do your cruise first and then Pro Trimit in your second summer. Now you're gonna do Pro Trimid that first year and then do your like, you know, time on a ship or on a submarine in your second summer. Again, this now matches again. I'm kind of happy about it because this now matches what ROTC has been doing forever. And again, when we talk about Pro Trimid to kind of break it out for you, Pro Trimid stands for Professional Training for Midshipman, right? Pro Tremid, professional training for midshipmen. The ROTC folks that again, you will be doing summer in conjunction with ROTC Midshipmen. Again, I remember being on my first summer cruise and we had a like a contingent of the Naval Academy midshipmen, but then we had a couple of other people who were like, you know, part of Villanova's ROTC program and some, you know, I th I forget it was like maybe University of South Florida or there's some kind of Florida school's ROTC program. And we all combined and were part of the same like midshipman cohort on the summer. And that was always really funny and entertaining to kind of like figure out from that perspective. And so, you know, we had that opportunity to kind of work with with the different midshipmen, right, from different places and different opportunities. And so, you know, getting to talk to them and realize that like their college experience is way different than your college experience is always a good first awakening. And you're like, you had all that fun, like you were able to do that, and we're still gonna end up in the same place right after we graduate. Like, that's crazy. But anyway, again, it now matches the point of this was it now matches what ROTC has been doing forever, and which is again doing this pro-tramid between their freshman year and their sophomore year. Now they call it core Tremid, which is the career orientation and training for midshipmen. It's the exact same thing, right? It's the exact same thing. And so what ProTramid is, again, does it break out exactly to like weeks? No, the full block is not like a full 28 days, sometimes a little less, sometimes, you know, right at there. But basically you get it's broken into like weeks or segments. You're gonna have, and again, we for terminology's sake, you will call it a week, right? Like you're gonna have surface week, then you're gonna have submarine week, then you're gonna have Marine Corps week, and then you're gonna have an aviation week. So you're gonna have four separate segments of that period, which are broken out, you know, somewhere between five to seven days, usually five working days, a weekend, or some kind of transit to your next location. And then you go, and then you go from there, right? And so again, you're gonna spend the first segment, and not all these happen. Like you, your cohort will be broken into separate groups. So, like some midshipmen will do aviation first, other midshipmen will do the Marine Corps segment first, others will do submarines first, and others surface first. And so it kind of depends what the actual schedule is gonna be, but you're gonna do one segment with the SWO community, the surface warfare community, you're gonna do one segment with the submarine community, one segment with the Marine Corps, and another with like an aviation squadron. The intent really is to hopefully give you enough of a taste to make you want to do a full cruise in the following summers to learn even more, right? You're gonna get a sense of, oh yes, I would like to pursue something in the Marine Corps. Oh, yes, I do want to pursue something in aviation. No, I'm really interested in being a surface warfare officer. Oh wow, that three days on a submarine was really cool. I want to do a full cruise the following summer. Again, at the end of the day, all we really want out of Protramid is exposure to the fleet, exposure to sailors, an opportunity for midshipmen to be curious and ask questions and figure out what's going on and see what sparks their interest and what they want to learn more about in the coming summers. Right. And so it's really cool. And I think along those lines, because at the end of the day, like we want midshipmen to pick the communities that they're interested in, but communities and community managers, like they want, again, this is gonna sound funny. Welcome to the military verbiage, they want bodies, right? Like they want people who are gonna pick their community. And so what's funny is during Pro Tramid, a lot of times the Navy sees this as like a cool recruiting trip to try and recruit these midshipmen to want to be a part of their community. So they try to make it fun and they do all the cool stuff that like you don't actually do in the fleet, right? Like I think it's so funny because again, you know, during during my Pro Tramid, I spent three days on a submarine. And during those three days, we did a bunch of cool stuff. We did this stuff called angles and dangles, where you take this submarine on like, you know, to the max extent of like your, I don't even know the exact words, but like the angles at which you are driving through the water with like steep declines, steep inclines. And so like you're able to kind of like do this, you know, like Neo in the Matrix like movement where you're leaning back all the way, you're leaning all the way forward just to maintain balance as you're doing cool stuff. You're driving the submarine in cool, fun, adventurous ways, which makes it exciting. We had like, you know, pizza and movie night with the captain and all the midshipmen, you know, sat in the wardroom and and they they made these delicious pizzas, and you're talking to the submarine captain, and he's telling you all these cool stories and telling you how amazing being a submariner is, and you're doing all these like tactical drills and stuff, you're getting to see what it's like in the sonar shack. Like being on a submarine for three days is super sick. Like being on a submarine for three days is really cool. Being on a submarine for 30 days is like way less cool, and then being on a submarine for like three months is a frickin' grind, right? And so, like again, what's funny is but during perchment, you're just gonna be on for like 72 hours, right? So, like, you're gonna get two to three days to get to see the cool sides of being a submariner, and that's how that that's how they start to recruit you, that's how they start to get you, that's how they start to get people to want to be interested in in some of this different stuff. And again, like when you're on the surface ship, yeah, like we did we did gun drills, they let us shoot the 50 cal off the side of the ship, right? Like you're gonna do all this cool stuff that like it doesn't really happen when you actually graduate and you become part of the fleet. Like, you're doing all the stuff that everyone's like looking, like all the people that the sailors and the officers on the ship are like, oh my gosh, like this is so ridiculous. Like, we don't actually do this, and they're making they're making our job look so seem like way cooler than it actually is, right? And so, you know, you have that opportunity during Pro Tramid, but again, for the sake of being a midshipman and for like your sons and daughters, they're gonna have the coolest experience during that that month of Pro Tramid because you're gonna do all of the cool stuff. You're gonna go underway in a ship, you're probably gonna shoot guns, you're gonna go to the range, you're gonna get to go on a submarine and do angles and dangles and do all this cool stuff and see the sonar shack and see how all the stuff works and see the missile tubes and see all these cool things. You're gonna go with the aviation squadron, you might fly in a jet, you might fly in a helicopter, you might get to do these things. You go with the Marine Corps and you do four days out in the field and you get a, you know, actually, you know, walk around with the, you know, a sim rifle and sim rounds and do all these cool things. Like it's really fun, right? Like it's a really cool opportunity to see the best that all these service communities have to offer. And so, again, really cool opportunity to gain exposure. You're probably gonna get a ton of fun stories from your midshipmen about how the weeks went, how the experiences were, and like everything that was going on, right? Super cool, super fun. Going into your second class summer. So, again, that that pro trimit is gonna be happening between your freshman year and your sophomore year. Between your sophomore year and your junior year, so again, after third class year and going into second class year, so your second class summer, you basically get the option for one of two things, which is a surface cruise or a submarine cruise. If you're interested in being like a nuke swell nuclear, you could potentially ask to get put on a, you know, on an aircraft carrier and kind of get like a nuke swell. And again, we use the term nuke, we're talking nuclear. And when we're talking nuclear, we're really referencing the fact that like an aircraft carrier has a nuclear reactor that is like powering the ship, right? Like it is not driven by gas, it is driven by the nuclear reactor, which powers the submarine and propels, or excuse me, propels the aircraft carrier, drives the aircraft carrier. Again, it's a it's a reactor, a nuclear reactor. It's it's it's driven by nuclear power. So again, nuke, nuke swow, you know, or submarine. So you have surface, nuke swow, or submarine cruise as your options. Again, in one-off cases, you could potentially do leatherneck in your, you know, in that summer, but not usually the case, usually reserved for the next summer. So again, you can now go on to the cruise, right? And you're gonna spend time that first summer, again, going into your second-class summer, your first cruise, your first surface cruise, your first sub subcruise, you usually get assigned what we call a running mate. And that running mate is someone who's gonna be like your chaperone, really. Again, they're designed, like it's designed for you to see what their life is like, but really they're like taking care of you, make sure you're not doing anything crazy. But you're gonna spend time with that running mate. And then that first summer, that second class summer cruise, your running mate is usually an enlisted sailor, right? It's meant to give you exposure and see what their life is like. It's meant to open your eyes to their reality, get their unfiltered perspective, get their opinions about their leadership and their junior officers and their life and what they do and what's important to them. Because if you don't have an understanding that of the reality that the enlisted military experience is drastically different than the officer military experience, you're you're not gonna be a good officer. Like, I just can't stress that enough. Like, you need to have the self awareness to realize that your life is very different than an enlisted sailor's life. And to have that awareness and And realize that and then embrace your duties, roles, and responsibilities and be a kind, considerate, you know, productive human being and leader in that instance is important. And so to get to have that experience, to spend time with your running mate, to spend time with the enlistic community, to get exposure to what their life and their experience is like, to open your eyes to their reality, it is super important. It is super important. And I can't stress that enough because at the end of the day, you are learning their experience because the day you graduate, you are now going to be responsible to be a part of their life. And what I mean by that is you will now have the blessing and the responsibility and the obligation to make a positive impact in their life. You are going to have the authority, you are going to have the ability to either make their life worse or make their life better. And that is up to you. And you have to understand everything that's going on. And that's why I love this opportunity of the summer training that happens between your second class summer to kind of figure that out, right? To kind of figure that out. In comparison, this the surface cruise or the summer cruise that you go into your first class summer is a little bit different because if you were to stay with the submarine or service community, again, if you want to be a submariner or you want to be a surface warfare officer, then you can request a surface cruiser or submarine cruise again. But that summer, the year after, you would spend time with the wardroom. When we use the term wardroom, we are talking about like the officer community, the officer contingent on that ship. The wardroom is also literally a place. The wardroom is where the officers eat their meals, but you can also use the term wardroom to collectively reference like the officer community, the officer contingent at a specific unit on a ship, on a submarine, aviation squadron, like the wardroom are the officers at that command. And so during that summer, again, you're going to be working with the wardroom. You're going to be learning from the junior officers. You're going to see what your life would be like as a newly commissioned officer. Whereas you are learning kind of from the enlisted experience over that first summer. In the second summer, you're going to be shadowing a junior officer and really getting a sense of what your life would be like as a newly commissioned officer. Now, in that first class summer, again, going into your senior year, so between your junior and your senior year, again, you can do that surface cruise, you can do that submarine cruise, but it also opens up now to other things. If you want to be an aviator, you can do an aviation cruise or you can do powered flight, which is a really cool program that's a bit academic, but it ends up leading you to do a solo flight of a plane, right? Like you kind of learn the foundations of aviation and actually fly a plane for the first time. And so cool opportunities there if aviation is your forte. If you want to be a Marine, then you go to Leatherneck. It's you know three and a half week experience at Quant in Quantico, Virginia at the basic school, which is where Marines go immediately after graduation. When you get to do that, the you know, for SEALs and EOD explosive ordinance disposal for the folks who want to go in like the special operations community. They have a specific training over the first class summer. Again, they again, I think that one's really interesting with the SEALs. They go to a thing called SOAC. I think it's like the Special Operations Assessment or Special Warfare Officer Assessment Corps, something like that. I actually don't know what that can breaks out to. But SOAC is where the folks who want to be Navy SEALs or want to be EOD officers, they go for their summer training. And that one really for them is like a freaking evaluation, right? Again, I think that's really fascinating. The the Naval Academy contingent of folks who select to become Navy SEALs and go to BUDS, they have a very high success rate at BUDS because they go through an extensive evaluation and selection process during their time in Annapolis to include, you know, this three and a half week training period over the summer at SOAC, right? Like they're being evaluated as well to kind of see who the top performers are and who the folks they want to have in their community, right? Like for them, it's really like an evaluation more than anything. And that kind of goes actually again for the first class summer, where I think the first, you know, you know, pro-tramit and that first summer cruise, you're really just learning, you're really exploring, you're trying to figure out what's going on. Going into your senior year, it's far more of a an opportunity to make an impact, right? When we go back to like, what are you doing to set yourself up for your service assignment that you want to do in the Navy and Marine Corps? Like that first class summer is really important. Because again, if you're on a surface ship, you have the opportunity to earn a blue chip. If you don't know what that is, I encourage you to go back and listen to the ship selection episode or even the service assignment episode. But those midshipmen have an opportunity on that ship to quite literally earn a blue chip. The captain at the end of the summer cruise can say, like, we want you to come back to this ship and be a permanent member of this crew after your graduation. The captain also doesn't have to offer that. The captain could say, Thanks for being here this summer. Good luck in your career in the Navy or Marine Corps, right? And so, but there's an opportunity to get that. And again, if you were on a surface cruise or like, you know, summer cruise on a ship in Rota or on a ship in Japan, something that would be a high, high demand ship during the normal ship selection process. And especially if you're someone with like a low academic order of merit, you have an opportunity to earn your spot on that ship after graduation, right? Like there is real opportunity to go out there to make impact, to be curious, to figure out what's going on, and like do it in a way to earn that opportunity to serve in that community or on that ship after commissioning, right? So very cool opportunity there again. For surface folks, you have the opportunity to earn that blue chip for marines. You're being evaluated at Leatherneck, right? Like it needs to be a fit both ways. You may want the Marine Corps, but the Marine Corps might not want you. Or the Marine Corps might want you, but you don't want the Marine Corps after Leatherneck, right? And so again, that specific thing is it needs to be a fit both ways. And then again, we have the CL and EOD community at the gauntlet to test your resolve and really kind of see what's going on. So that first class summer and the summer training in this in the cruise, again, this this summer cruise is really important. So man, so much to talk about in this stuff. I I always amaze myself with like how much stuff is going on, like how many things there are to break down and talk about in the Naval Academy world. It's nuts, right? Like, how's your how's your kids supposed to have time to explain all this? It's just never fun. It's never fun. So, again, if you ever have any questions, please ask me. I'd be happy to kind of break all these things down. So, again, if we go back to the overall like summer training, right? You have one summer, you have one fleet cruise, and then you have one professional training event. So, what is a professional training event? These are kind of like the augmentation blocks, like these are the cool opportunities. Sometimes it can kind of be crummy ones too, but again, these are the augmentation blocks that are broken into different categories. So, again, a professional training event can fall into any of these different categories. And these also are gonna, I'm gonna list them kind of in the order of like priority that that the Naval Academy needs to fill. And so the first one are like the Naval Academy programs. If you're on the plebe summer detail, if you're on the naps detail, if you're on the weapons detail teaching the plebes how to shoot, that is a USNA program. That is a professional training event. So again, if you are a plebe summer detailer, like that is your professional training event for that summer, right? You can also do mandatory summer school. Again, there's a couple of reasons for mandatory summer school. It could either be that like you failed a class and you need to take mandatory summer school in order to maintain, you know, up to speed with your matrix and graduate on time. It could also be that you're a varsity athlete and you have what we call an NAA blocker for the teams to come back and practice and you take mandatory summer school. Like that's your professional training event for the summer. You can also do YPs, the yard patrol boats, where you kind of get opportunity sailing and being out to sea. Um, you have CSTS. If you're interested in CSTS, which is like the actual like sailing, like sailboat training. You know, I go back and encourage you to listen to the episode with Andrew Shea all about Naval Academy sailing. We talk about the summer program, which is really cool. So again, PTEs, you have Naval Academy programs. Then you also have fleet exposure programs. So they're really cool opportunities to do like Navy and Marine Corps fleet trainings. We have the thing called MagTAF, the Marine Air Ground Task Force Training, where you, again, instead of like going to Leatherneck and doing like a TBS light, TBS standing for the basic school, like the initial Marine Corps training. Magtaf gives you an opportunity to like, again, it's almost like a surface cruise, but for the Marine Corps, right? Like you get to go join a Marine Corps, you know, unit and learn from them, shadow them, just be a part of their life, right? Like kind of figure out what's going on. So you have the the MAGTAF, which is cool, you have dive school, you go to dive school, you know, lots of cool opportunities in the fleet exposure programs. Then the third category are funded internships. So you have LREX, the language regional education. I always forget the acronym for LREX, but LREX are like your international program office opportunities, right? Like you're gonna have an opportunity for language immersion, for cultural immersion, for all these different things. Like LREX are the coolest thing in the world, and they run through the International Programs Office at the Naval Academy. Like freaking awesome stuff. Like LREx are the coolest thing in the world. Like these are the opportunities when I talk about like cool opportunities, like PTEs through the through LREX through the International Programs Office are really cool. It also includes like internships at the National Security Agency, at the Naval Postgraduate School, like I did, within the Intel community. Like there are really cool opportunities to be within, like, you know, again, the intelligence community, the three-letter agencies, and have internships in that world. You know, fourth category are like big army and navy schools. You can go to air assault, like actually earn your jump wings. You'll see some midshipmen with like these silver, almost like parachute-looking wings over their left breast pocket. Those are for the folks who went to air assault school. Like they went to jump school. You go down to Fort Benning, Georgia, you go and and you know, you jump out of planes for multiple weeks over the summer and earn your jump wings. And it's like, you know, really cool stuff. You have the opportunity to do Marsock training and go like with the Marine Special Operations Command, mountain warfare training. Like a lot of these schools and training opportunities are the folks for the folks who like want to do military stuff, right? Like want to jump out of planes, want to do special operations things. Like there are professional training events to go to some of these big Army and Navy schools. When I say big Army and Navy, I'm talking like not West Point, not the Naval Academy, but like actual schools in the fleet that like sailors, marines, soldiers go to. So really cool opportunities there. Fifth category are like unfunded internships, things that you kind of sourced on your own. You know, there's these are low on the priority list. A lot of times you're not really going to get an opportunity to do them unless you trade in, you know, for your lead block, you know, certain things again, always one-off and communication stuff. And then the last one are civilian leadership events, which are really cool. So you have things like Philmont, where you work with the scouts, Northern Tier, a lot of opportunities in the wilderness. Like these are civilian leadership opportunities to lead young men and women who are just, you know, again, like in the scouts or whatever the case is. Great opportunities. People love these things. So yeah. So, like this is the idea of professional training, whether that be exposure, again, more exposure to fleet, whether it's supporting Naval Academy programs, whether it's doing internships that will benefit your professional development, like that's kind of what falls into this category. And again, doubling down that for many athletes, again, for a lot of the athletes and athlete parents that are listening, you'll have that NAA blocker, which will basically keep you in Annapolis. You'll take summer school, mandatory summer school, and then you'll practice, right? Like again, that was my summers. Like every summer I would take seamanship and navigation, and then we would go to practice. And like that block was tough. Like we would have school, again, summer school would basically go from like, you know, it'd be everything up until lunch. So you'd have morning, you know, class from 8 a.m. till noon, roughly, and then you'd have lunch. And then like that was your, you know, summer school day. But then we would have, you know, lifting and conditioning in the morning before that, and then you know, practice and skill development in the afternoon. Like it was a block to allow the basketball coaches to be able to train us and work with us over the summers. And so that counted as my PTE. And so, yeah, you can take summer school voluntarily, but it doesn't count as like a block. Like you would have to do a PTE and then also do, you know, a voluntary block in exchange for your leave block. Like you could stay in Annapolis and go to summer school to help reduce your academic burden in the academic year, but you're doing so at the expense basically of your leave, right? Or you would take zero block leave, really, and get that 14 days of leave. And then you do your fleet cruise, do your actual PTE, and then you can take voluntary summer school. So, so yeah, again, a lot of cool professional training events and opportunities. How are you supposed to do all these things? Right. Like, okay, like sweet, but like can I actually take advantage of these? Yeah. And again, you're gonna really find two kinds of midshipmen. There are gonna be those that want to do everything, and then those who want to be as home as much as possible, right? And it kind of like there's really two polar extremes in that. You know, in general, like the Naval Academy wants you to take leave, like they want you to have a break. And so there's supposed to be, you know, a minimum of 14 days of leave and really a maximum of 35. Like that's your bracket of like what standard looks like. You should have at least 14 days of leave over the summer, and at max you should have 35 because you should be in summer training events. Outside those brackets would require like special approvals. But yeah, I mean, again, like, and sometimes it can happen. Like, if you want to do, you know, an internship during zero block and do jump school during one of the other blocks, so you have like, you know, you you do like three PTEs over the summer, right? Like some of these things like can happen, can work out. I again, like, I'm not here to to tell you to do a certain thing, but again, it would just require conversation. Like, I know plenty of midshipmen, you know, during my time, and you know, it's kind of a sad reality. I think there are a lot of people who love their family. I think there are a lot of people who like don't want to go back home. And they're looking for something to do or a place to go or things to have happen, right? And so in some of those instances, there are opportunities, and it's not even sometimes they're trying to like run away or escape their family. Sometimes they just want to take advantage of all these like freaking really cool programs that the Naval Academy exists. Like that's fun for them. And so as a result, there are opportunities to do a lot of these training events, but again, at a standard, at a baseline, you're gonna have one fleet cruise, one professional training event, and then one block of leave. Those things can be slightly adjusted, but for the majority of midshipmen, they're gonna do zero block in Annapolis, they're gonna stick around in Annapolis and partake in you know the commissioning week events. They're gonna do a you know a fleet cruise, a professional training block, and then have a block of leave. That's that's what normal looks like, right? That's what normal looks like. All right. Now, in terms of like planning the summer, midshipmen get an opportunity to put their preferences in, right? Like they can say, like if you know you're gonna have a family vacation or a wedding in you know July or whatever the case is, like midshipmen have the opportunity to put in their preferences, preferences, like and say, Hey, having third block leave is my number one priority. My second priority is then I would love to do you know a surface cruise out of you know San Diego. And then, you know, my third priority is a professional training event doing X. I don't care which one is first block, which one's second block, not sure, like doesn't matter. Like, my number one priority is having leave in this block. The training office takes that into consideration, right? Like they absolutely take into consideration. They want to do everything that they can to kind of support midshipmen. And if there, if there's ever anything that's like super important, the wedding for a sibling or like some of these things, you just need to communicate and communicate super early. There's no guarantee that it's gonna work out. Again, this is the military. Here's my gentle reminder to parents you will never 100% be able to guarantee your child's presence at home. You're not gonna be able to 100% guarantee it. Schedules change all the time, these blocks change all the time, these trainings are always subject to change. Ship schedules always change. Military units have things that they have to adjust all the time, and that may impact your world. And I'm sorry, but like there is no guarantee that you are going to have an ability to be at some of these things. Your best case is to communicate and communicate very early to make sure that like there is a special request put in months, months in advance to be present at some of these things. And even in that case, it might not work out. And so, again, your mid knows what they need to do and how to do it and like go through this. They know they need to communicate and they need to communicate early. And like you, as a parent, should not be involved, should not be reaching out to the academy about these things. Like, that's on your son or daughter, like that's on your midshipment to get this figured out and planned with their unit, right? And sometimes it might not work out, sometimes it might not work out. And I hate to kind of be the bearer of bad news on like the brunt front of this, but like at the end of the day, do your best to not harbor any resentment towards them or the military. Like it's it's the military, it's the military, and you have to be able to adjust. You have to, again, we have this term semper gun, but you have to always be flexible and willing to understand that like things may change on a moment's notice, and that is completely out of the control of your son or daughter. And like, I'm sorry, right? And so, again, in many cases, if you have a family wedding or a family vacation or anything, do your best to plan it. But like, there's there are no guarantees. There are no guarantees. So, you know, just as a just as a heads up, right? Just as a heads up. Now, with all that being said, during summer trainings, especially like during pro-Trimid, they have usually, again, everything's always subject to change, subject to their unit, things that are going on. They usually have weekends off. A lot of times it's a day job. They're going into the squadron, they're going into the unit from, you know, 7:30 to 4. And then they have the night off, right? Like, and a lot of times midship want to hang out with their families or hang out with their friends, do all this stuff. But like, there are opportunities to like visit your midshipmen if you want to communicate with your mid to kind of figure out how that works and where they may be and what may be happening. But there are opportunities to potentially go and visit and see them around and see them in their element. Again, you're not really going to get on base, like you're not going to like see the training necessarily, but you may have an opportunity to visit with them, coordinate directly with your midshipmen to see what their schedule is over that summer and like during those blocks, and you may get an opportunity to do it. I also want to let you know that, like, if you happen to make your way to San Diego, shoot me a message. Preferably a LinkedIn DM. Again, you're going to get the best opportunity to get a hold of me there. But you can email me too. If you're in San Diego, and again, you listen to Academy Insider or you're a fan of this, like, I'd love to meet you and grab a coffee. Would love the opportunity to get to meet you. I'm based in San Diego. I'll be here the majority of the summer. Again, there are times I'm not going to be here, but I'll be here a lot. And if you make your way out to San Diego, would love the opportunity to get to meet you, have a conversation, chat, and just, you know, get together for a little bit. So if that ever works out, I would love for that to be the case. I hope I get an opportunity to meet y'all. That would be super fun for me. And uh yeah, no, I mean that'd be great. And again, also the the self-plug, again, just you know, trying to provide for me and my family for my wife. But yeah, if you're if you're ever considering making a real estate decision as well, nationwide, buying or selling anywhere, like that's what I do. You know, would love to help consult on that, would love to help you build your team of an incredible real estate, you know, of incredible real estate professionals on the agent side, on the lending side, always happy to do that. So please reach out if there are any questions about that. But yeah, if you're in San Diego, shoot me a message. Would love to meet as many of you as I possibly can. We're gonna wrap it up with like now just some like general thoughts and advice. Summer training is a really cool thing for midshipmen, but now that I'm out, again, it's funny how perspective changes everything, right? My friends now, my peers are the ones who are like having to organize these events and put them together for midshipmen. My friends are the training officers on the ship who have to now completely adjust everything that they do to accommodate midshipmen. And it's a freaking burden, dude. I like I just again, people need to, and it's tough. Like, we always are the center of our own universes and worlds. But like when you're a midshipman, I think the best thing you can do, and again, in my opinion, self-awareness is just the greatest skill that you can have in the world, especially in the military. Like, it'll go so far to have self-awareness of the reality of your situation, empathy for others, and understand kind of that perspective. But having the awareness that you are legitimately a burden in their world, they're never gonna say it to you. They're never gonna like be like, oh my gosh, we're so unhappy you're here. Like, I can't believe it. But like you coming out to be on their ship with like nothing actually to do, no ability to really contribute, but just to like be there, like that's a burden in their world. That's so much planning, that's so much consideration. Like you're you're one more thing that they have to deal with. And so again, this is not to like feel bad, but also like really. Realize the awareness of the situation and don't do anything that is going to cause them more work. Do not get in trouble. Do not do stupid things, right? Like if you're going to do things that are going to make them have more work, like it is in a complete lack of consideration for the fact that people are adjusting their worlds, their lives to accommodate your development, your exposure, all these things, right? My advice, be considerate, be curious, and be engaged. If you show a general appreciation and interest in what they do and your desire to learn what they do and be involved in what's going on, then you're going to have a great experience. If you're like, I don't care what's going on, just like floating around, non-existent, like whatever, you're not going to get anything out of it. But if you're actively causing them issues, oh dude. Like that is the number one way to kind of cause a bad reputation about you before you even go anywhere in this military world, right? So anyway, be considerate, be curious, and be engaged. You do those things. Summer training will be the coolest experience of all time. And yeah. So anyway, that's going to wrap us up. I hope this was valuable. I hope you got a little something out of this episode and learned a little bit about perspective about summer training. And if you ever have any more questions, let me know. I plan on doing deeper dives into each individual thing of like how these work and what the structure is and what their life will be like. But I hope this provided an overview of summer training at the Naval Academy. Really cool stuff. Love it. Like super fun. Thank you. Thank you for listening. And I hope I can continue to be a resource. If you ever anything, let me know. Otherwise, enjoy your day and thank you for listening. 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 it 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.