On September 16, 2022 Alexander Garcia, my brother who graduated from West Boca in 2022, graduated from basic combat training for the army and is now an official army soldier. He states that he is currently working to become a combat medic and joined the Army in order to pay for college. I attended the ceremony for Family Day which was on September 14 and his graduation which was the day after. During the ceremony I saw a lot of soldiers who were graduating around the same age as my brother; the oldest soldier during that graduation was about 56 years old.  Alexander trained in Fort Jackson, South Carolina for 3 months. On Family Day, we were able to go see my brother and walk around with him on the base from 9am-7pm.

 Once we reunited with my brother we went out to eat and walked around base looked around their museum. In the Museum they provided lots of training videos, old letters, and life sized models of soldiers in training. They had stores where you could buy hoodies, shirts, and souvenirs. We spent most of our time at the park spending time with him and as he shared his stories of the time he spent training; he also was able to show us his locker and where he slept. I observed that during my time the soldiers wore their cap outside and removed them while indoors and were not able to drive any vehicles for safety reasons.

On the day of his graduation, after the ceremony, they allowed us to take Alexander off base from around 10:00am-6:30pm. That day we went and ate breakfast and afterwards we went to the inn we were staying at and allowed my brother to get some rest to prepare for his upcoming trip to Texas. Afterwards, we went out to eat once again and talked with him until it was time to send him back to base. He talked to us about how he was doing and how he felt throughout his training. I was glad to hear that he was not affected by training too drastically and is able to continue on with working towards becoming a combat medic. He is currently in Texas awaiting his orders on where he will be stationed next. He is currently a U.S private soldier in AIT (advanced individual training) which is training to become a combat medic he states on how he is excited to be jumping out of planes.

Alexander’s experience in training was very tough, Alexander stated that experiences may vary among others who graduated with him because some had trouble adapting to this new environment because of how they missed their daily life. He also states on how lucky he was at times saying “I am so glad I still have my teeth” because surprisingly he stated that you could so easily loose some teeth. These three months for my family were stressful because we were not sure when would be the next time we would hear from Alexander due to the fact that sometimes phone privileges would change due to how well the soldiers were doing. When we caught up with my brother with what he missed back at home he said “these past three months felt like years” and in the letters he wrote to me he also stated that he felt trapped like in a “bubble” because he did not know what was going on in the “outside world”. He mostly stated how much he missed home, our cat, and how he also missed the food and hot meals, especially sugar. But overall, he seems to be doing well and I know that he is very strong and has the strength to endure whatever these next 4 years have in store for him. My brother has been a true inspiration to me and my family. I dedicate this article to my brother because I am so proud of him, here’s to breaking the cycle and being able to accomplish so much and graduating high school which is a big deal to our family considering a lot of our family were not able to have that opportunity.