throw your white cover, it'll mean something to someone.
- steff
- May 28, 2025
- 7 min read
when i was a freshman in high school, i read the diary of west point cadet, by preston pysh. this book would be one of the books of my life, one i would reach for in moments of discouragement & failure. while applying to west point my sophomore year of high school, i read it religiously. when i wasn’t reading it, id listen to it on audible—i'd put it on when i went on runs, to the gym, in the car—this book single-handedly served as my reason to go to west point. when i read this book, i believed i belonged at west point; i believed that west point was the place people went to and lived out their dreams to be challenged & learned more from their peers & their failures. now that i'm done with plebe year, i find it ironic that i never reached for this book in the last ten months, as this was the most failure i'd ever come face-to-face with. i stopped trying to look for the comfort i used to in between pysh’s lines and stopped trying to relive the feelings i used to get when i'd read a chapter or two. yet, as i sat in the stands of graduation, half in awe of seeing people's journey here come to an end & mine just beginning, i remembered my favorite chapter.
years after first cracking open this book, it amazed me at how much my perspective on it had changed. i no longer needed to use my imagination to illustrate the scenes in my head. i no longer had to imagine what it felt like to be a west point cadet, or what thayer hall looked like, or what a west point parade looked like…all of it was my reality,one that i had consistently & passionately felt ungrateful for throughout my plebe year. i’ve always kept in the back of my mind how badly i wanted to go to west point. i was once a 14-year-old girl who wanted more than anything to play softball at west point. 14-year-old me looked out the window at 2am of her hotel window & saw a train pass by in the middle of a cold january night. at that age, i decided that west point would be the place i wanted to be at. i actually cried a little thinking about how i could potentially be a cadet one day & i felt this overwhelming sensation that i was just destined to be at west point. that dream fated as i got older & new dreams took its place, but i never forgot how i felt that one night looking at the train, that i now frequently ride 8 years later, pass me by. i still think about it now, especially when i hear the sound of the train thunder around west point, & i think about how i felt about west point at 19. i came back to west point for the first time in many years in january of 2023. i remember how new everything looked, how everyone stared at me weirdly, & how much i wanted to leave fsu and go to west point. in hindsight everything is 20/20, & i'm not one to invalidate my own feelings from plebe year, but it is satisfying to know that 14 & 19 year old (picture left: january 2018, 14 years old. picture right: january 2023, 19 years old) me thinks im probably the coolest person ever.
now, back to the diary of a west point cadet. the last chapter out of twelve is called “The Hat”, & this was always my favorite chapter to get to: 1) because it meant i was done reading the book & 2) because it tied up the west point experience into a perfect bow & i was always so determined to one day feel the way preston pysh did on his graduation day. “The Hat” introduces readers to grad week at west point—somewhere between here & there, preston pysh forgot to really hone in on how DREADFUL & LONG grad week is at west point, but i’ll forgive him for now. reading the chapter now, a few days after graduation, it really reminded me of how west point truly never changes. there’s still a huge MOUNTAIN cadets have to walk up to get to graduation at michie, people are still running around packing out their rooms, firsties are still laying low to avoid getting in trouble, & cadets are still eager to get the heck outta west point--all things pysh wrote about in his book. there’s a sense of relief that comes with knowing that everything i’ve ever struggled with at west point has been shared between those who came before me & those who will come after me.
my favorite parts of the chapter has nothing to do with west point itself, but the community that west point has the weird knack of making.
this chapter was full of west point traditions, one's we still have & those that have dissipated throughout the decades. one of my favorite west point traditions is The Goat. preston mentioned how his firstie class handed down a handful of money for the goat (the term refers to the cadet graduating with the lowest gpa) of his class on his graduation day. experiencing the revealing of this year's goat was amazing for me because the class of 2025 goat is one of my dear friends & company mate, malik birchett! pysh did not forget to mention that the goats of west point have gone on to do incredible things, which makes sense because i could have never gotten through my prep year or my plebe year without my friendship with malik.
there was also a side story about how an old grad from the class of 1984 told preston about a forgotten tradition firsties used to do during the graduation parade. in the 80s, the firstie class used to leave trash behind as they walked away from the underclassmen during the parade. there would be a line of trash around the formation when they marched forward to leave the remaining underclassmen & how funny it used to look from the stands--just a pile of junk on the plain. preston shared how he too left trash for the underclassmen during his grad parade, a little piece of paper that said “later, suckers".
one tradition i forgot about until i was engulfed in it was the dozens of children that storm the field to pick up white garrison caps that once belonged to a graduating firstie. i spent the whole graduation dozing in & out of sleep (once again, there seems to be a lack of public information that describes the true experience of graduation day as a cadet. cadets are up at 2 or 3 am, packing out the last bit of their rooms & then forming up to wait at michie stadium for SEVERAL HOURS). after the names were called, EVERYONE in the stadium was buzzing the finally hear the first captain dismiss the class. everyone had been sitting in their seats for so long, and everyone couldn’t wait to finally leave, graduate, or finally go pee. once the class was dismissed, the stadium roared with cheers & applause. the sky was decorated with a monsoon of white garrison caps, & everyone harmoniously darted for their final destination far far away from michie stadium.
it’s a good thing i didn’t really have a plan after graduation. i had an hour and a half before i needed to be in the football weight room to be freshly graduated jordyn “boobie” law’s first salute, so i stood in the bleachers weighing out my options. then, from the corner of my eye, i saw kids running around with white garrison caps & that’s when it struck me: i was living in one of west point's most special traditions known to its community. as i saw the little kids smiling and strutting around in their new hats, i felt a feeling i hadn’t in a while: a sense of place. west point can really be isolating at times & you can get so caught up in what’s happening right in the moment and forget to think about the bigger picture. there’s always a cadet wondering if they’re going to pass their class or if they’re going to get enough sleep for the next day, and a lot of it can be suffocating & it can lead people to dissociate from the dreams they once had for themselves at this school—i, amongst many, fit into this narrative.
on graduation day, i was in the middle of the big picture: graduating is never just about The One, but about The Many. graduating is about the village it took to get your butter bars & you're diploma from one of the most challenging and prestigious schools in the country. graduating is about those in the stands & those in the seats around you--The Many.
the last page of the book tells the story of the little boy who picked up preston pysh’s garrison cap from his graduation. the little boy’s dad, a colonel, commandant of the preparatory school (go usmaps! desire, faith, effort), emailed preston to ask what he had been up to since graduating & assured him that the hat was in good hands. sitting back now, i realize that getting through plebe year wasn’t my doing alone. it took The Many, an entire village & some. graduating from west point is personal, & sometimes you have to take it personally. sometimes i have to be so hungry to graduate that i put some of my other desires to the side, because no one wants to graduate from west point more than me.
after getting recognized into the corps, my incoming first sergeant & company commander had all of “pluks” write a letter to our future selves. we wrote promises we would uphold as team leaders, & one of my promises was to give my plebe someone they could be proud to be led by. graduating west point isn’t about the freshman in high school who saw the train go by & it isn’t about the sophomore in college who would’ve given her left kidney to be admitted…it’s about the little boy or girl who picks up my hat in three years.
when i throw my hat in the air, im sure tears will fall from my face. tears will be shed and they will encapsulate all of the trials, the doubt, and the failure…it’ll be because of all the times i got knocked down but i stood back up to throw another punch.
i can’t wait to throw my hat up in the air, but i'm most looking forward to, hopefully, one day, meeting the kid who picked up my hat.
i hope whoever picks up my hat knows that if i can do this, they can do ANYTHING that sets their heart ablaze.
with all my love,
♡steff
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