Mini BUD/S This last summer, I had the unique opportunity to attend the SEAL Officer Assessment Selection, also known as “MiniBUD/S.” The purpose behind this training is to immerse candidates from the Naval Academy, Officer Candidate School, and ROTC to see which individuals stand out as leaders and fit to lead future SEAL warriors down the road. The entire summer cruise was three weeks long. The first week was referred to as “cruise” week. While this week did not actually count towards selection, the candidates got to tour the different SEAL teams based in Coronado, CA and talk with the officers of each team one on one. All of the SEAL officers were quite candid and offered all of us particular advice on varying topics, whether it was about actual missions or from their own personal lives. We played a lot of beach volleyball on our free time and went out to explore downtown San Diego. The second week was the actual start of the assessment. It can best be described as the first phase of BUD/S training condensed into one week. We were all divided into respective boat crews that mixed the varying accession sources. The training evolutions involved everything that BUD/S is known for; whether that was log PT, surf torture, long distance swimming, etc. The instructors wanted to see who was physically fit enough for the many evolutions but they were also assessing to see who the real team players were. No one individual survives BUD/S; it is a coordinated team effort. Instructors not only looked for teamwork but also for the ones who could foster this team mindset and lead others to win. The final week boiled down to many interviews with physiologists and SEAL team members. They wanted to understand what made us tick and get a fuller profile of who we were as individuals. When the interviews were completed, all of us got together, had a bonfire on the beach and shared our favorite stories from the many training evolutions we got to experience. In the end, I walked away with a deeper appreciation and sense of what those trainees go through to become SEAL warriors. It is one thing for someone to say that they want to go through that type of training but quite another to actually experience it. It reflected precisely what President Roosevelt said over a century ago, “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Ensign Joshua Korver United States Navy
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