As I performed more and more, I felt myself becoming more confident in my abilities. But having to train with a group of people, and getting better, and then having to go through inspections, and watching myself doing not so good, to doing okay, to doing well, and then doing exceptionally well, I started to gain a sense of confidence in myself and in my abilities that, well if I can run 3 miles and if I can repeat my general orders and if I can do all that in a day, you know, there's not much more that I can't do.
I think my parents looked at me more as a mature adult more... 'cause when I left home I was a high school graduate. And when I came back for the first time I had been through basic training, I had been through my first semester at the Air Force Academy, and as time go on, they viewed me not as the young man or as the child that left but as a mature adult that was capable of making, at times, life or death decisions.
Well, certainly, what the first thing was, everybody noticed when I came back from my six weeks at Fort Brad was that I just looked different. I was really in shape for the first time in my life. And, I had grown up as a slightly chubby, violin-playing, mostly sedentary person and there I was out there doing pushups and getting strong. And, it really changed the way I perceived myself as well. And, the idea of going from a pretty unformed person, which is, like I said, is the way I think I was, to someone who had more of a passion and a mission in life is what happened to me and I think the military training had a lot to do with that.
