I'm a student at the academy of 4 years. I want to...

I'm a student at the academy of 4 years. I want to talk about my experiences and expose some of the problems I've encountered during my time here.

Firstly, every last bit of a student's day is planned out. Everyday is the same routine. Students have to look at their watches every few hours to prevent them from missing formations, pt, lunch, or tac time. The best words to describe going to ANA would be dull and controlled. I see other reviews here saying "there is so much freedom" and that is simply not true during weekdays. When you enter ANA, every aspect of your life will be controlled by them. Everyday you have to ask yourself: Is my hair too long? Am i wearing all my pins on my uniform? Is my shoes shined? How many inches is in a half step? I never went to prison but if I ever did, I'm sure that ANA would be comparable to prison. The best way to describe this would be whenever I leave the campus, I feel relieved like heavy weights has been taken off my shoulders. I really don't think it shouldn't feel like that whenever you leave a school campus.

During my time here, I've seen many cadet leaders at ANA abuse their powers, either humiliating students by making them walk around the campus chanting "I was wrong" or making students hold a 15 pound rifle above their heads for half an hour.

The mess hall at ANA is... well a mess. There is a food rotation schedule the resets every few weeks and they serve the same exact thing every rotation. The mess hall at ANA is also pretty unsanitary, I have seen cockroaches on the walls and ground in the mess hall and it's pretty unsettling. However, you are allowed to order food here though which is a huge win.

Overall, I think that, personally, going to this school had no positive effect on me or my character whatsoever. Sure I learned how to march in a military style, sure I learned how to perform drill in a military parade, sure I learned the ranks of the army, but there was nothing else I took away from attending this academy aside from the military stuff that I could just look up on the internet. This academy just gave me more stress on top of my homework and AP classes and made me feel like I wasted all of my teenage years confined in a 16 acre cubical campus. When I watch tv shows about high school, it made me really miserable seeing that I could never have the experience of a normal teenager in a normal high school. Everyday in the academy, it's the same pattern. Wake up, look forward to the day ending, and going to sleep, on a repeat, until the weekends when I get to go home.

This school claims that it's a college preparatory school but how is it a college prep school when they use study halls to babysit students to do their homework instead of teaching them time management and make a restrictive schedule controlling every aspect of a student's time.

Aside from the Cadet Life, classes at ANA is pretty good. The teachers and counselors are all very experienced and fun. I feel like they are what makes the school bearable for me specifically.

This is just an inside scoop of what the academy is really like from my experiences.