Emma’s ESOAL story:
I was truly excited for ESOAL. I thought that it would be a great experience, and that pushing myself to my limits would be really good for me.
So in the auditorium, we sat in our companies and platoons. General Hasz walks up and says, “So this year we are doing things a little different. This year, my friend here, he’s a retired NAVY SEAL, is going to be helping us facilitate. He has also helped us come up with some of the evolutions we will be doing throughout the course of ESOAL.” I’m thinking, “Oh, shoot. Forget finishing…I’m going to die here!” So this navy seal vet gets up and he’s talking to us for about an hour and a half about the attitude and the heart of a seal…it was just intense. The whole time I was getting more and more scared.
After he was done, General Hasz had us all get over to the Student Activity Center. So we ran over there and stood at “attention” until they came over to give us further orders. They came over and said that they were going to give us some rest time, and they turned out all of the lights, and all of the facilitators left. So it was just us interns hanging out and waiting. We didn’t know if we were supposed to sleep or just sit there. After about 20 minutes of sitting in the dark, we realized that they meant that we were supposed to go to bed. But we’re on hard floors, and it’s cold! They had the air conditioning WAY up…It was basically impossible to sleep because it was so cold. So I didn’t sleep at all. I was just laying there, scared out of my mind. I didn’t know what to think. We’re just waiting…and waiting…and waiting. I felt so alone and small. As much as I wanted to, I was NOT going to cry, I kept telling myself that. I really just needed to sleep and I couldn’t.
I don’t know how long we were there. It felt like forever, but it was probably only 4hours, max. Then our second lieutenants, who had been watching all night for the facilitators to come back, started yelling, “Everybody UP! They’re coming, they’re coming!” So we all jumped up and stood at attention. Then we heard one long whistle, so we dropped down on our faces. Two whistles, so we got in the low-crawl position, and the whistles kept coming, so we started crawling over one another to get towards the whistles. I was carrying my water bottle in my teeth because we were told to carry our things with us everywhere. We were crawling towards this wall, when a garage door started opening in the wall, and all the facilitators were standing at the door, shooting at us with blank shots or something, and lights were flashing and sirens were going. In the moment, this was terrifying. I honestly was afraid for my life. Any calming thoughts from before that they couldn’t kill us were gone. I had forgotten them and all I was thinking was, “What can I do to survive?” So we got to the doorway, and they had us run down to the football field, where we began the hardest corporate exercise I have ever experienced at the Honor Academy.
After the most awful corporate ever, we all marched over to the soccer field, in front of the pavilion. Our sergeant majors went over and brought back three “units” of food for each person in our platoon. It was baby food. Nasty baby food. I got two cans of this apple sauce stuff, but it was not just apple sauce – it definitely had something else in it, because it made me gag. The last one I had was this bacon stuff. HORRIBLE. Ugh! It was so gross. You had to eat with your dirty fingers, too, because we weren’t given utensils, and it was too solid to drink it. Not very sanitary, since our hands and arms were covered in dirt.
Throughout this whole time, people are ringing out right and left, and every time someone rings out, you can hear the bell ring across campus. We were not allowed to call anyone by name. If you do, on accident, you do army low-crawls. You are not known as an individual, but a big group of people who are all punished together. You are told you are worthless and very insignificant, and you are told that no one cares if you just quit and go home. It seriously kills your morale. You feel so defeated. That might be why so many people rang out so early. By 11 a.m. on the first morning, about 160 of the starting 400 had already rung out.
After our ‘delicious’ breakfast on Thursday morning, my company marched further back on campus to this stretch of open road, known as the “maniac mile.” We stopped next to this school bus, and out major told us that we would be competing among our five platoons to see who could pull it the furthest. Mine barely got it 4 inches. Other platoons got it 6-10 feet. I was told later that they had rigged some of the buses with heavy weights, so they couldn’t be moved, but they called us failures anyway. The feeling after trying something like that and falling so far short is so depressing. Not only that, but they’re yelling at us, “Second place is first loser! You’re all losers!” It just kills your will to keep going. So we did squats and pushups and other stuff as punishment for ‘losing.’
Then they marched us back over to the soccer field, and there is this hill at the top of the soccer field. They sat us down and began quizzing us on facts about our state. Each company was named after a state. We were told before ESOAL that we should memorize facts about our state, so we all knew the capital, the state flower, tree, bird, etc. But they asked us hard questions that we couldn’t have known. We didn’t have anyone in our platoon who was from our state, so no one knew these things. So they made us roll the hill. You might be thinking, “Rolling down hills? Psh, that’s fun!” No, it’s not. Not when the distance you are rolling is close to 100 meters, it’s rocky, and you ate only an hour or so earlier. Almost everyone throws up. And when you are down in the dirt, throwing up baby food, dizzy, disoriented, and you know that this isn’t even close to the worst of it, I cannot even begin to describe to you the defeated feeling you get in your heart. And this feeling keeps coming, over and over and over and over again. After you get to the bottom of the hill, you get to hop back up and answer another question. And we got that wrong, so down we go again, and this time you begin to roll in other people’s vomit. This was the most horrible part of ESOAL for me. It didn’t help me in anyway, just made me feel like a failure and like dying.
Next we marched over to the obstacle course. The first part are three 5ft log walls to climb over. Then there is a 4ft deep tunnel covered with a tarp that you had to army low-crawl through. It was really dusty and you were basically breathing the Texas red dirt, and it was rocky so you got a lot of bruises, and when you came out, you had red dirt outlining your teeth. Blech…then we did over-under-over-under on these 2x4s they’d set up. Then we climbed a 12ft cliff with a net hanging over the side, and we came down a little path. Then we had to climb the cliff again, but our platoon had to carry a barrel this time. We got down from that and we had to dive into this ditch that was about 8 feet deep, and the opening was covered with a tarp, but the space was only about a foot and a half open, and we couldn’t touch the tarp or we’d have to do it all over, I touched it. So there I went. Next we had to Tarzan swing across a little pond on some ropes, and then we ran through a bunch of tires.
Then we went on a long march, stopping to do pushups and random corporate exercise stuff. Every time General Hasz would drive by, we had to assemble at the side of the road as fast as we could to stand at attention. He’d drive by really slow and stare at us. Very unnerving.
Then we marched back to the obstacle course, but all of the companies were doing it together this time. And they had taken a major hosing to the course. So we got to the tunnels and it was muddy. They were spraying us with a really powerful hose at the over-under-over-under part, and by the time we got to the deep ditch, it was a pond, so we were practically swimming in it. We got done with that course, and we all looked like unidentifiable muddy animals.
For lunch, they gave us four minutes to eat pizza. We were surprised that they were feeding us pizza, because we’d expected nasty foods. But they said that they were pushing us more physically than any other year, and we’d need the carbs. Next, our major marched us over to the hill again, and yep, we got to roll it. Right after eating pizza. I cannot tell you how awful it was to be vomiting pizza–it was much worse than that morning. We rolled the hill twice, and both times I was a mess by the time I got to the bottom. I was dizzy, my head was throbbing, and I was seriously considering the friendly bell at that point. I kept telling myself that I could not take another roll down that hill, and I’d ring out if they made us do it again. And then I rolled it again, my determination to go on was seriously only coming from God at this point. I had nothing left, and it was only lunchtime on the first day!
Then our major marched us back into ETAC (the ropes course) and they took us to the paintball course. We get there, and they tell us that one person at a time from each platoon will be going into the course to retrieve as many flags as possible without getting hit by out captain or our major, who will be shooting at us with the guns. We will have six shots each, and when we’re out of ammo, we are allowed to come out of the course. I was petrified going in. I’ve never done paintball before, and we’re all wearing spandex and under armor because we were told to wear clothes that would dry fast. During my turn, I just grabbed as many flags as I could while I was trying to keep moving to avoid all the shots coming my way. I grabbed as many as I could see (7) and then I blindly shot in the direction of where the shots were coming from until my six were gone. So I yelled, “out of ammo,” and started to run out. Other people were coming in, though, so my major was shooting at them, and got me in the hip with a stray bullet.
After that evolution was over, we marched down to the football field. We lined up and the navy seal was facilitating this exercise. He takes us out of our platoons and lines us up with people who have close height ratios. So I get put with three other guys, while the other teams have 5-6 people – we have four, and I’m the only girl. So he sets it up so that we grab hands and run as fast as we can to go around him without touching him and get back before the other platoons. He’s walking away from us the entire time. So I got lucky on this one. My team won every time, and it was definitely because we all had long legs. The teams that lost had to bench press these massive logs, while doing flutter kicks…so their arms are dying at the same time as their abs and their legs. I don’t know how they kept their logs from smashing their faces.
Our major took us over to another part of the football field then, and we started doing flutter kicks, pushups, squats, overhead claps, and of course, a whole lot of army low-crawls. Then our major lined us up and said we would have a chance to earn a reward for our team, if one member from each platoon would go forward and do 50 stars. Stars: basically, you start in a squatting position, and you jump as high as you can while you spread your arms and legs as far as you can. It kills after about 10, so thinking 50 was almost impossible. I volunteered, and the whole time my lieutenant was yelling at me to jump higher and to spread my arms wider, and stuff like that. Surprisingly, I had enough strength to finish them. And I won my platoon a Gatorade.
So then our major marches us off to a grassy hill behind the obstacle course. He tells us we’re going to be playing hide-and-go-seek. We had to make it back to where we’d just been on the football field, and we have to do it before all the other platoons, so that we don’t lose, or become second (first loser) and we have to do it without getting caught by our major, captain, lieutenant, or any other random instructor that may happen to be wandering around. If we were caught, punishment would be awaiting us. My team made it, and we tied with another platoon.
We all marched over to the soccer fields in front of the bell to “wave goodbye to the sun.” Hasz was making it sound very bad that the sun was going down, because we would be “wishing for our friend the sun the whole night long.” For dinner, we got these cans of Chef Boyardee noodles and ground beef, and some rolls. The good food surprised us, and I was thinking, “Oh, no…here come the hills.” But we needed the carbs to keep us going, so down the tube they went. I felt even more like an animal. More people were ringing out.
Then they marched us up to the auditorium to watch a movie. This movie was long and boring. But the catch was, you couldn’t fall asleep. And if you started to, they would send you to the back of the room to dunk your head in a bucket of ice water to wake you up. And there was a test at the end.
After the test, which I passed, we were taken out to the hill again. And we got to roll it twice. And I threw up. After hopping back to the top the second time, we stood at attention for about half an hour, and I was swaying because I was so dizzy and tired. I came so close to passing out. At that point, I knew that my body couldn’t take it anymore. I was talking to another guy in my platoon, “Kyle, I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to collapse if I keep doing this,” and he was going through the same thing, so we both went to our lieutenant together to tell her we were going to ring out. And then we walked down the hill to ring the bell.
There were about fifteen of us waiting to ring the bell. General Hasz has to ring out each person. He came down and we got in line to ring out. It was my turn and he came up to me and asked, “Did you give it 100%?” “Yes, sir.” “Do you have any regrets?” “No, sir.” Then he paused, and he asked me something that he hadn’t asked anyone else from what I heard, and he goes, “Are you full of joy?” I paused, and I realized that I was! After all of the awful things I had gone through, the only emotion that I felt was joy! So I smiled really big, and I said, “Yes, sir! I am!” And he said, “Okay, I’m very proud of you, go ring the bell.” And he shook my hand, and I rang out. Then I put down my helmet among all of the others that were laid out, and it was over. My ESOAL was over.
Although I didn’t get any injuries in ESOAL, many of my friends did. I saw people suffer from diseases in their feet from wearing wet shoes for 40+ hours. Many of my friends had leg/knee/ankle injuries that lasted for months afterward because they were not treated during ESOAL.
I made it 29 hours, and felt like I had given it 100%. It wasn’t until a few months later that I began to think that ESOAL didn’t really stretch me emotionally like I had expected it to. It was an experience that stretched me physically, for sure, and a little spiritually. But it was not worth it when I had expected to grow emotionally.
Looking back, I think the “joy” I experienced upon ringing out was just relief that I was done. Now I think that ESOAL is wrong. There is no reason to push people through something like that, especially because the end goal is rarely met. We were not stretched emotionally, except in the way that we were verbally and physically abused, which is never constructive. One of my core mates was unable to do ESOAL because of her medical problems, and I remember so many other interns looking down on her and those like her, even though ESOAL is optional. That kind of pressure to perform is not okay.
13 comments:
Josh ex-intern 00-01says:July 28, 2010 at 7:37 AM
Wow, wow, wow, wow!!!! I’m speechless after reading this.
Jacquelinesays:July 28, 2010 at 9:10 AM
Wow Emma– I am amazed that you can remember so vividly the order of events! I blocked them out at a certain point. . . What teen mania fails to acknowledge is that most teens come already having experienced abuse– which they need healing FROM not exacerbated.
JacklovesJillsays:July 28, 2010 at 9:29 AM
After reading this it made me want to PUKE on Dave Hasz and everyone of those military wanna be idiots. I am just so mad and wonder what in HELL is going on at HA. It sounds like it’s being run by a bunch of power hungry bullies from high school. They put a big whopping portion of kick your a** and abuse but because we put a little dash of Jesus with it, it’s OK. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!! These kids signed up for an internship, not to become NAVY SEALS. What a bunch of idiots.
Hasz : General :: Boyardee : Chef
“Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement [Q.E.D.]
and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind [“General”, Really?!?],
and not holding fast to the head [Word Count: “Hasz” 5, “Jesus” 0],
from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God [not a growth which is from an idiotic abusive cultic brainwashing exercise regimen].”
(Colossians 2:18-19, commentary EP)
Renaesays:July 28, 2010 at 10:22 AM
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
—C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock
Anonymoussays:July 28, 2010 at 11:23 AM
Right on Eric!!
Moriahsays:July 28, 2010 at 10:24 PM
WOW!!!!
Ranae THANKS for sharing that quote. It is eloquent and poignant. C.S. Lewis writes so beautifully, combining intellect with faith. It is the perfect way to articulate opposition to the hellish and evil rigor Teen Mania puts kids through.
Thanks again for reminding me of one of the great intellectuals of our time, for although I am not a believer, I have great respect for those believers willing to delve into intellect in order to express and defend their faith in language that is profound and deeply expressive.
Candorsays:July 28, 2010 at 10:25 PM
I just keep wondering what Hasz is doing at the cult. It sounds like he really missed his calling with the military.
Sorry for your troubles, Emma. Hopefully prospective interns and current ones can gain something from your experiences with this abuse so they don’t have to experience it for themselves. Thanks for sharing. Much love.
hehe with everyone’s ESOAL stories I am even more glad now that I didn’t do it back then. Whenever people tried to guilt me about it, I just answered “I’ve been emotionally stretched enough this year, thank you.”
Anonymoussays:July 29, 2010 at 3:38 PM
“It sounds like he really missed his calling with the military.”
This comment ticked me off.
Not at Candor at Mr. Hasz.
ESOAL is NOT the military and if Dave was in the military running things the way he runs T.M. I’m POSITIVE his entire platoon would end up dead. Dave Hasz is only in the place he is because everyone around him let him and chooses to submit to his every whim. (am I wrong? for real, that’s what it looks like to me. R.A. I can see why you get so ticked off sometimes talking about him now. lol.)
If Dave was in the military he would have served his 4 years, probably gotten labeled as the weakling he is and wouldn’t of been asked back.
DH doesn’t have any desire to discuss ESOAL or even Emma’s story.
We did ESOAL together. I finished. And.. I might do it again. haha. I really like stuff like that. BUT I would never use this sort of thing to show God’s love. Never!
In fact, ESOAL comes across more to me like socialism. If one person screws up.. everyone screws up. There is no individual consequences.
