“The Third Platoon Leader is Cameron Stewart,” The Company Commander announced. “Yes I did it! I was promoted to a Platoon Leader,” I exclaimed to myself. I had been a zealous and industrious member of the C.E. Byrd JROTC program for two years and my hard work finally payed off. However, I was ill prepared to be a platoon leader and the challenges that come with the position.

     The reason I was so ill-prepared was that I had not had developed my leadership skills as much as they needed to be developed. I am an inherently nice and kind individual, so it is hard for me to tell people that they are incorrect. I was extremely nervous talking to big groups(I have grown out of this for the most part) and not capable of projecting my voice well. I was(and still am) very socially awkward, so it was hard for me to make relationships with my subordinates and they probably thought I was weird and a wee bit crazy.

     On the first few days of being the third Platoon Leader I gave a very bad first impression. I was extremely shy and nervous, so I came off as a weak leader and my awkwardness made me come off as weird. My second in command, which is called a Platoon Sergeant, gave a good first impression. He talked with them and make good relationships and came off as a pretty cool guy and a strong leader. This caused the members of the platoon to respect him more than me, and this lack of respect would cause serious frustration later on.

     My frustration did not start building until about halfway through the school year. For the first half of the school year I was only supervising the squad leaders who taught individual and squad drill to the first years, so I did not have to do that much work. When it was time to teach Platoon drill everything started to crumble. The Platoon Sergeant and I were responsible for teaching Platoon drill, but sergeant was little help. Most of the time he would wander off and talk to his friends in other Platoons leaving me on my own (I always had to get somebody else to make him come back). When he did help he just sat there talking to everyone and actually did little teaching, so I was left on my own trying to explain Platoon drill to my subordinates while some listened and others blatantly disrespected me.  I was basically left on my own with a group of people who did not want to be lead by me, and I tried to be more strict and stern, but I was far to late for that. Over time I was filled with unbridled rage towards my Platoon and Platoon Sergeant because of all the disrespect I had received.

     Then on a very normal day something snapped in me and I lost all constraint. I had been trying to no avail to get them to learn extremely important information for our yearly inspection. But hardly anybody was paying attention, and I started to ask them why they would not simply listen to me a little bit; the information was not that hard to understand, so I wanted to known why they ignored me. Pretty much all of them were speechless, except for one person. This person had the gall to say that I was rude and she did not like me. I then asked her what I had to do to get her to like me, then she said to be like my Platoon Sergeant.

     That response made me explode. I began to burn hotter than one-thousand suns! I vented all my rage and all my inner thoughts and continued to yell about how the Platoon Sergeant was terrible at his job and how all of them were disrespectful towards me. This continued for a minute or so and I would have been finishedthere, but then the Platoon Sergeant walked up asking what was going on and I threw all my rage at him full speed. I vented about how he never helped, was always a distraction, and should have been fired a long time ago. After this I calmed down and I felt embarrassed and alone. A leader is never supposed to lose his cool and act like that. Any bit of respect I had was now lost and there was no way to retrieve any of it.

     Then a friend of mine took me to another room and tried to make sure I was alright. I was fine, but in a mode of deep thought. Then I had an epiphany, I was the root of all the problems. My bad first impressions made my Platoon think I could be trampled over and when I decided to be strict they thought I was joking. They had no respect for me because to them I was rude, I never attempted to try to be a more approachable leader. I never tried to make relationships with them. I never tried to understand how they felt. I was being selfish and putting my own agenda ahead of my subordinates, which is wrong. I shifted the blame on to my Platoon Sergeant because he did not help me at all. I felt I was alone trying lift up the entire world with no help. Anyone with a task that daunting would feel the same. Now granted the Platoon Sergeant was not perfect and a small portion of the blame goes to him. He set a terrible example always leaving when it was time to teach, and taking to people in the Platoon when I was teaching.  However, the rest of the blame was my burden.

     From this point on I decided that I had to be a firm leader, but I still had to be approachable and build relations with my subordinates. My third year in JROTC was a year of hardship, but I came out of it with more knowledge of leadership. Now I am in my last year of
JROTC and armed with my new knowledge I am going to succeed, but still being a leader is not easy. It is a learning experience that never stops, and I am ready to soak up all the knowledge that I can.