There are people in our lives who may know more about what's good for us than we do. - Martin Dempsey

I was a good student at West Point- probably not as good as I could have been or should have been, but I performed well enough there and in the eight years afterward, serving with two cavalry squadrons, that I was selected for graduate school and a teaching assignment back at West Point. I chose to pursue a master's degree in English literature at Duke University. Even in retrospect, I wouldn't suggest that at the time I was passionate about getting an advanced degree in English. I was passionate about going to graduate school in some discipline other than engineering, my undergraduate major, and I really wanted to go back to West Point to teach. The English department provided a path for me to accomplish those goals.

Loyalty is not an entitlement. It must be earned, both by leaders and by those who follow them. And even when loyalty has been earned, it must have limits. (Who among us can forget being asked by our chiding parents, "If your friend told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?" Every day we see misplaced loyalty contributing to problems such as bullying, hazing, sexual harassment, discrimination, and corruption. To be sure, it can be difficult to say no to someone in a position of power who is using loyalty as leverage, especially when that person makes it clear that they expect total and unconditional loyalty. But that's where loyalty must meet moral courage, if we are to act honorably and do what's right.

Ranger School is the toughest training offered in the Army- not a place for the faint of heart and only recently open to women. Only a fraction of the soldiers who enter the nine-week course make it out successfully.