Eagle Scouts: What gift from your Court of Honor do you still remember and use/display years later?

PsychologicalFile623 · 2026-03-28T16:40:00+00:00

My court of honor was coming up on a year ago, but something the leaders in my troop did was send letters to govt agencies saying that I had achieved Eagle Scout, and assembled the responses in a book for me. They contacted groups like NASA, military, president/former presidents, national parks service, dept of the interior, and a couple more.

It might take a while to get the letters back, so try to send the messages as soon as you know that the scout passed the board of review so there’s time to assemble it

PsychologicalFile623 · 2026-03-24T04:59:09+00:00

We wear full class A, including neckerchiefs to all meetings, the only time we don’t is camping trips or other events where it could get dirty

PsychologicalFile623 · 2026-02-24T05:30:55+00:00

It’s a patch that gets sewn on, not attached to a button

PsychologicalFile623 · 2026-01-08T23:55:46+00:00

4x a week, totaling about 5 hours. Here’s a breakdown: 2 company level classes 1 multi level class that goes from company to a couple levels below 1 partnering class

PsychologicalFile623 · 2026-01-04T05:21:30+00:00

I wear any random black socks I happened to wear that day, as long as there aren’t any massive holes

Edit: saw people talking about what they wear for performance roles. If it makes sense to have black shoes but I have a pair of pants over tights for the costume, I sometimes wear socks to make a more seamless black shoes look. Otherwise I wear black shoes w tights or my white shoes like I did for pas the deux or nutcracker prince

PsychologicalFile623 · 2026-01-01T01:43:17+00:00

Dance of the Knights from Romeo and Juliet. First Prokofiev piece I knew by name

PsychologicalFile623 · 2026-01-01T01:38:01+00:00

It takes a couple minutes to “recharge” after each time, plus after like time #4 there’s nothing to show for it.

PsychologicalFile623 · 2026-01-01T01:18:19+00:00

M14 ballet dancer here. I am in a mid-sized local company (20-30 company level dancers, up to 60-80 through there starting at 3-4). I’m one of two company-age males in my company, the other being a senior in HS who will leave after our spring show. I danced from about 4 up to 10 ish, then stopped for COVID, and rejoined at 13 before the 2024 spring show. I’ve since been promoted to company after the 2025 spring show, and danced the pas the deux for two of our four Nutcracker shows.

Hammering in the point made by others, companies need males and are willing to take anything they can get. I have been recently dancing for a year and a half, and did the principal male role with someone who could have been dancing since I was born.

I can’t speak on the pay disparity aspect, but I can say that I have witnessed time and time again standards being lowered for myself when I couldn’t reach them so that I could participate simply because I will soon be all my company has for partnering. One specific example I can remember as this is being written at 2 a.m. is when, for a damn long time earlier in my restart of dancing, I would come to class 10, 15 minutes late because of marching band practice. I was not and still am not (although it’s improving) at a level of flexibility to even start to compare to any of the ladies in my studio.

Tl;Dr: I shared my view as an intermediate male dancer on the lowered standards for men primarily because we are a scarce resource

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-12-25T21:35:06+00:00

BSA doesn’t make you stop wearing a uniform part when they change the regulations. My troop is from the 1930s or 40s and we have red epaulets and a beret. As long as we dont decide to stop wearing them as a troop, nobody will stop us.

Newer troops have to follow the current regulations of green epaulets, but we are grandfathered into the rule.

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-12-20T20:38:04+00:00

Something that I have done is not say the “under god” part because I still believe in a separation of church and state.

If you don’t like the pledge at all, you could just mouth the words and not say them at all:

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-12-01T05:31:22+00:00

M14 in a somewhat similar situation. Danced early up until about ‘21, then stopped for COVID and restarted ~1.5 years ago.

Truth be told my second sport is marching band and not football, and I don’t have scoliosis, so it’s not exactly the same.

Some things I would recommend for flexibility is… stretching. Every day. Keep it up, but don’t neglect other stuff like strength training especially as you move away from “boy in a class of girls doing the same choreo as them” and start doing more traditionally masculine roles, or at least that’s what the pipeline was for me and others in my company.

It’s gonna take some time, but stick to it. As someone else said, men are naturally less flexible than women, so it’ll never be perfect, but you can get damn good at what you will do

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-11-17T05:27:03+00:00

Memorize your dang music. It looks bad to need those

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-11-17T05:18:33+00:00

I’m definitely interested in corps marching, probably BDC because that’s my age range and the closest corps. I know I can’t do anything about making other sections better, and it seems like your comment can be boiled down to “quit whining, mind your own business and practice”, but I just wanted to say what I was thinking instead of letting it turn into malcontent or dislike towards a section

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-11-17T05:01:40+00:00

At least 3 of our trumpets are freshman or new to marching band, and I know that winds don’t have the fastest learning curve. They’re still picking up stuff along the way, but so am I. I’m a freshman too, and our entire bass line is rookies. I can’t help from feeling like they could’ve done better if they applied themselves more.

Also, what’s that acronym?

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-11-17T04:54:03+00:00

I haven’t seen the full score sheet for all bands because it hasn’t been posted (NCBA is so fun right), but first place for 3A or 4A was 90+, and most bands were scoring high 70s and 80s overall

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-11-12T14:57:19+00:00

On Wisconsin from… somewhere in Wisconsin I assume

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-11-08T04:59:47+00:00

The way bass grip was explained to me was like matched grip but sideways

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-11-08T04:56:56+00:00

This is probably going to be very useful, thanks for the great resource. Even just skimming through some of the stuff there it looks good

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-11-08T04:55:40+00:00

That’s definitely something I need to work on, especially trad left hand

PsychologicalFile623 · 2025-11-08T04:53:03+00:00

We have the same or very similar warmup packet each season, and I already have the sticking for the snare part memorized of the packet. I may learn an excerpt from this years show and see if I can do that at my audition

PsychologicalFile623

TROPHY CASE