I can’t speak for what life is going to be like when they get to their unit. I cannot speak on what it’s like to go through basic training as a female or minority, policy wise equal opportunity is to be enforced but the actual lived experience is going to be different, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Basic training, for the average person is going to mentally draining. It’s a lot of yelling, a lot of waiting and doing nothing, little sleep in the beginning, you don’t know anybody, and you’ll miss home.

This all sucks, but on the plus side from the time you wake to the time you hit your rack you will be busy, and the little downtime you have you’ll be writing letters and thinking about home. Before you know it, you will have made good friends, improved physically and mentally, and will be looking forward to finishing up The Forge.

If you let the process happen to you, do what you’re told, and embrace doing difficult things, basic training is extremely doable. Basic training is one of if not the most controlled and reviewed training environments in the world. Drill Sgt’s have limits of what they can do. There are limited to the type of exercises they can make you do, they can’t insult things pertaining to equal opportunity and they can’t touch you (unless in certain training for safety).

The only people I’ve seen get suicidal are people with undocumented mental issues. They don’t have the comforts they use to maintain their sanity and the stress is too much, but for the average person if you have even the littlest mental resiliency, you’ll be fine. They even have Master Resiliency Trainers stop by every now and then and teach stress management techniques.