COVID-19 and the Battalion Though many restrictions from COVID-19 have been lifted; such as in-person classes, and social gatherings with more than 10 people, precautions still had to be made. Thus the battalion was not allowed to participate in most of the yearly events. North West Navy was called off along with the Navy and Marine Corps Ball and many more. However, the battalion was able to look up and continue with the mission. Since the entire battalion was not able to participate in PT at one time, platoons were split up to PT on different days with Semper Fi training an extra day. Friday’s Professional development was the only time the whole battalion was able to congregate. While this made it difficult for the upperclassmen to fully familiarize themselves with the lowerclassmen, the battalion held culminating events to help solve this problem. Additionally, Semper Fi was able to meet up twice a week and go into depth about OCS prep, physical fitness improvement, and learn from other marines. MIDN Figueredo worked hard educating and training this year’s Semper Fi platoon and organizing classes and workouts that taught us things we didn’t know we didn’t know. Since having the option for Hybrid classes, it has been interesting managing both a live zoom lecture and in-person class. Though the entire battalion was not able to be present this year, we still were able to learn from each other and overall achieve our goals. The battalion’s GPA per class has improved despite the challenges. There were a number of Midshipmen who were rewarded the academic excellence ribbon for having a GPA at or above a 3.7. Additionally, we were able to conduct an in-person spring award’s ceremony and commissioning ceremony where that was not possible last spring. While the Battalion missed out on a lot of normal activities and events, we were able to adapt, improvise, and overcome. We look forward to this next school year where we can take what we have learned this year and continue to improve together.
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