Reflection

MS300 Reflection Paper
Military Science is one of the most applicable courses to our future roles as Army officers.   While West Point offers one of the best educations in the world, at the end of the day my goal is to serve as an infantry officer in the greatest army in the world and I owe it to my future soldiers to be the best I can be. To me, the purpose of MS300 is to build a foundation for being able to think critically and tactically to come up with the best strategy for executing a mission in accordance with the U.S. Army’s doctrine.
All of the Military Science classes have built off of each other so far. In MS100 I learned the basics of how the Army was structured. I learned a lot about graphical depictions of units, tasks, and weapons. Basically we learned the basics of the Army’s way of planning and communicating so that everyone is speaking the same language. The most helpful lessons of MS100 for me where the practical exercises we did as a class, and what that looked like in as close to reality as we could get. Going out on the parade field to practice squad movements helped me to grasp the concept and understand what movement formations were better given the situation and terrain. I also learned about the different Army branches and the missions of each one. After MS100 I was sure that I wanted to go into a combat arms branch.
MS200 followed off of MS100 in reviewing and building off of the basics of military science and then transitioned into how to apply what we learned to planning and decision making. The huge difference between MS100 and 200 was the decision making part. The assignments we were given focused on coming up with a plan with limited time and information available. I enjoyed MS200 and learned a lot about tactical decision making. Coming out of MS200 I felt much more confident in my ability to think critically under pressure. Much like in MS100, the practical exercises taught me the most because it gave me a visualization of what it...