FORT KNOX, KY. – Cadets assigned to 1st Regiment, Advanced Camp, Alpha and Bravo Company, stood in formation, waiting to begin the daytime land navigation course for the second time in two days. 

The day prior, they tested their skills on the course, unsuccessfully, but today was a new day. 

As they stood waiting, Cadet Gavynn Baer, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, sang “every little thing is gonna be alright,” lyrics to Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” to his battle buddy. 

“At the end of the day,” Baer said, “that negative mindset isn’t going to help you.”

To pass the land navigation course Cadets must find three out of four points they are given. The day before, Baer only found two. 

“Not going to lie, after yesterday I was a little bummed out,” Baer said, “but today I flipped that switch.”

After only finding two points the day before, Baer was one of the first five people to finish today, and with all four points. Yesterday, he tried to use roads that were on the map as attack points, easily distinguishable terrain features, but only to discover that a lot of them did not exist. 

“I got completely lost and stuck in the swamp,” he said.

Today, he took a different approach. Baer decided to use the checkpoints set up as attack points, not the roads. That was not the sole reason why he was so successful on the day’s course though. Baer credits most of his success to the support he received from his battle buddies.  

“I was low-key bumming,” he said, “but they turned it around and helped me and really made the difference.”

He needed the support of his fellow Cadets this morning, but he didn’t just find it in their words of encouragement. Baer finds his motivation through motivating others. His platoon mates call him “the hype man.” Before starting the course, one of his platoon mates was feeling down, so Baer took him by the shoulders, smiled and said “wake up!”.

“If one of us isn’t feeling that day, we pick each other up,” he said.

When the platoon was qualifying with their rifles, even after he qualified, Baer stayed on the bleachers cheering on everyone. 

“If they qualified, if they didn’t qualify, I just cheered them up,” he said. 

Working with his fellow Cadets isn’t something that Baer has just picked up while at Cadet Summer Training. Back at school, he was working on building a new land navigation course for his program along with two other Cadets, his non-commissioned officer and officer. 

In his program, they have the opportunity to do a land navigation course at least once a semester, sometimes twice, but the course itself was not being kept up with. The condition of the course was often brought up during after action reviews. Some of the point posts had been removed by maintenance crews, some had been washed away by rain. Baer and the rest of the team have made new points for the course and put new posts in the ground. 

“We’ve all went out there and spent multiple hours out there in the field planning that out and putting posts in the ground,” he said. 

Baer’s ROTC program has helped him in many ways. It’s taught him discipline, time management and work ethic. 

“I’ve become a whole different person over the last three years, for the better,” he said. 

The different person Baer became through ROTC was able to face failure, feel down and turn it around. He did not wallow in defeat, instead, he sang to himself, celebrated his battle buddies’ achievements and through it, found the motivation to find all four of his points today.