Who is Tatiana Olivares?
She’s really something.
Tatiana recently returned from NASS, The Naval Academy Summer Seminar program, where— out of 1,500 other high school students participating—she was awarded the Overall Outstanding Candidate by Capt. Stephen B. Latta, USN (ret.) Dean of Admissions of the United States Naval Academy. That’s impressive.
The certificate she received says, “For having the overall outstanding performance in all areas of drill, athletics, academics and leadership in keeping with the moral, mental and physical mission of the United States Naval Academy.”
Tatiana spent one week in this course which gives students an idea of how life in the military will be if she is accepted, and she started preparing for it in the eighth grade.
She had to apply to the academy and was then invited to participate having met all the criteria, which were based on her academic and leadership roles.
The roles she plays while at Rockdale High School include being a volunteer firefighter, vice president of the FFA program, a member of student council since seventh grade and National Honor Society. She’s on the varsity teams for cross country, soccer and powerlifting. She also plans and hosts blood drives. She’s one of four RHS students taking college courses at Temple College Bioscience Institute. And she somehow manages to also be a varsity cheerleader as well.
“They want candidates to be the ‘mayor’ of their high schools,” she said. She added that, “This summer is going to be super busy because I have my eight-week course at Temple College, but I also have cheer camp, the FFA convention and the Coast Guard academy so I’m going to be gone for four of those weeks but I will have to make up everything I missed in those four weeks. I will be studying like a mad woman.”
When asked what made her want to go into the military service, she said it was a family trip to Corpus Christi when she was 10 years old.
She said, “That was the first time I saw the USS Lexington aircraft carrier and I was so impressed that I’ve wanted to be in the military ever since. I also have an aunt, Leticia Plaza, who is retired from the army, and several other relatives who have been in the service.”
“They all hammered military service into me from a very young age because of all of the opportunities and benefits of military life,” she added. “Also, once I made the decision that this was what I wanted to do, my parents told me they aren’t pushing me, but they are going to hold me to my standards, which in my case are very high.”
Even though she has received the Overall Outstanding Candidate award, she still has to wait to receive her official letter. If by chance she doesn’t receive the letter to go into the academy, she will go into a program called NAPS, Naval Academy Prep School.
“It’s a yearlong prep course they put you in if there are things you need to work on. It could be academics or physical fitness. The NAPS kids experience military life and do better when they get to the academy because they are already used to people yelling in your face and things like that. I’ll be OK either way it goes,” she said.
She added that in the Naval Academy candidates can either go into the Navy or the Marines and she’s leaning more towards the Marines.
“In the Marines you have surface warfare, submarines, special forces like the SEALS and a fighter pilot in aviation. Once you have your education you automatically have a job,” Olivares said. “Candidates pick their top five positions and they assign you the one they think you’d do the best in based on your GPA and rank in the class. I would probably like to go into aviation so I could be a commercial airline pilot, fly helicopters like the ones that land here for PHI or fly fighter jets like in Top Gun, but that’s very hard to get into. But I’m not ruling it out.”
Tatiana is 5’3”. I asked her if that had any effect on her career choices. The short answer is no.
“I’m five inches away from not being able to be in the military at all, so it really doesn’t affect my career,” she said. “The only time it did have an effect was when I was carrying a pole with people who were 6’2”. There were a few times I couldn’t reach the pole with them. They have one pole that is for the shorter students named the Smurf Log and I was sometimes hanging from it!”
“After the first day of becoming adjusted to the new rules that a plebe at USNA would follow, we gathered in the hall as a platoon and were spoken to by MIDN 1/C Alexander who had read a poem, ‘Invictus’ [at right], that I believe truly changed my perspective on myself and what I can achieve in life as long as I put forth the effort, Olivares added. “I walked away from that first Navy Blue and Gold, so full of pride, and motivation from within, that only grew stronger in those few days I was there at USNA. I have the poem memorized now and every time I read it I feel like I could walk right through a brick wall.”
When I was her age, I was definitely not the master of my fate or soul, but this girl definitely is. And I have a strong feeling that her letter of acceptance will be dropped in her mailbox very soon.
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