Challenging the status quo, questioning traditions, crosstalk— none of these things seem natural at a military academy. And yet, most, if not all of the Cadet Writing Fellows I have worked with over the years, have developed the confidence and skills in collaboration needed to question and produce their own scholarship.

For the past three years, I have served as the Senior Postgraduate Writing Fellow in the Mounger Writing Program, a subsection of the West Point Writing Program at the U.S. Military Academy. I joined the ranks, so to speak, of this writing center under the assumption that I would be entering a particular kind of Pratt-esque “contact zone” (or a combat zone) in the most traditional sense of it—one where the program tried to “militarize” writing and consulting in a formulaic, un-embodied way, and then the Cadet Writing Fellows would follow suit.