You're officers for all time to come! We of the first class at Annapolis will receive our diplomas, surely.
But what beyond that?
While you become officers at once, we have to start on the two years' cruise, and we're still midshipmen.
After two years at sea, we have to come back and take another exam.

If we pass that one, then we'll be ensigns---officers at last.

But if we fail in the exam, two years hence then we're dropped from the service.

After we've gone through our whole course at Annapolis we still have to guess, for two years, whether we're going to be reckoned smart enough to be entitled to serve the United States as officers.

I can't feel, Dick, that we of Annapolis, get a square deal." "It doesn't sound like it," Prescott, after a moment, admitted.
"Still, you can do nothing about it.