Sebastian Benitez Zelaya

I plan to become an Army officer after I graduate from college. I am extremely privileged to live in the United States. It would be an honor to protect the way of life I have been blessed with. Being in the service will allow me to be part of something bigger than myself. It would be fulfilling to mentor soldiers, watch them grow, and motivate them to accomplish more than they ever thought they could. I would feel proud knowing that I am part of the foundation of the military, the officer corps, and be a small, yet important, cog in keeping Americans and other groups of people safe. To lead is to serve and I love serving others.
I hope to commission as a Military Intelligence Officer into the Army. The responsibilities of this position are very intriguing to me. An Intelligence Soldier’s main task is to reduce uncertainty for their commander. This is done by providing them with timely and accurate intelligence, most often in the form of intelligence briefings. Intelligence is specialized information that is used to aid in decision and policy making. The most important types of information gathered are details about terrorist threats, the capabilities, intentions, missions, and locations of enemy and ally forces, and information regarding the battle space. Intelligence officers are the ones responsible for all intelligence that is gathered by an Intelligence Unit. I love learning about different countries, cultures, and geopolitical elements of conflicts so monitoring what other nations’ militaries are up to and how that affects their societies is intriguing to me. Intelligence officers must depend on their knowledge of history, geography, political science, the physical sciences and international affairs to produce intelligence reports on specific nations and regions or security issues. Those are all things I enjoy learning about.

I have recently started to give thought to law school. I am going to do a lot more research about this. I hope to provide a detailed response here once I conclude my groundwork.

In my free time, I enjoy doing a multitude of different things. I have played and trained soccer for six years and it is something that has really impacted me. The sport definitely taught me the importance of hard work and discipline. I try to spend at least an hour every day studying the Arabic language. Middle Eastern culture and history fascinates me and the language is beautiful. Although I am bilingual, I really wanted to learn a third language while I am still young. Another endeavor I partake in, and am trying to spend more time on, is reading. I like reading about history, and more recently, have gotten into philosophical works, most notably stoicism (Marcus Aurelius and Seneca specifically). I place a serious importance on daily exercise. I go to the gym everyday for 2 hours to lift weights and run. Exercise is more mental than physical. It is a constant rejection of the voice inside you telling you to stop. I see it as ¨building calluses on the mind" as I heard somewhere. I recently began two new sports. I have been practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for about a month now. I love it. I really like the technicality of it and I find it valuable to get out of my comfort zone, which is the act of grappling with another person. I try to embrace that distress. Lastly, I recently joined a marksmanship team. I want to go into the army so I thought it useful to learn how to handle and utilize a firearm. This sport is certainly different and I hope to improve at it.