Everyone wants to make a mark -in this world. For Bray-Doyle 2019 graduate Mark Eldridge enlisting in the Marine Corps helped him reach that goal. Eldridge graduated from MCRD Recruit Depo in San Diego, California on Saturday August 9..

“I enlisted because I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself,” Eldridge said “I want to better myself.”

Eldridge said there were many difficulties during boot camp, but none harder than the final weeks before graduation.

“The hardest part of boot camp was definitely the Crucible week,” Eldridge said. “ The week before we slept on the concrete grounds and stayed in a field environment and we were not able to take a shower or anything.”

In the days leading up to leaving for boot camp and his time at Camp Pendleton Eldridge lost close to 80 pounds of weight with a hard workout regiment.

“The workouts were extremely hard, but it depended on who I was doing it with,” Eldridge said “ If you are getting Individual Training Directorate, and you are doing it with your friends then it was fun. A lot of the workouts were hard  though. The swimming workouts were fun, but the push ups, pull ups, and crunches weren’t fun at all. It was over all physically and mentally challenging.”

Along with the physical struggle, Eldridge said he had to be prepared mentally as well. Being able to stick with the long hours and period of time away from home was also very difficult. For most the physical and mental struggle was too difficult.

“ We had about 150 start with us and i had 46 graduate with me in my platoon,” Eldridge said.

Eldridge will be traveling back to San Diego and go to Camp Pendleton for school of Infantry on August 27 and will be stationed from there.