“I’m just going to play along for a semester and have a funny story to tell at parties,” she told herself. “I’ll be respectful and not waste their time.”
She planned to only do the classwork portion, but it turned out that wasn’t really an option. Her first pre-dawn PT, or physical training session, started at 6 a.m. She veered her car into the parking lot at 5:58. Early by civilian time, late by Army time.
“I got out of my car and everyone started running around,” she said. “I thought, ‘Where are they going?’ And then people started yelling.
“They were all formed up into these little boxes, and I tried to get into one of their boxes, and they’re all, “No, no, no. This isn’t your squad.’ And I was thinking, ‘I don’t know what is going on.’”
The other cadets – who joined ROTC on purpose – didn’t know what to make of the ill-prepared new student who couldn’t keep up. “My only physical training up to that point,” she said, “was nothing.”
Even so, Fitch’s fellow cadets kept checking on her by text and in person. They asked if she had the equipment she needed, whether she was feeling OK, and made sure she’d join them at ROTC events. Gradually, she felt something she didn’t feel her first year: wanted.
“I felt like they really cared,” she said. “So, I stayed in the program.”
On her first Army Combat Fitness Test, she couldn’t muster even three pushups. The scores were posted for all to see “and I failed by a landslide.”
“It was really embarrassing,” she remembered.
ROTC leadership assigned Fitch a “fitness mentor” and they exercised together almost every day. Each week, she got faster and stronger. Her fitness scores improved, and by the end of her first year with the program, she passed the test.
“I have a picture of me holding my PT score next to my fitness mentor and I have this giant smile on my face,” Fitch said. “I don’t have a single picture my first year with a smile like that. It was a genuine, pure smile, and I was really so proud of myself.”
For the first time, Fitch imagined joining the Army.
‘I Felt Like It Was Coming Out of Nowhere’
When Fitch’s mom found out her daughter had stumbled into an ROTC course, it didn’t ring alarm bells.
“I thought it was just an elective. We aren’t a military family, and she didn’t grow up saying she wanted to join the Army,” Alice Fitch said. “So the worry didn’t come at that stage. I was sort of assuming she probably wouldn’t stick with it.”
Yet Rebecca Fitch never felt happier or more fulfilled. As the semester moved forward, Alice Fitch noticed her daughter was gradually becoming more enmeshed in the program. That started stirring “all the standard mom worries,” Alice Fitch said, including “war and fighting and guns and being in harm’s way. All that kind of stuff was not on my radar for her.”
But just as things were finally settling in for Rebecca Fitch, she learned she would have to quit.
‘I Needed To Drop ROTC’
“I found out you are not allowed to be on antidepressants in ROTC,” Fitch said.
When Fitch said she was depressed after her first year at UVA, she didn’t mean just sad. She had sought a therapist. A doctor prescribed antidepressants and Fitch imagined she couldn’t function without them.
“The obvious choice was that I needed to drop ROTC,” she said. “I had such a hard time my first year, and these medications helped me so much.”
She told her leadership she would resign from ROTC because quitting the medication “was a non-negotiable.” But then she pondered how far she’d come and how the program made her feel.
“I thought about being without ROTC, and it was harder than thinking about being without my meds,” she said.
She reversed her decision.
Under a doctor’s guidance, she weaned from the prescription and, eventually, was medically cleared to join the Army. She signed her contract and took the oath on March 18, 2024, and texted the news to her family. Fitch punctuated the message with a smiley face.
“At that moment, I was like, ‘OK, this is it. She’s done it,’” Alice Fitch said. “It wasn’t like a big surprise because we saw so many signs leading up to it. But it did feel very official, and classic Rebecca that she would tell us with a smiley face on a text.”
“They’d seen such a change in me,” Rebecca Fitch said. “They said I looked so much healthier and happier. They just loved that I was happy.”
In her fourth year at UVA, Fitch earned the title of battalion commander, the cadet in charge of the entire program.
“Rebecca is a phenomenal leader,” Lt. Cmdr. Elizabeth Eaton-Ferenzi, who leads the Cavalier Battalion, said. “She entered the program by accident and was ‘behind the power curve’ in terms of tactical knowledge, physical fitness and basic leadership skills. That didn’t stop her. She poured her heart and soul into her growth and development.”
After graduating with a degree in psychology, Fitch will join the Medical Service Corps in the Army Reserve and will attend William & Mary to pursue a master’s degree in counseling with a concentration in military and veterans.
“Never in a million years would I have ever predicted this,” Alice Fitch said of her daughter’s journey. “It still stuns and amazes me that this turned out to be her path, but I am thrilled for her, and I am so proud of her.”
