One of the Marine Corps biggest tasks every year is getting people to enlist. This is a job for a Marine recruiter. After a young man or woman is enlisted, they are often placed in the Marine Corps Delayed Entry Program. This is a program designed to prepare future recruits for recruit training.

The DEP consists of challenging military workouts that are common in the Marine Corps. They call this training, PT, which stands for physical training. Instead of calling them “recruits,” in the delayed entry program, members are called “poolees.” A Poolee is defined as an aspiring Marine who is waiting to endure bootcamp and are most oftenly high schoolers.

The physical expectations in the DEP program are highly targeted in improving the Marine Corps Physical Fitness Test. The PFT tests recruits with a three mile run, pull-ups, and crunches. The three mile run needs to be completed in no less than 28 minutes, they have to get at least 50 crunches in two minutes, and at least five pull ups for males and and one pull up for females.

Alex Ramirez

“I’ll be honest, PT is really hard,” Poolee Stephanie Gomez said. “When I came to my first PT, I was the slowest runner and couldn’t even do one pull up. But I kept showing up PT, put out in everything we did, and slowly started to see improvements.” When poolees are ready to endure recruit training, they are either shipped to Parris Island, South Carolina or San Diego, California for a rigorous 13 weeks.

“Compared to other branches, the Marines are more physically demanding,” Private Rosiles said. “From what I seen, it’s more challenging mentally and physically. I saw my brother come back from recruit training and was motivated to endure in the same. Since the Corps expectations are so high, sometimes you feel like giving up, but you have to think about why you enlisted in the first place and what your goals are. You have to remember your mindset when you were just a poolee in the DEP because that mindset is what sparked your motivation in the first place.”

Another expectation they have for poolees in the DEP are the formation of bonds. The Marine Corps is largely known for their brotherhood and sisterhood, so forming a family in the DEP program is highly enforced.

“I made a handful of friends in the DEP,” Private Rosiles said. “Because of it, I felt like I had a pride of belonging. We would hang out before and after PT and occasionally on the weekends. To this day, I still keep in touch with them even though we don’t see each other. That brotherhood is what makes the Marine Corps great. We all can embrace the suck together.”