Cadets, who were not part of the graduating class, catch up on some sleep as the await the start of commencement ceremonies for their peers at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington on Saturday May 16, 2009.

Back in October when I as redesigning my website, I posted a photo I had taken from a graduation ceremony at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va. It was a bit of an amusing photo of non-graduating cadets in the audience and some of them had nodded off to sleep. Funny, but not uncommon at an assembly of college students, much less students in a military academy where there are more things involved in the daily life of a cadet than just classes and studying.

I am revisiting this photo because it is the subject of an amazing amount of internet searches in the past few days. Ever since President Obama’s speech concerning the war in Afghanistan before the West Point corps of cadets, this site has had A LOT of web traffic stemming from Google searches with the phrases “sleeping cadets,” “cadets sleeping,” “sleeping cadets obama…” well you get the idea.

Now I watched the speech. Yes there was at least one occasion where the camera was showing the cadet audience and in the frame was a cadet or two with their eyes closed. Again, funny but not really shocking nor in my opinion a reflection on the speech or the speaker. But all over the internet bloggers are having a field day with the images.

It will never cease to amaze me what people will search for on the internet or more importantly how much time they have on their hands. But I will say this: Everyone with time to kill.. please come visit my site at www.petemarovichimages.com. I can use the extra web traffic to increase my Google ranking!

UPDATE: I just saw this post on answers.yahoo.com from a cadet at West Point who was at the President’s speech:

I am a cadet at West Point and it’s highly disrespectful for them to fall asleep. I can say that we did sit in that auditorium for 4 hours before the President arrived-we were only allowed magazines and books. So, yes, it was difficult (considering we weren’t allowed to walk around or stand either). Not to mention, we had class from wake up at 7 unit 4 pm that day as well. It was a long day, but it was worth it.

You can see the quote and the discussion at: answers.yahoo.com.