That sounds great!
I've always thought about joining, what are some of the pro's and cons?
A lot of this depends on your mos. That's your job.
I highly advise against going combat arms if you're looking for job experience. Not a whole lot of civilians find loading artillery rounds and shooting people as a valuable skill set.
Pros:
Chicks dig military.
You will always have a place to live whether it's a barracks room or an apartment the military pays for.
You will always have three hot meals a day. You typically get an hour and a half for lunch too which is sweet.
You will stay in shape.
Free medical and dental.
You will meet people from all over and all the high school clique bullshit breaks down. I'm a half Irish half Japanese guy that played every sport he could get his hands on in high school. Best friends are a Mexican band geek, a black dude from the worst part of Atlanta, and a skinny white guy that loves going to anime conventions.
People buy you shit when you aren't around a military post.
Guaranteed to advance depending on how squared away you are. I'm a 22 year old E-5 and I have as much authority as a half dozen guys in my company twice my age. Points play a factor as well but that varies from job to job.
You go places you never would have imagined. I've been all over the world.
Half mil goes to your family if you die. So long as it isn't suicide or not wearing a seatbelt. Benefits pass on to your spouse and kids as well including the GI bill.
Post 9-11 GI bill gives you E-5 pay with one dependent after you serve three years. That means they pay your rent and your tuition. Plus VA loans are awesome.
Tuition assistance while you're in. Free.
20% disability for every surgery you have to get. I'm sitting on that right now and I haven't even been in for four years.
Depending on your MOS you get bonuses for enlisting and reenlisting.
Extra languages means even more money. There's a lot of opportunities to learn them too.
Get stationed in Europe? You get cost of living allowance. Even more money.
Deployments. They are awesome. Not including the adventure and all the awesome stuff you see you get paid a shit ton. Tax free too.
Once you make it to sergeant like me you can go to recruiter school or go teach at AIT. There's also Drill Sergeant school but those are some long ass hours.
You have the occasional fun day like this Wednesday we took our platoon out and played paintball. Two weeks ago the chaplain took the whole company to laser tag. We got paid to play that.
30 days of leave a year. One four day a month when the sequester isn't messing up optempo. Half days around Christmas if you don't go home.
Cons:
Mass punishment. When one person ****s up everyone pays.
Duty comes first. My wife is pregnant with twins. Odds are I will either be deployed or in recruiter school when she gives birth.
Lots of down time. You learn to fill it but a lot of times if you don't have a lot of freedom with your authority you get bored. Though some awesome debates do spur up when that happens.
Its rough on the body. Like I said im 22 and I work out a lot but even I have trouble with a ten mile run or twelve mile ruck. I feel like im 32.
Motorpool Mondays. I hate servicing those trucks more than anything.
Online training. The military websites are the bane of my existence. Half the time they don't work and when they do the training is retarded.
That one guy. There's always one guy that will screw you over in a heart beat. In the military getting into trouble doesn't mean you get fired most of the time. It means you lose rank. That's less pay. Less respect. More work. Everyone looks down on you.
You can't quit. Some days you want to just turn to your boss say "**** you. I quit." Doesn't work that way in the army.
Officers. They are an out dated concept and a waste of government money. You could replace them with a secretary. Plus you have all these stupid LTs walking around trying to run shit when they don't know what they're talking about. I was giving a class and when I started talking about danger zones this kid had the balls to try to take over and teach what he learned in OCS I explained we never do what he was trying to teach. He said it was SOP. I explained our SOP didn't matter since we deploy as teams not a battalion. He went on this big speech about how he thought the army was supposed to run. I told him how the army really was run and said if he wanted to press the issue we could go to the top.
We can't beat soldiers anymore. Some guys need an asswhooping.
Red tape. Some days it feels like you have to fill out ten forms just to wipe your ass.
Weather. You will run outside when it's 35 degrees. It sucks.
Btw if you're single I suggest Air Force. More girls and better living conditions.
