In all seriousness, the reason I’m sitting down now and writing this article is a kid that I met at a job that I worked over the holidays. He was hot to join the Air Force, and when I told him I’d been there and done that we began talking about it regularly. I was struck by his naivete, lack of knowledge (or desire to learn about) about what he was getting himself into, and seeming lacksadaisical and nonchalant attitude towards something that is a major life decision and could very well end up leading to serious injury or death. He didn’t even know what job he wanted to do in the service, didn’t know anything about the training, didn’t know about deployments and what he may be asked to do overseas. He was, quite literally, ready to just sign up and let them do with him what they would – simply because, at that particular moment as a teenager, he was not sure what he wanted to do with his life.
Though perhaps a bit more devil-may-care than most, this kid is not an isolated example of the pool that the United States military reguarly draws it’s recruits from. While I was in the service I met literally hundreds of people from all branches of the military and all walks of life. When the conversation turned to the reasons for joining the service, it almost always was a shrug of the shoulders and a reply of “college” or “nothing going on back home”. People who join are commonly from economically depressed situations and, after graduating high school and facing the prospect of leaving the nest, see little available to them in the way of opportunity. Along comes the military, with it’s multi-million dollar advertising and propaganda budget, promising a path out of what appear to be very bleak and trying years of low-wage toil.
It is important to look at the military as more than just a large well-funded institution promising a lifetime meal ticket. There are a myriad of other things to consider, but the desperate and the hungry and the just plain bored frequently do not look at anything beyond the regular wages, travel, educational benefits and all of the other Big Promises the service routinely makes. I strongly urge everyone out there who is on the brink of recruitment to take a step back and consider some of the following points.
First of all, you need to examine carefully your reasons for joining. Why is it that you are doing this? What is it that you want?
Is it merely for “college”? There are other ways to finance an education. The Montgomery G.I. Bill can actually work *against* you in some cases, as it disqualifies you from other forms of financial aid that are usually available to everyone – there have been stories in the national news recently about veterans freshly back from Iraq having trouble pursuing their education due to beauraucratic issues, payments that do not come in until after the school year is already well underway, and underestimation of the costs outside of tuition in high cost-of-living areas. This link will take you to a page at objector.org that outlines not only what troubles you may run into with the G.I. Bill, but also what alternatives there are for paying for school without doing a military hitch. The “100% tuition reimbursement” offered while you are serving on active duty may sound very attractive, but there are numerous caveats. For one, you are not allowed to attend school during your basic or technical training periods. If you are in one of the more advanced career fields, your technical training can occupy nearly the whole of your first year. Then, after training, you are considered an “apprentice” in your field and have to do homework and take further written tests (called Career Development Courses) to become a “journeyman”. Again, in most cases, you are not allowed to attend school until you become a journeyman. This on-the-job training period in which you are doing your CDCs can, if you have a complicated technical job, last as much as another year or more. Even after your journeyman training is squared away, your ability to attend school is limited by certain factors. First, you must get the approval of your First Sergeant and/or Wing Commander before taking any classes that the military pays for. Then, keep in mind you will be working a regular shift and most likely unable to take classes during the weekday, which is when the bulk of them are offered. You are stuck with what is on offer for night and weekend classes. Also, the military limits your choice of schools – they will not pay higher tuition for a private university when there is a community college in the area that offers the same class, even if the quality of instruction is different. Bear in mind also that you are usually deployable, for anywhere from three to six months, and deployments tend to come out of the blue with little warning. If you happen to be deployed during a school semester, you will have to drop all your classes and start over from scratch when you return.
If you are just seeking vocational training, be aware that many military career fields have no civilian parallels when you exit the service, or have very few civilian jobs available. Anything specializing in weaponry or military machinery virtually requires you to stay with the military in order to have work. There are many less intensive, less demanding and simpler ways to learn a trade – local Employment Divisions often have programs to help low-income folks get into a trade school or two-year school and will often fully fund your tuition. If you live in California and are low income, the Board of Governor’s Waiver covers your tuition and fees fully at any state community college. I am sure there are other states that have similar arrangements. There are also Federal programs like Job Corps, Americorps and many others on offer for youth from disadvantaged backgrounds who want to learn a trade. Apprenticeships are also very lucrative – after four years of on-the-job paid training one can be making upwards of $30 per hour and be part of a union, and they require no previous experience to enter (a good way to learn about these is through your local EDD One-Stop Job Center). If you explore, there are a lot of vocational options outside of the military to be found.
If you are simply bored, lost, confused, feeling vaguely guilty or sacrificial, or just scared of living in poverty and being out on the street, you may feel that turning your life over to a Big Institution like the military that takes care of you and tells you exactly what to do at all times seems like a comforting idea. A lot of these feelings that you have now simply come from youth and inexperience, however, and in time you will get past them. When you do you may find that the institutional, highly regimented life does not suit you at all. Then, you may find yourself rebelling and getting into trouble, and possibly even getting a bad conduct discharge or somesuch and losing all the benefits you worked to attain. There are other ways out of your situation and other ways to take care of yourself that don’t involve signing yourself over as a piece of property to the U.S. Government.
If you simply want to “travel”, you are going to find that the military style of travel (ordering you to places that you may not want to go and then leaving you there for long periods of time) is probably not what you had in mind as far as “seeing the world”. You usually don’t get to choose your destinations and duty assignments are for 2 or 3 years at a time. In a four year hitch you might see Texas, Oklahoma and that’s it. Maybe not even Oklahoma.
Next, be aware of the pressures that are on you that may perhaps be speeding you to a hasty decision. Recruiters will, of course, breathe down your neck as soon as they get even the faintest scent of interest from you, and any contact information you give them will be spammed regularly. You’d do well to read about high-pressure sales tactics on the internet, because these guys are trained in them and will use most of them. Needless to say, this decision should not be made while in a stressful time. I decided to enlist when I was a month behind on the rent, weeks away from being out on the street and had no idea where else to go or what to do. That is an unfair stress load to be forced to make a huge life decision under. If you are in financial crisis, or any other sort of crisis, there is some help out there. If it’s really bad, go to an emergency shelter if you have to, but just get some time to get your head clear and explore your options. Don’t feel like your life is over and there’s no hope for you because of one temporary bad situation – life is always in flux and opportunities are endlessly renewing. It may seem hopeless but, odds are, there’s something out there right near you that you don’t know about that is the answer to your problems, and all you have to do is poke around a little more until you find it.
There’s also the issue of parents, if you are from a military family. Parents who are prior service often want their kids to go down the same road, and will exert both subtle and overt pressures on you to follow their path. We often make the mistake of thinking that parents know best and can do no wrong, and that respecting them means acquiescing to their wishes. Well, as you’re going to find out if you haven’t already, parents often haven’t a clue what the hell is going on and are just as prone to bad judgment and wrongheaded beliefs as anyone else. If your parents are pushing you to join the service and you’re not sure about it, you need to tell them flat out to back off. This is YOUR life and YOUR future. You are a human being, possessed of yourself alone, and it is not for them to decide what you do in your time. This may mean butting heads with them, but so be it – it’s better than making a mistake that steals years from you and that you regret forever.
Then, be sure you know all of the exact and specific terms of the deal you are about to strike.
How many years are you going in for? Four? No, it’s actually eight – as you may not find out until you’ve signed the papers, unless you’ve been reading carefully (this is one of those points recruiters don’t bring up voluntarily). There’s four years of active duty, and then a mandatory four years of what they call “inactive reserve” – where you are not on duty, but can be called back up at any time.
Is there an enlistment bonus? Timing can be everything here. When I signed on to the Air Force I received a $1,000 signing bonus. Pretty sweet, huh? I got to technical school, and found out that kids signing up as little as two months after me were getting TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR SIGNING BONUSES for the same career field that I was in! Needless to say, I felt a bit badly used. Don’t make the same mistake.
What job are you going to be doing? Recruiters like to send you in with what they call an “open” contract, telling you that you can choose your job later at basic training. That’s not entirely true. You’ll get a very limited list of jobs to choose from at basic training, and then you may not even get a job that’s on the list at all. “Open” means that they give you whatever they most happen to need at the moment when you complete your basic training. If you want to do a specific job, be sure to *get it in writing* that you’re in for that career field and that career field only.
Are you aware that you waive much of your Constitutional rights when you join the military? You do. You agree to be governed instead by the Uniform Code Of Military Justice, a much more rigid set of laws that gives nearly anyone who outranks you almost limitless authority over your life.
Also, be aware of the propaganda involved, and consider everything that the recruiter tells you in light of their position. Are you getting an honest appraisal of the facts? Now, I am not going to make a blanket denouncement of all recruiters as liars. Some have shown themselves to be, but I am sure there are at least some that are not. Some are more prone to than others and some are more grandiose in their “misstatements” than others. I know I myself was only lied to on a few details, but they were enough that I would have reconsidered my decision to enlist had I known at the time. I have heard stories of much worse, however, from people I’ve served with.
First, the recruiter. From what I have heard, it is not true that they are given mandatory minimum quotas of people to recruit each month – at least not in the Air Force, which even in thin times usually has significantly less trouble recruiting than the other branches. What is important to know about the recruiters, however, is that their Enlisted Performance Report (an annual review that is a factor in how fast you get promoted) is based in no small part on how many people they bring in. So – more recruits, better for their career. Thus, they will at the very least do everything in the legal limits that they can to get you to sign – misdirections and technicalities, as opposed to outright lies – and some of them will just plain cross over into boldfaced lying.
From my own experience, the recruiter “misinformed” me about job selection, saying specifically that you could choose from any job later at basic training if you took an Open Enlistment contract. They also did not tell the truth about the living situation, saying that you could live off base in an apartment during technical training and afterwards (another of those technicalities – *married couples* can live off base, but not singles. Once out of technical training singles can get on a wait list to get a subsidized apartment *if* the base that they are living at does not have enough dorm rooms built to accommodate all of it’s people. The wait can run into the months if not a year or more, and if there are adequate dorms in your base that is where you will be at least until you promote to E-5 or get married).
The moral aspect of this decision is frequently underlooked. Perhaps it is the most widely ignored, largely because the military trafficks in teenagers fresh out of high school who have not yet had the life experience to solidify their outlook and determine who they really are and what they really believe. Most of the kids I have met during my military time, myself included, approached the decision with a sell-sword attitude. We were looking only at what material things the military would provide us with. After joining, however, you may quickly find yourself in a position where you are being ordered to do things that you are morally conflicted about, that you may not feel are right. Every military member is expected to be willing to take a bullet for the President; however, while in service you may find that a President has been elected whom you are not willing to take a bullet for. How well do you understand the world around you, and all the forces that are in play in both this country and globally? Do you really believe that this system of government, as it stands now, is for the best for everyone and is really worth dying to preserve? Do you think that perhaps you could “serve your country” and your birthland better by working to challenge social injustice and ease people’s suffering here at home? Do you agree with the direction that prominent political leaders are taking this country in, and are you willing to be used as a tool to further their agendas – perhaps even maimed or killed for them?
These are all questions you need to ask yourself before signing on the dotted line.
