Well, I finally signed my papers today and swore in, I'll ship the 18th. Got exactly the job I wanted, plus much better extras than I ever could have hoped for-- a rare option to sign up for 2 years with no strings, or 4 years with a $20,000 enlistment bonus.
37F, Psychological Operations-- marketing and PR for our forces on the ground. Learn a third language, travel the world, hang out with Special Forces guys, as well as getting to jump out of a few airplanes, shoot some guns and blow some stuff up along the way-- pretty much everything I'm looking for out of the Army.
I was actually set on 18X, Special Forces Candidate when I thought 37F wouldn't be available, but I like to think that PsyOps has all of the things I want out of Special Forces, and none of the things I don't need. Not that I've any objection to hard-core ruckmarching and extreme wilderness survival, but they're not exactly central to my life plan, you know?
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What's really funny is the amount of time and BS it took me to get here, like five or six days at MEPS over the course of two weeks. When I first got into it all I was a GED applicant, which the head recruiting sergeant ensured me wouldn't make a difference-- wrong! When I finally got through the medical and all the other bullock, nothing good was coming up on the job screen and I wasn't ready to jump in-- which was of course a four-alarm emergency. I got to sit in the hotseat while every damn recruiter in the battallion tried their best on me, all the way up to the First Sergeant and the Master Sergeant-- they tried to do some stuff for me, but when none of it worked out (because-- duh-- I didn't have a Diploma) I had to sit and smile through some pretty intense hard sells.
What I finally did (which I'd been telling them all along) was straighten out my College Transcript and get the semester's worth of credits I needed to qualify. I had a bunch of credits from subjects I recently tested out of, and it turned out all I needed was to make a bunch of phone calls, take a couple more tests and get everything in line. Everyone seemed genuinely suprised and impressed, which I guess means they didn't believe me before, but that's fine.![]()
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So, armed with two good legs and more knowledge of Recruiting than I ever thought I'd learn, I head to Fort Benning in a couple of weeks. Evildoers, here I come![]()
DA
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