Why is my blog called Air Force Dreams? Well, because some how joining the U.S. Air Force became a dream of mine, something that I strived for above everything else. It's hard to say when exactly or why this became a dream of mine. I wasn't one of those kids who always dreamed of being a pilot, I don't come from a military family. The only exposure I had to the military was less than a year of Air Force JROTC in high school and I quit because I decided as much as I enjoyed it, it was a waste of time because I didn't want a military career.
But the more I learned about the Air Force, and in particular the Air National Guard, the more it appealed to me. In fact, I didn't actually start out wanting to join a specific branch. It began with me graduating college and having a hard time finding a job. After around 50 job applications and 10 interviews, I still didn't have a full time job. Just a 30 hour a week internship that paid close to minimum wage. I kept looking every day for new openings in my chosen career field, and found that the Army wanted a paralegal. At first I was confused. I didn't know the Army had paralegals. Was this a civilian job that didn't require training and wearing a uniform?
I followed the link on the job posting to contact a recruiter, and at that point realized it wasn't the Army but the Army National Guard. Not that I knew what that was. It also said the job was part-time. What does that mean? I wanted to meet with a recruiter just to understand what kind of job this was. I didn't really have any intention of joining because don't you get locked in to the Army for 8 years or something? Where would I get sent? I wasn't sure this would appeal to me at all, but I wanted to hear out the recruiter.
The recruiter sent me an email and we arranged a time to meet at the recruiting office which was inside a local mall. He explained to me that the National Guard is working one weekend a month and 2 weeks a year at whatever local base you choose, then you may be deployed on top of that. He told me that Guardsmen used to be "weekend warriors" reserved pretty much for domestic disasters only. He said that changed after Vietnam when instead of the Guard being used as a last resort for international conflict, they are still to this day rotated in deployments with active duty personnel. In the Guard you are not any more or less likely to deploy than active duty, your odds are exactly the same. He said it's like a turn taking system, if it's your turn to go, you go. Units are rotated in sequence, it's not about you or your job. Commitments are always 8 years long and you have the "active" portion followed by the IRR - inactive ready reserve, which basically means you're out in a way, you don't have to work anymore, but if poop hits the fan you're back in. I could serve 3 years active, 5 years IRR minimum but would not receive any assistance like the GI Bill with a contract that short. In order to get those it would be 6 years active, 2 years IRR.
So now I knew a little bit more. I could be a paralegal in the Army National Guard and work here in the same city I live in, just 15 minutes from home. But it would be one weekend a month and that wasn't really what I was looking for. I wanted a full time job, so I dismissed it. But I still kept thinking about the plausibility of it. What would training entail? Could I handle it? Maybe that one weekend a month could build up my skills to the point where I could find a great civilian job. My internship would soon be up and then what would I do? The benefits would certainly make it worth my while if nothing else.
So two months later I met with the recruiter again to find out more about training. He explained that everyone does 10 weeks of basic training at one of 4 locations (3 for me as a female) and then after graduation you immediately go to AIT - Advanced Individual Training, to learn your job. AIT was as little as 4 weeks to over a year depending on your job. By this time I had found a full time paralegal job and figured it was too late to enlist. My recruiter educated me on USERAA and how that protected me if I did want to enlist. I didn't want to disappoint my employer having just started, but I still hadn't completed discounted joining the military. The skills and benefits sounded amazing. The one thing discouraging me was that the Army had 12-15 month deployments. I didn't like the sound of being away from my husband and dog for 4 months for training, how could I handle a 15 month deployment? I spent weeks after that scouring the internet, reading blogs, and watching YouTube videos trying to figure out if the Army was for me.
One day while out to lunch with a group of friends, I discovered that one friend of mine was a Marine and I never knew. I took that opportunity to ask her a million questions about what being in the military was like, especially for a female, how deployments were, and her advice for me. She asked me why I was thinking Army National Guard and not Air National Guard. What? There's an Air National Guard? The National Guard is spoken about like there's only one, and nothing about an Air National Guard came up in my internet research, so I figured that was it. Immediately I started researching the Air National Guard to compare my options. I was pretty much sold! It sounded perfect! I could learn a new skill, go to amazing places, get paid, and have a ton of new opportunities before me. I wanted in.
I went to the Air National Guard website and called the number and answered all the pre-screening questions. They wouldn't give me the recruiter's info like the Army did, they said they would give my info to the recruiter and they would be in touch. Okay, that all seemed very secretive. Well no one called after a week. I gave it another week, no phone call or email. I called the number on the website for a second time and tried to explain. I thought they would be able to connect me to a recruiter or at least give me their information (they wouldn't before) since passing my info along didn't seem to work. My phone was showing that the person I was talking to was not someone local, but someone in Hartford, CT probably in a call center. Somehow he had the resources however to inform me that I hadn't heard from anyone because there were no job openings in my area at the time. I was crushed.
At this point I realized from my research that the Army (including the National Guard) is a much bigger branch than the Air Force and they need so many more recruits each year. I had read somewhere that the Air Force need 50,000 new recruits a year, while the Army need 300,000. Who knows how true that is, but my point is the Army appears to be begging for people, while the Air Force is turning people away because more people want to join than they have room for. Insane. While everything about the Air Force seemed like a perfect fit for me, and there was something I couldn't put my finger on that didn't seem right about the Army, it appeared to be Army or bust.
I contacted the Army recruiter again and he scheduled me to take my ASVAB - the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. This is a test that everyone trying to enter the military takes and it's the same test for all branches. The only difference is the passing score is not the same across the board, it depends on the branch you're trying to join. First I took a practice test in the recruiter's office and that's like a shortened version of the test. I think I scored somewhere int he 30's I can't remember. And that's a passing score but not amazing. You need to pass and then just how well you pass dictates what jobs you can do.
I took the real test a couple of weeks later at a local testing center and scored much better. My recruiter told me candidate usually score 10 points better on the real thing than on the practice. I scored an 89, a pretty high score. My recruiter said any job I wanted was open to me, but when we sat down to look at jobs, I didn't like the sound of any of them. Plumber, truck driver, cook... paralegal was no longer on the list. He encouraged me to pick something different to my day job, but I didn't like those options. The only one I liked the sound of was a behavioral therapist, a psychology job. But the AIT was like 6-7 months, which means I would have been gone for 8-9 months. I did not like the sound of that. So the recruiter and I came up with a list of 3 jobs I would do if they became available and he said he'd call me if and when they did.
7 months later, I got a call from the recruiter that one of those 3 jobs had opened up. It wasn't the same recruiter I'd been communicating with before and this new guy told me my recruiter had been stationed elsewhere so now I'd be working with him. He asked me if I wanted the job because he could only hold it for me for a few days. I said that I did and went to his office to fill out paperwork to go to MEPS - the Military Entrance Processing Station. That's where you have your military physical done to ensure you are physically fit for military service. You can also take your ASVAB here if you don't have a place to take it locally. Almost every state has a MEPS, some have more than one. Everyone joining the military goes through MEPS and the physical is the same for all branches. Like the ASVAB, some have different requirements, for example the Air Force requires you to take a short reading test (no other branch does this) and to have a greater depth perception.
I filled out my MEPS paperwork and I was due to go down the next week. I was sad that this guy was new because I liked my previous recruiter. He was helpful, took the time to answer my questions, always responded to me and was polite. I felt like he was honest, he would tell me what I wanted to know and would say "I don't know but I'll find out" if he didn't have an answer for me. I had recently heard about the Recruit Sustainment Program (RSP) and asked my new recruiter about this while I was at his office filling out the paperwork. He told me it was a program that helped new recruits learn everything they needed to know at Basic Training before they left. Once enlisted, recruits in the National Guard would attend RSP every drill weekend until they ship out for basic.
I asked him when drill weekends were and what time you got to drill and what time you left. He told me that I would find all of that information out once I enlisted. I asked if I could go to the base to see what it was like because I'd never been there, our meetings were always at the recruiting office. He told me that's not something I could do for safety reasons. Okay. At this point I felt like he was either keeping things from me or really didn't care to help me out. The new recruiter held the job I wanted for me and then said he had put a lot of effort into my paperwork for me to go to MEPS so I better go through with enlisting while there. Every branch of service has recruits enlist and sign their contracts while at MEPS. (The Air National Guard is the exception). At this point I really got irritated and felt like a child being reprimanded in the principal's office. He did no work to get me in, that was the other recruiter, and obviously I want this because I'm getting scheduled for MEPS - assuming I even pass the physical, what if I don't?
I left and that night shared my concerns with my husband. He also felt like this recruiter was being shady and so I decided to back out. I just didn't see why if you want someone to dedicate 6 years of their life to service, you wouldn't give them all the information about it until after the fact? While researching what the MEPS process is like and what enlisting is like, wanting to have all of the information beforehand since my new recruiter wasn't helpful or approachable, I read about Army recruiters leaving people at MEPS if they didn't go through with enlisting. Even if it wasn't their fault because of unknown medical issues. MEPS was a two and a half hour drive away from where I live. I didn't feel right about the situation so I called my recruiter the next day and told him I no longer wanted to go to MEPS. He reamed me out down the phone and I hung up. He continued via text and I blocked his number. I took all of that as a sign that I did the right thing. I was truly settling for the Army and it wasn't what I wanted.
6 months later I happened to be at the mall when I walked by an Air National Guard recruiting booth. I stopped by and asked the guy at the booth if there were any openings in my city. He said a bunch, was I interested. I told him I had tried to start the process over a year ago but was told they didn't have openings. He said that was ridiculous, he'd been in 8 years and recruiting for 2 and there were always openings. I told him I was never given a recruiter's information and I was really wanting to join. He told me he was still a recruiter and we scheduled a time to meet on base a week later.
So the dream came from the fact that the more I was told the Air Force wouldn't work out, the more I realized I wanted it. Someone told me a long time ago that you realize what you truly want when someone tells you no and I think that's true. All the obstacles I faced made me try harder to attain enlistment in the ANG. My desire to be an Airman moved from something I could see myself doing to a dream I wanted to make a reality. The "why" will be my next post and I will also talk about the process in stages.
