Weekend Freewrite 03/17/2018 Single Prompt: the military

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I was a part of the United States Navy for almost nine years and I thought that I would use this prompt to give a quick assessment of my time in the military for any young people thinking about joining.

If you are thinking about enlisting in the military there are a few things that you need to know, and I'll give you a few tips and a little advise that might help out. Since I was discharged well over thirty years ago it would not do much good for me to try to give you details about what to expect in today's modern military, but there are a few generalities that probably have not changed much.

Before you enlist, you should check out all of the different branches and see what programs and career paths are open to you. Most of the choices available will depend on your scores, I don't know what scores they go by today, but they will check your knowledge level out thoroughly to see where you stand. Get a printout or write down the choices available that you are interested in and then research them online. You want to try and chose a beginning field of study that will correlate to work on the outside, that way if you decide not to re-enlist you will leave the service with a marketable skill set. You also want to choose a path that has good opportunities for advancement. Some fields get bloated with too many trained enlisted personnel and since there are a limited number of leadership positions available, advancement in those ratings slows way down. For other ratings, there may be shortages of qualified enlisted members and those ratings will be on a fast track for advancement. Ask your recruiter these questions because he will have the latest information right in front of him, in fact, he has probably been using that to try and convince you to take some field of study that you are not the least bit interested in. His job is to fill the critical needs first. Caution is necessary here, sometimes there are shortages in certain fields for a very good reason, mainly that no one wants to do that job! What you want to look for are the ratings that have a lot of openings because people are leaving to take jobs in the civilian workforce. What happens is that some critical positions in the military might also be a critical field in some real-world corporations, and those corporations will sometimes lure military people out with the promise of a higher paying job.

Things to think about before you sign on the dotted line. Do not lose sight of the fact that you are basically turning your body over to the Government. From the time that you sign until the end of your enlistment you are going to go where you are told and do whatever nasty thing that they tell you to do, as long as it is a lawful order you must obey or things will get ugly for you very fast. Some of the people who will be giving you trouble will be those who entered the military because no one, including their own parents, liked them. You will meet some people that you just can't stand, and chances are that some of them will be giving you orders that must be obeyed. You are also going to meet some of the best and brightest people that the world has to offer, and you will make lasting relationships with some of them that will be closer than anything that you have ever known as a civilian.

One thing about military life is that things are always in flux, so if you find yourself in a bad situation don't panic, it will change in due time. On the other hand, if you meet some great people or develop some good relationships, then chances are that you can work things out so that you can stay close either in the same unit or in the same region of operation.

There are a few things that I really disliked about military service, and there are a few things that I still miss to this day. I don't regret my time in the military and I would probably be a much better sailor today than I was as a kid, but if I had it to do over I'm not sure that I would. The Government will lie to you, the military is part of the Government so brace yourself. When they say they take care of their own they mean that they take care of those who are still valuable to them. What I'm saying is that if you decide to join go in with your eyes open. If the military makes a mistake and you end up suffering from that mistake there is little chance that the military will own up to it and do the right thing unless it happened to enough people to raise a strong enough stink. The rewards of serving are real and they can be very good, the risks that you take when serving are also real and you could pay a high price for your service. All I'm saying is just make sure that you fully understand what it means before you sign up, and go into your chosen service with the right attitude and the right mindset so that you can more easily cope with whatever adversity that you are sure to encounter along the way.

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**Disclaimer: I often use the freewrite prompt to tell a story instead of doing a pure freewrite, so they sometimes take longer than 5 minutes and usually have some editing. But I try to do my story straight through at one sitting without any unnecessary breaks.
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Over 20 Club Graphic by the ever so talented @fireawaymarmot and personalized for me by @snook
Old' Steem by the most wonderful @snook
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Prompt: the military

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