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Commentary - Recruiting experience

  • Published
  • Minot Air Force Base Public Affairs

Recently, I surpassed one year of service to the United States Air Force. Wow. Five years ago I would have never guessed I would be sitting in North Dakota wearing military camouflage and photographing the Air Force mission.

Joining the military was something that was always in the back of my mind growing up. Both of my grandfathers were in the U.S. Army and my father served in the U.S. Navy. When I was young, I heard countless stories of their brotherhoods, experiences and travels, and I was always intrigued by the history they shared with me. While I was in high school there were numerous alumnus that joined the service who would come back in uniform with their recruiters and they would always catch my eye and make me wonder what it would be like to join.

Immediately following graduation of high school, I attended Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. While attending college my only goals and dreams were to become an athletic trainer, get a job at some small-town high school and ultimately become their head cheerleading coach. As soon as the opportunity came up, I tried out for the college cheerleading team, but my dreams were crushed due to limited space for not-so-petite, unable-to-be-a-flyer female positions. This didn’t really interfere with my dreams, as I could still become a coach.

As the year went by, I was distracted from my academics and things seemed to be headed in a downward spiral. I made friends with people who influenced me negatively, I did not have a job to pay for the sorority I was a part of and I was almost always in a pretty stressed out state-of-mind. So, for reasons I really can’t explain, I stepped into the Reserve Officers' Training Corps office at my university in the hopes I could start somewhere fresh, have some stability and guidance, and focus on getting my life together.

For the first half hour or so, the civilian instructor showed me a few videos and explained the concept of ROTC at the university and we discussed my goals and just talked.

“Why do you even want to join AFROTC?” asked the instructor in a degrading tone.

“Well, I just want to get straightened out, have some stability and set myself up to have a successful future,” I sincerely tried to explain to him.

After discussing everything—I’ll never forget this—he told me “I honestly don’t think you’ll make it in the Air Force, this isn’t really for you.”

With no idea how to react, I just said, “okay, thanks, I guess” and walked out.

So, basically, I squashed that dream as soon as I crossed the threshold of that ROTC office.

I finished out the semester, decided to come back home and just pretty much gave up completely on the whole college thing.

Through the next few years, I worked countless dead-end jobs and just wasn’t amounting to, well, anything. I worked at the shoppette at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, McDonald’s in a nearby town and a photography gig across the river in St. Louis.

With support from my boyfriend, my new friends and family, I eventually got the courage to go back to a recruiter and try this whole military thing one more time.

In September of 2014, I started the process from scratch. My recruiter was respectful and supportive of the dreams I had for so long. He really talked with me about my ideas and goals I wanted to achieve, not necessarily related to the military. After getting to know me, he informed me of the benefits I would gain from joining and how the Air Force could help me accomplish everything I wanted to do in life.

A few weeks after completing my entry exam, I went back to the office to discuss some available jobs. Before telling me what I could do with the scores I received, he sat me down and asked me what interested me, what hobbies I had and what I would really enjoy doing for the entirety of my prospective career.

I listed numerous hobbies and interests like sports, fitness, working with children, computers and photography. He explained to me there were jobs suited around all of those interests. Then we discussed taking some more tests to broaden my job potential.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks I took the Defense Language Aptitude Battery, which is the test to become a translator, and the Electronic Data Processing test, which is the test for computer programming. Both of these tests are ranked among the hardest tests you take at the military entrance processing station and, sadly, I failed both, one only by three points and the other by seven. So, I was limited to the jobs based on my ASVAB score, which was high enough to give me a long list to choose from.

When given the list of the jobs I could sign up for, I was overwhelmed by all of the opportunities. I pondered for a while on what I wanted to potentially do for the next 20-30 years. I saw security forces, maintenance, civil engineer, medical and, finally, photography.

When I read that being a photographer for the Air Force was even an option, I immediately wanted that. I didn’t know what to expect or how it might be, I just knew that’s what I wanted to do, so I called my recruiter.

“Sir, my top three are photography, medical, civil engineering,” I said.

“Oh, photography?” he questioned. “That isn’t something I encourage people to put down, it’s a hard job to get. There are not many opportunities available for that job.”

“Well, sir, a girl can dream.”

So, against his advice, I put photography as my number one choice at MEPS. Not even a month went by and I got the text saying I had an opportunity to leave June 9th with a slot as a photojournalist. I’m pretty sure I cried, and immediately called my mom after responding to my recruiter with “Of course! I’ll take it!”

It seems to be a common occurrence that people tell me not to chase my dreams and to try something else. But being as stubborn as I am, I’m willing to always prove them wrong and chase my dreams anyway.

I left for basic training June 9th and began my career at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas.

After basic training I completed technical training school and headed to Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, where I discovered that if you work hard and hold onto your dreams, they will become realilty.