My friend wants to join the army?
I think that you are concerned that he does not understand what he is getting into and that is worrying you. What you need to tell him is that he needs to research his options in the army before making a choice about what job he will get and how long he will stay in. He says that he will stay in until he is a SGT. An e-5 is a sgt with about 4 to 6 years in - depending on how quickly they earned promotions. If he goes in enlisted, he will not attend the military academy, however, he can take advantage of tuition assistance while he is in and he could also look into programs like green to gold which would allow him to go to college and train to be an officer through the rotc program. Simply put, he just does not know all of his options and this is a good time for him to sit down with a recruiter and ask any question that he can think of. I also understand that you think that the army is more dangerous than the navy and in certain ways it is. However, if you are a sailor who works with heavy equipment, you run the risk of accidental injury and death. My dad was in the Navy and he told me that they lost at least one sailor every time they deployed due to accidents and other incidents. He could spend his entire enlistment working as a supply clerk and never get hurt at all while a machinist mate in the navy could get seriously injured during their first couple of months of service. What you have to understand is that he will make his own choices and he will be responsible for these choices for good or bad. The same holds true for you. Your plan of enlisting for 4 years and getting out to go to college and medical school sounds simple at this point in your life but if you make mistakes, you can end up not seeing this through. He could end up in the green to gold program and do extremely well. It is all in how you plan things and how you conduct yourself. Good luck and do not worry about your friend. He will be just fine. Worry about yourself and make sure that you do what you need to do, when you need to do it.
What are some reasons students drop out of the US military academies? Is it because the coursework is too rigorous? Do they not like the structure?
USNA '01 Grad here. I pretty much agree with everything said by other responders. I'll add one other factor to consider. I was a varsity athlete; Go ahead and take all the rigors of military-school life and double the daily routine to include team meetings, workouts, and practice. Kiss your limited "free-time" goodbye. Oh, and the "sports-marketing" majors that you see on the players' bios at traditional universities don't exist. You've got a handful of majors to choose from and none of them are easy. I guess my point here is that for service-academy athletics, coaches want to recruit top talent that meet the academic standards required to graduate. To make that more difficult, once you layer on the military aspect that other folks have listed here, you've got a "flight risk" among the athlete ranks. Remember that offer letter you had to play at Arizona State that you turned down to get screamed at for the next 12 months of your life? Yeah, that starts to look a bit more appealing. Oh, and that backup quarterback at Florida is still the big-man-on-campus with the ladies...that same guy at a service academy is just another midshipman once the pads come off. I give a lot of credit to the military leadership and especially the coaches to foster a "brotherhood" mentality that keeps everybody focused on a unified mission.Last point here - If you play football at West Point, you've already made the biggest mistake of your life...BEAT ARMY!!!! Navy extends football win streak vs. Army to 13 games
What would you say to someone who wants to join the Navy SEALs?
When I went to Navy Bootcamp in Great Mistakes, Illinois, at about the six week mark of the eight week Winter Wonderland Bootcamp (it was January, and just stupid cold), they said, “You can try out for the SEALS”.I said, “What’s that?” (It was 1984, SEALS weren’t on TV just yet)They said, “It’s 6 to 8 months of special training”I said, “Is it like Boot Camp?”They said, “It’s like Boot Camp times 10”I wasn’t thrilled with Boot Camp. There were no chocolates under the pillows at night, no late wake up calls, and except for breakfast, the rest of the meals were barely edible.“F#ck that noise”.I have no regrets, I became an OTM (the rate which no longer exists) and fixed computers and loved my job.The Discovery Channel had a great TV series that followed a class of SEALS going thru BUDS training. I’d watch that.I had a few friends in the Navy who were in incredible physical condition and trained to prep for it (running on the beach in combat boots, etc..) and they dropped out.So I would say the following:1. Watch the Discovery Channel Documentary. Don’t watch TV drama shows about SEALS. 2. Have a backup plan. SEALS training has a super high washout rate, and once you washout, you don’t get to go home and watch TV drama shows about SEALS. You’re STILL IN THE NAVY, so you better have a contract that says, “if I fail SEALS, I get to learn a skill and do a job I enjoy”. Otherwise, you will be painting Navy ships HAZE GREY (that’s the name of the grey paint color the Navy uses) over and over and over again. Get that contract signed BEFORE you join. Once you join, and without a contract, the Navy can assign you to ANYTHING based on the needs of the Navy. Without a contract, if the Navy needs you to scrap bird shit off of an aircraft carrier, a scrapin’ you will go.3. I think SEAL training is really a question of physical ability and mental determination (I’m guessing, I wasn’t a SEAL).I wish your friend the best of luck.
Advice on my best friend joining the Navy please?
Ok, here is the thing: I DON'T WANT HIM TO JOIN THE NAVY and I am NOT asking you to say things like "it's HIS decision" because I didn't ask who's decision it was and I WILL report you if you say that. So, that being said, I want to make it clear that I'm not saying anything bad about those who are in the Navy or the Military. True, I don't condone war at all, but I am CERTAINLY not going to be rude and say anything bad about people, there's no reason for rudeness. Also, I am not pro- or anti- any country over another, I believe we're all just people. Ok, thank you.. so, the thing with my best friend is, that he is 16. Already he has gone to "Sea Cadets" and is currently spending his holiday break from his junior year of high school in basic training. He is the only person in the world who understands me, and I really don't want him to go. I think it is too dangerous, and I told him that I love him and don't want him to die, he says he won't. I know he can't be sure of that. I also don't like the idea of the sweetest boy on earth killing other people. So I have a few questions. How dangerous IS the Navy?? How can I talk him out of going?? (Again, please no "it's HIS decision," because I KNOW it is, BUT there's a reason we LISTEN to the advice of our best friends, and he's going to be at least open to what I say.) This isn't selfish of me, as I expect some of you to think, because I love this person so much, and if you think I don't care about what's best for him, then you must not think I know what being a good friend means.... 2 weeks ago
Why can’t the Marine Corps release my son ASAP if he is unable to adapt to military life? Why does it take weeks to send him home if he is released from the marine boot camp training?
Why can’t the Marine Corps release my son ASAP if he is unable to adapt to military life? Why does it take weeks to send him home if he is released from the marine boot camp training?The release processing is deliberately longer than it needs to be…. For several reasons that you may not like.THE USMC is trying to make Marines…. They are less inclined to give much consideration to misfits - which literally means “people who don’t fit”.The USMC is hoping the recruit will recognize the error of quitting (for any reason) and rescind their request. (See 1 above).The USMC recognizes that almost every recruit at some point wants to quit and necessarily for their future in life as a grown up and in combat need to know, really know, how to function when that panic, fear, worry overwhelms them because on some hill in some future war it will overwhelm them (See 1 above).The USMC has for over two centuries successfully created Marines and Officers that can over come any obstacle, challenge, adversary - so they can tell the difference between a salvageable and non-salvageable misfit. (See 1 above).The USMC knows the regret and shame that comes with surrendering to those doubts will plague the recruit for a lifetime and create a member of society who is less than they can be (See 1 above).The Military Life is not a square hole that only square pegs fit into. It is a square hole that you hammer the ill-fitting peg into! Shaving off the pieces that are irrelevant or useless to adapt the recruit to the new paradigm. Specifically, they will, at some point, be ready to make decisions that have life and death in the balance and not freeze up.In the end it’s up to your son to decide what his future will be. He took a promising first step my signing up. There really are very, very few unredeemable recruits. Just as there are very, very few people who on the other side of their service regret it. It instills a confidence, a tenacity, a esprit de Corps that no other job can give you. He, if he goes forward, will be forever different.My question is what do you want for your son?
How do I convince my boyfriend not to join the Navy?
I do not want him to join. His friends are all getting excited and saying they are going to join and the one friend who is instigating this has already gone to a recruiter and gotten all of the information. It kills me to think about him going into the military. I would worry about him so much. I have always been afraid of someone I love going into the military and now it could be happening. I know that we need people to fight for freedom in our country, I just do not want it to be anyone I love. Even if he comes back perfectly fine, so many people have PTSD after seeing all of the terrible things going on. My boyfriend is 19, in college, has a good job and doing just fine with his life. And if this had been a dream of his, it would be completely different. The problem is that his friend is talking it up to be awesome and he thinks 35,000 dollars a year is a ton of money, and his friend thinks they're going to be stationed in Sicily of all places. I think that not only are they being idiots, I think that they have been lied to by the recruiter. Recruiters lie. They tell you how awesome it is going to be and all this crap and how you can be a medic or go to college and enter as some type of officer, or they offer to pay for your college and then you end up on the front lines watching your best friend die beside you. And I am just not feelin that at all. I think that not only are they being lied to, but they are also being idiots about it. So please help. I need to know how to get him to see what the true repercussions could be.
I have a friend in the Army who wants a divorce. Is his wife entitled to anything after only 7 months?
He is deployed and she admitted that she's been cheating with his friend. Is she entitled to his money? They haven't been married long. He's afraid she will automatically get half of his money. What should he do?
How do I convince my friend to not join the Navy?
Show him some film or take him to a VA Hospital and let him see all of the people learning how to spend the rest of there lives with no legs or no arms or no eyes are with brain damage... and how the government doesn't care about you afterwords. Show him some film of all of the woman,children and innocent men getting killed or injured in Iraq... a lot of them from bombs and missiles that come from ships, people he will never see but will be responsible for there death.
Want a DEP discharge from Navy because of recruiter's lies?
I was told that if I joined the Navy I could pick a job that ships out sooner and then cross train into the job I wanted. I wanted to do this because the job I wanted had a ship date 7 months away from the day I enlisted. My recruiter said I could cross train after 18 months in the Navy. My dad who is an O-4 in the Navy and a former recruiter told me that it takes 2 years after your "A" school to apply for a new job and even then it still takes another year or two. On top of that it would not be guaranteed that the job I wanted would be available when I wanted to cross train. I have informed my recruiter about this and that I think he's lying but he denied it. I just want to get out and join the Army because I can't take the lies and all the time it's taking to do this. It's time wasted that I could be using for college. Is there any way I can get a discharge without them delaying it up to a year, so I can join the Army and leave.