He'll be reconsidering “career” during Boot Camp. Navy's is at Great Lakes, north of Chicago, maybe wait til Spring to sign up or enlist with delay going to Boot.
Marines!
Everything else is a compromise.
A possible answer to the DUI question will be whether it was a felony DUI or a misdemeanor; http://www.totaldui.com/overview/offenses/felony-vs-misdemeanor.aspx
I’m a retired Army Colonel and serve as a Red Cross volunteer at our regional Military Entrance Processing (MEP) center. In the latter role I speak with dozens of new recruits each month. Without exception those who were given enlistment options for the “better” specialties had scored well on the ASVAB.
The ASVAB is comprised of subtests in the following areas:
- General Science (GS)
- Arithmetic Reasoning (AR)
- Word Knowledge (WK)
- Paragraph Comprehension (PC)
- Numerical Operations (NO)
- Coding Speed (CS)
- Auto and Shop Information (AS)
- Mathematics Knowledge (MK)
- Mechanical Comprehension (MC)
- Electronics Information (EI); and
- Word Knowledge and Paragraph Comprehension (VE).
NOTE: The Numerical Operations (NO) and Coding Speed (CS) subtests are being phased out.
Regardless of the branch of service you ultimately select the key to having enlistment options is getting a good score on the ASVAB. You should not take this test cold. There are study guides available to help prepare for it and practice tests at the Military.com website (http://www.military.com/ASVAB).
I’m not sure about the DWI but don’t think it’s a disqualifier. All the services do a background check so it’s very important not to hide anything or knowingly misrepresent the truth. They will find out and then you might be disqualified.
In the military, he could spend 2-4 years doing something he might have an aptitude for, but which he hates with a vengeance. At the end of his enlistment, he might know more about what he never wants to do again, but not necessarily have gained any ground on a career.
This is a big decision, and age 24 might be considered too old by some branches.
My son and my about-to-be son-in-law (Friday as a matter of fact, all the groomsmen will be in their dress uniforms!) are both Army. They recommend it highly.
First, he should figure out what he wants from a military career. Adventure? Training? An easy route to retirement? (I hope not on that one, but some people in uniform are perfectly fine with any job that gets them 20 years and that retirement check, and some other people are just programmed to think that way.)
If he has a general idea for a career field, he should comparison shop the branches and find out what a career as a computer repairman in the marines means compared to a similar job in the navy. There is a lot of overlap, and some important differences. With force drawdowns, it’s good to know if a chosen career field is overstrength, which could mean he wouldn’t be in that field for long, or be limited in opportunities.
Last, if the job and branch he ultimately selects involve a security clearance, he better not sign a thing before getting a security waiver for the DWI in writing. The recruiters don’t have authority to look past a criminal conviction, but they do know the minimum that can get through processing, and can push a recruit to give it a shot, knowing that meeting the background requirement for a clearance is a roll of the dice or worse. I know one guy who planned to be an interrogator, but because of some shady things in his background, instead he started a career as a mechanic. There is nothing wrong with a career as a mechanic, but the job satisfaction is much higher if you actually want to do it.
If, after all that, he doesn’t have a strong desire for anything in particular, don’t go in the navy unrated. Picking no job dosen’t mean you get to embark on an exciting internship rotation. Picking a job that dosen’t sound bad for a few years then changing out later is a much better plan.
I served in the Navy, both blue water and brown water, during the Vietnam War. I served because it was my turn to follow in the footsteps of the many members of the Greatest Generation I knew when growing up. My son became a Marine during the Bush #2 administration and served with Marine Presidential Security Forces; not bad for his first job out of high school. In my wife’s and my family we have eight volunteers for military service in three generations.
I know this post is long, but sadly I can no longer recommend service in any part of the military. Repealing U.S. Code Section 654 of Title 10, also known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) relied upon deception, disinformation, and discrimination. Deception came from the Department of Defense (DOD) poll presenting the fraudulent idea that the military supports homosexual behavior. Disinformation came from requiring equivalency for rejecting homosexual behavior with discrimination based on sex and race. Discrimination came from repudiating religious freedom for Christian, Muslim, and Jewish believers.
Politicians supporting repeal of DADT relied for cover on the DOD deceptive proclamation that 70% of service members saw positive or no effect for repealing DADT. The poll was conducted after Congressional Representatives had voted for repeal of DADT. Therefore, only 29% responded by completing half or more of the questions, under the compelling logic that nobody really cared. DOD contacted equal numbers of reserve and active troops and spouses, but only 20% to 30% of those whose family member’s military specialty could place them in harm’s way. Also, nearly one third had never deployed. Supposedly all these responses provided valid information, even though people in base housing, civilian neighborhoods, and CONUS bureaucracies never experience firefights and IED’s.
The entire military exists to serve Marine and Army combat infantrymen and those in Special Operations. DOD accomplishes nothing of lasting significance until infantrymen walk the ground formerly held by an enemy, and well over half of those trigger-pullers opposed repeal. Only they understand the unimaginable totalitarian leadership and obedience demanded by their chaotic and brittle environments.
Military service deals with the issues of race and sex amid consequent extraordinary restrictions of Constitutional freedoms unknown to the civilian world. Disinformation must therefore achieve equivalency for rejection of homosexual behavior with those discriminatory issues. That objective in turn relied for vindication on the 1973 American Psychiatric Association (APA) decision to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
Removal followed two years Newsweek described as ongoing disruptive, chaotic attacks on psychiatrists and physiologists. Yet throughout this campaign, no academic papers arose at conferences refuting any previous research. Eventually sufficient under-votes and abstentions enabled a third of APA’s 17,000 plus membership to approve removal amid political rather than scientific motivation.
Next activists established a committee targeting leading researchers such as Dr. David Reuben, and Masters and Johnson to ensure perpetual sanctity for APA actions. No research papers would again confirm initial therapy success rates of 30% to 60 %, substantiating 7 of 10 homosexuals could eventually walk away from the lifestyle. Persistent activism over 37 years enabled ubiquitous infiltration of academia ensuring pre-ordained theses, approved research designs, suitable human data points, and enchanting statistical enhancements. The result has been social alchemy.
Psychology and psychiatry abandoned scientific rigor for popular acclaim. With homosexual studies freed from objective analysis, DADT repeal advocates relied upon base antidotal, emotional politics to dominate discrimination concerns. Advocates were free to avoid the realities of military operations characterized by sacrificial, primitive and intimate relations. Psychology and psychiatry were unwilling to demand a rigorous discussion of whether any mental disorders could be tolerated within the exceptional human structures needed to defeat enemies.
The Pentagon study never addressed the area of religious freedom, placing this form of discrimination for the first time among those restricted Constitutional guarantees inherent in military service. Previously the religious faith exception provided a critical foundation for surviving the grinding stresses and shattering experiences of warfare.
Basic theology explains why Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers find their religious freedom evaporating with repeal. Followers of desert religions, who send their pastors into the chaplaincy and believers into military service, consider homosexual behavior unacceptable. It resides among the myriad sins entrapping fallen humanity.
For tens of millions “People of the Book” foundational Old Testament scholarship concludes homosexual relationships separate believers from God. When speaking of the character, identity, and purpose of God, He is spoken of as masculine, and all humans become feminine in relation to Him. Besides creating all things, God created heterosexual marriage as the earthy manifestation of the absolute unity and love He seeks with each person. Classical Semitic theology emphasizes identifying with God in spiritual intimacy, meaning any subsequent reasoning must proceed from that basic understanding.
Therefore after repeal, when believers reject homosexuality in counseling rolls and normal life activities, these people reside outside Constitutional boundaries guaranteeing religious freedom. They see themselves becoming guilty of at least cultural prejudice, if not criminality.
This debate veered into humanist social alchemy as a means to fabricate attachments to our Constitution and to dissemble concerning military operations. The primary issues of Constitutional speech and religious freedoms, and of whether any mental disorders can be tolerated within the exceptional human structures needed to defeat enemies were not addressed.
Again I know the post was long, but it is represents definitive reasoning for me in regard to military service. Replacing the warrior ethic with social engineering to enable participation by homosexuals seems fatal to the military discipline that should continuously pervade every branch and is simply too much for me.
Don’t.
Tell your son to stay the hell away from the recruiter until we have a Commander in Chief worthy of the title. Otherwise, he's just cannon fodder for the next political stunt that comes down the pike to help Obama look tough.
I have no military experience (yet), but my dad was a career navy officer. All I can say is that the enlister will say just about anything to get your foot in the door. “You want to do XYZ? Sure, I can guarantee that.” Whatever deal he makes with the enlister, get it in writing, signed by the enlister.
If he’s tough and unflappable, maybe he’d like to test himself in the Army Infantry. If he can qualify, he could even go to the Army Rangers. If he’s bored with that, he can go into Special Forces (though you can go into SF from any branch of the Army). If he gets bored with that, he can move up to CAG (aka Delta Force). The sky’s the limit if you want to test your toughness in the Army.
I can tell you right now that he sounds perfect for the Air Force as a Combat Controller which will prepare him for almost anything. This job has it all!
Coast Guard or Air Force
Ummm. try 11 years. 8)
My youngest daughter and SIL really enjoyed the USAF.
I can tell you right now that he sounds perfect for the Air Force as a Combat Controller which will prepare him for almost anything. This job has it all!
Join the service that offers him training in the field that interests him most and offers career opportunities when he gets out. Even if he spends 20 or 30 years in, he will likely need to work when he retires.
Make sure that he takes maximum advantage of all of the college tuition assistance that the military can provide both during and after his service.
The Coast Guard, it seems to be the forgotten service sometimes. The coast guard academy appointments are based on competitive merits, not political appointments.
Patrolling the USA coastline and interior waterways sounds better than being stationed in the desert to me. Course they also provide escort service to other vessels crossing the seas during a war.
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