Thought I would share boychild's e-mail re: his experience yesterday re: enlistment:
"Hello-
I went to the link you sent me & my experience matched up almost exactly. At about 11:45 Tuesday my recruiter took me to the east side office where the star force van was, and waited for about an hour. some chick slept through her alarm, or so she said. I got dropped off at the asvab floor of MEPS & that took an hour or two, got an 84 out of 99 which is pretty good. good enough to get into any program i want, probably. After that I stopped by the room which was actually pretty nice. two sinks outside the bathroom, two T.V.s, sofas, the whole works. I figured they would stick us in a hole in the wall. I can't say much for the dinner. I had awful instant mashed potatoes & bland corn with a wildwood soda. I didn't have to pay, so i guess it was worth every penny. Then I wandered around downtown Milwaukee for a couple hours, which I'm starting to get accustomed to. The MEPS was very near the greyhound station & badger bus. At around 8:00 I got back to the Howard Johnson & met my roomate. This guy was shipping out for boot camp that day to be a fireman or something. stayed up until about midnight & "reveille" was at 4:00 A.M. Breakfast was pretty awful too. I can't even remember what it was i was so tired. at about 4:45 we all stumbled down the street to the MEPS center & did all the stuff on that link you sent me- alcohol test, blood test, vision, hearing, drug test, medical physical & physical competency test. all this took about 8 hours, at least 3/4 of which was hurry up and wait. To top it off, the receptionist kept putting shows like "dawson's creek" & "changing spaces" on the T.V. Everything turned out good. my vision was 20/20 in both eyes & the hearing test was good too. I went to the guard office & took care of my 91 wisce M.O.S. (medic major) & all my other paperwork, got finger-printed, and sat around for about an hour. at 3:30 a guard officer came in & administered the oath, we finished the paperwork, I waited another hour for the star force van, and was supposed to meet my recruiter and C.O. at the Madison armory, but they were gone by then so i got a ride back to the dorms. tomorrow i'll prolly get a call about that..
So that's where i'm at. Next month my training is going to start.. i think i told you before, i'm in the 32nd infantry division, known as the "red arrow". they have a fairly impressive history, here's a link: http://www.ngb.army.mil/gallery/heritage/redarrow.shtml
I'm going down to meps around november 4th and basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood in Missouri starts on the 14th. Immediately after I'll start medic training at Fort Sam Houston on February 2nd, and that lasts 16 weeks. I don't know if I clearly explained what I'm doing, but as it's been explained to me, I'll be assigned to a platoon of other medics, and then on outdoor training days & if we get shipped out, I'll go in as air infantry with a different combat unit, so i'll have a gun and everything, and then if somebody gets hurt it will be my job to administer first aid and coordinate the evac. I still don't have alot of the details, i should by this weekend. That's about it for now, have a good one, i'll see you l8r-"