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I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “20% of the people do 80% of the work.”  In the military, that proportion is more like 10-90.  The reason is, incompetent people can’t be fired!  Your supervisor can’t just hand you your pink slip and send you to the unemployment office if you prove, after all your expensive training, that you can’t do the job – because – you signed a contract, and you are filling a billet.  Supervisors, literally, do not have the option of getting rid of people who are incompetent.  Their only option is to shove those people onto the competent people, and have the competent people baby-sit the incompetent ones, and do their jobs for them.  Competent people, alas, do not get paid extra for doing someone else’s job in addition to their own.  If they did, I’d probably be a millionaire right now.  Anyway, these useless people comprise a large portion of the people who stay in the military, because they know how limited their useless-person options are out in the real world – which means there is an excellent possibility you will be working for one of them.  Another unfortunate aspect of this silliness is that competent but lazy people will choose to not work, because they know they can’t be fired.  This second group is the most frustrating – they know that you are being forced to do their job, while they still collect their paycheck, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  These people think they are a lot smarter than you, too.  They think they are cheating the big, bad, faceless military, when all they are really doing is screwing you.

Choosing a service – When I first decided to enlist, I wanted to join the Navy or the Air Force.  I had been in Air Force ROTC for two years, so I was familiar with the Air Force culture.  I had no desire to join the Marines or Army (and the Army would have paid off my school loans, too). The Navy, however, really does have an adventurous feel about it, has the coolest-looking uniforms, has a long, colorful, often irrational history, and, in short, I wasn’t too unhappy when the Air Force recruiter never seemed to be in his office when I dropped by.  My dad was also in the Navy, and he had told me a lot of sea stories, and I liked the rather sentimental idea of following in his footsteps in that manner.

I can tell you, though, that most people in the military, if asked, would recommend the air force (including myself).  The air force appears genuinely committed to taking care of its people, and the contrast is considerable, if you have the opportunity to see an air force base and compare it to an army or navy base.  Air force people get better barracks – private rooms when available (no other service has expressed serious interest in giving their enlisted people private rooms!), larger rooms than most navy and army rooms – and better chow.  The chow hall here at Goodfellow is excellent, I’ve never eaten so well in a military chow hall.  It’s comparable to a small family restaurant in quality.  Air force is also committed to providing better base amenities, like hobby shops, exchanges (department stores), commissaries (grocery stores), and other base services.

If you are considering the Navy, the best advice I could give you, is that you should decide ahead of time what kind of job you want, and get a commitment in writing from the recruiter, that you will be sent to that A-school.  This is standard procedure in the Navy, so this shouldn’t be difficult if your ASVAB scores are decent.  If you are undecided, the recruiter may try to tell you that to go in as an undesignated seaman is a good option, but that’s not true unless you are really and truly incapable of deciding what you want.  Undesignated sailors do a lot of mindless, crappy, dirty work on ships for at least several months until they strike for a rating, and you can avoid that by getting your A-school before you ever go to boot camp.  They can’t guarantee where you’ll get stationed after school though – that generally depends on your rating, although you will be allowed to fill out a “wish list” of your desired duty stations.  Some ratings, like medical corpsman or cook, can get stationed anywhere.  Other ratings, like mine (linguist, CTI), have very few options.

The best general advice I could give you is to know what you want out of this experience before you commit to it.  Talk to the recruiters, find out what kind of jobs are available, what benefits are available (college fund, bonuses – ask about bonuses!, pro-pay, etc.) and if anything really strikes your fancy and makes you excited, wait a few weeks and see if you feel the same a while later.  You have a whole year ahead of you – there is absolutely no need for you to sign papers until you are positively sure that you know what you want to do.

I mentioned benefits – here are some more details:

-          college fund – not the GI Bill, which everyone is entitled to, but Navy College Fund, Army College Fund, etc.  This could add up to some serious college money if you know you will want to go to college later.  I don’t think you have to pay to get one of the college funds.  In order to be enrolled in the GI Bill, though, you will have to pay $1200, which will be taken out of your paycheck $100 a month for the first year.  If you are planning to go to college, though, the GI Bill is a real bargain.

-          bonus – certain ratings are more difficult than others, and sailors will be given a bonus once they complete their training.  I received a bonus of $5000 when I finished my schooling.  This is NOT the same as the Selective Re-enlistment Bonus, or SRB, so make sure the recruiter is not talking about SRBs if you discuss this with him.

-          professional pay (pro pay) – this is pay you get for maintaining a certain skill level in some  ratings.  I get $200 a month extra for maintaining a certain level of competency in Russian.  The rating, again, has to be one that is difficult to fill, and I really don’t know how common this is.  This pay is intended to be an incentive to keep people in the rating, and keep their competency levels up.

You asked me, why I decided to reenlist.  This was a very difficult decision for me, not nearly as straightforward as my original decision to enlist.   I regret the decision often, and I don’t know if I would make the same decision again, knowing what I know now – my last tour was pretty miserable.   I was out of the navy for several months after my first enlistment.   I thought I was financially prepared to go back to college, which were my post-navy plans, and I wasn’t.  I didn’t have access to reliable financial information about going back to college, particularly concerning financial aid, and that really hurt me.  Something to consider – once you are faced with the decision to reenlist, make sure your decision isn’t based on money or some other desperate situation.  There are a lot of people in the military who absolutely hate it, but they’re still in because they need the job, and they don’t have enough money in savings to risk getting out and starting over. [Note: the rest of my Navy career was great, so I believe now that staying in was a good idea.]

You asked as well, if I have traveled a lot.  By military terms, no, I haven’t, but it’s not because I haven’t had the opportunity.  In the eyes of your average small-town Midwesterner, though, I have gotten around quite a bit – Florida for boot camp, California and Texas for training, and Hawaii as my only duty station.  (I could have traveled more if I had requested orders for someplace other than Hawaii – Hawaii is an expensive place to base personal travel out of.) Also, I got lucky and the Navy sent me to St. Petersburg, Russia, for some language training, and that was a wonderful and unique opportunity, indeed.  If you get assigned to a ship, you will travel quite a bit.  If you get stationed overseas, like Japan or England, you should have plenty of opportunities to explore your host country and surrounding countries.  The Air Force and Army still have a significant presence in Germany.  The military has an excellent organization called Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) whose sole purpose is to find cheap ways to amuse you.  They organize lots of inexpensive trips and are one of the really good benefits of being in the military.  You should have plenty of opportunities to travel, even if you end up with orders stateside.

The highlights of my military time have been meeting some really great people from all over the country.  The lowlights have been working with some really nasty people.  Overall, I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet the great people. Great people are all wonderful in their own cool, individual way, and a lot of fun to get to know.  Nasty people are all pretty much the same, anywhere you go, and you’ll have to learn how to deal with them anyway.

Another highlight is, that being in the military, regardless of what job you do, you feel like you’re out there doing the job that needs to be done – some pretty good job satisfaction (in spite of the pointless stuff I mentioned earlier).  When you see the American flag flying somewhere, you’ll feel a much more personal connection to it than you do as a civilian.  This will be especially true if you ever have the opportunity to visit foreign countries.

On to other business – if you do sign papers, and later change your mind, you need to know that the recruiters can do nothing to you if you back out.  They’ll give you a lot of grief and may make threatening legal noises, but I’ve already had a couple of recruiters tell me that there is really nothing they can do about people who back out of their signed commitments PRIOR to being sent to boot camp.  Don’t step into this lightly, though – you’re messing a lot of stuff up if you back out after signing papers.  And if you do back out, tell the recruiter in person, be firm, and take your lumps like an honest person.  Don’t just not show up on the day you’re supposed to ship out.  I personally wouldn’t have a clear conscience concerning the whole thing if I did something like that, and I hope you feel the same way.

As I said in my last letter, I knew at the end of my first enlistment, that enlisting had been the smartest decision I had made in my life up to that point.  I had found out what I was capable of by successfully completing some very difficult technical training; by becoming very good at a job for which I had no natural liking or talent; and by living on my own so far from home.  The military is a good option if you don’t want to go to college, don’t feel ready for college, have no immediate goals, or you just want to get away from home for a while.  It’s a good option if you go into it with your eyes open.  It’s also a good option if you are interested in certain types of training or work experience – some military training is very good.  There are a lot of people who really like military life, and are dedicated to doing the best they can – but if you join, you will probably mostly be surrounded by people who do nothing but complain, because, you know, complaining is just sooo cool.  Most of these people couldn’t hold down a minimum wage job in their hometown, so they’re not worth listening to anyway.

If you have any questions about anything in this letter, you can either ask me personally  or you could take this letter to the recruiter and ask him to explain what I meant – in fact, I encourage you to do so.  Don’t be afraid to ask him difficult or sticky questions.  If he seems evasive or tries to deny something I’ve said, he is not the recruiter you should be working with.  A good recruiter is dedicated to bringing only quality people into the military, and should be willing to be straightforward with you even concerning difficult issues.  The military can be a great opportunity, but you have to understand what you are getting into, to the greatest extent possible.

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Well, that’s the end of the letter.  I may do some more writing later on other aspects of my military experience, particularly the fun stuff I did after I wrote this letter in 2001.  I actually enjoyed my third tour of duty so much, that I reenlisted in 2003, which I never would have guessed I would do in 2001!

I was going to crop these pictures so you could only see me, but I thought showing the other people and the silly stuff we were doing might be interesting.  I am in every one of the pictures below.

You may note that there are both male and female recruits in the pictures.  The Navy experimented with integrated companies for a year or so, and I was in one of the last companies to be organized that way.  The genders slept in different areas and obviously did not share the bathrooms or showers at the same time, but we did pretty much everything else together.  I was asked by some of the company commanders towards the end of my training what I thought of the integrated company idea.  I thought it was good, especially for the guys, because a lot of them were 18-year-old macho dumbasses who had obviously never had to take women seriously before.  I worded it a bit more respectfully at the time, but the Navy still disagreed with me.  My understanding was that most of the company commanders didn’t like training integrated companies.  Being a company commander seriously sucked anyway, so if the Navy can make that job a little easier, I guess it should.

My official boot camp picture - I was the yeoman.

It’s funny looking at the pictures of my company commanders with only their first names (I removed their last names from the pictures).  I still remember the Chief’s last name, and even how to spell it, 16 years later.  I couldn’t have told you his first name if my life depended on it (I’m pretty sure I knew it then, though – I was the yeoman).  The yeoman is the person who does the most work in the recruit company – basically a secretary with some rank (at least in the recruit division).  I had to do a lot of paperwork and make a number of administrative decisions.  My rank was Recruit Petty Officer First Class.  None of this really meant diddly squat – it just mainly meant that I had to do a lot of work that the other recruits didn’t. My most stressful week was work week, when the entire company had to get farmed out to various areas of the base for grunt work, like washing dishes in the chow hall.  I was given a list of the slots that needed to be filled, and I was the one who had to make the decisions for who went where.  I had the dubious privilege of not assigning myself that grunt work, but that meant I had to stand a lot more night watches, because hardly anyone else could.  This was almost like a vacation week for our company commanders, though.  They basically just gave me their phone numbers, told me to call them if there were any problems, and they checked in on us several times during the week.  I didn’t think much of that responsibility at the time, but obviously that meant that they trusted me a lot, and they knew I’d keep an eye on things for them.  So it shouldn’t be surprising that on the day we all shipped out, Chief thanked me for all my help.  That meant a lot to me, because he obviously meant it.

Chief was an extremely cool guy – very funny, a classic old salty chief.  Here are some examples:

• He already had his top recruit staff picked out when all the recruits arrived at boot camp (they had our profiles from the recruiters).  He explained that he chose guys for the recruit chief petty officer and recruit master-at-arms (the two highest recruit ranks in the company) and a female for yeoman because that just caused a lot less trouble in the company (yeah, that rankled me a bit, but I realized later he was probably right).
• He had tattoos of mushrooms on his forearms, and when I asked why he had them, he proudly explained that they predated the mandatory drug testing (’shrooms).
• He just about reduced me to tears the one time I made the mistake of washing his coffee mug – because of course, several layers of dehydrated coffee stains on the mug added a certain unparalleled flavor to the coffee he was drinking.
• I was slated to go to CTI school before I got to boot camp, and CTIs are nicknamed “spooks”.  So he would often call me “spook”, usually in a derogatory manner (there’s rivalry between all the various ratings in the Navy, and CTIs are particularly disliked), and occasionally made me drop just for being a spook.

He cut me slack where he could, though, and I even felt comfortable enough with him to tease him once in while (although I usually got dropped for it when I did).

Which one is me?? Hint: parade rest!

I did a lot of this at boot camp! Hint for finding me - I'm short.

I think the Rudder editors liked putting in pictures where recruits had their eyes closed during pistol training. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Ah, yes, firearms training.  I always laugh when people asume I had a lot of it at boot camp.  We spent at most a few hours at the firing range, all in one afternoon.  I don’t think we were even required to shoot well in order to pass.  I certainly didn’t pick up a firearm for military purposes afterwards.

Also, please note the humongous glasses on some of the people above.  No, they weren’t safety glasses for the firing range, and they did not have extremely poor eyesight.  Those were the standard boot camp glasses, I guess the cheapest durable frames available.  They were called “BC glasses” – nope, BC does not stand for boot camp.  It stands for “birth control” because the glasses are so ugly, it was assumed that no one would be interested in being intimate with someone wearing them.

Proof in the boot camp paper The Navigator that I was named Honor Recruit of my division. I was chosen by my company commander as the best recruit in my company (out of about 80 recruits).

This was the one honor that actually meant something.  If the honor recruit’s rank was E-1 or E-2, then getting honor recruit would get them bumped up a paygrade, but no higher than E-3.  However, I was already an E-3 when I went to boot camp thanks to all my college credits, so this didn’t do me a lot of good.  It was nice getting it though – almost all honor recruits are the recruit chief petty officers, not the yeomans!

The admiral profiled in the article above (Supreme allied commander Atlantic) made some sort of speech at our graduation.  All I remember from it was one story he told.  He had complained to a subordinate that he was having a bad day.  The subordinate replied something like this:  “If the word ’supreme’ is part of your job title, you just can’t have that bad of day.”

Many thanks to my husband, Aaron, for scanning these pictures in for me and helping me get them set up the way I wanted them in the blog!

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You’ve probably heard this before, but boot camp really is designed to “tear you down and build you back up.”  They take away all your privacy and nice clothes and make-up and adequate sleep time and make you do a lot of pointless yet difficult things, preferably when you’re so tired you can’t think or see straight.  They make the challenges, though, so you can pass if you try – they WANT you to pass – so it builds your confidence and makes you proud to be a soldier/sailor/airman.  Every single bit of it is a mind game – the mean drill instructors, the physical training, etc – and what they are looking for is not perfection, but sustained effort.  If you keep plugging away, keep trying to improve and learn everything, that is your job, and you should eventually get recognized for it.  That’s the ideal situation, anyway.  In boot camp, they can’t expose you to any real-life, dangerous, character-building situations, so they have to create artificial ones, which is why so much of it seems pointless.  The pointless stuff is actually good training for the military though, because a lot of what you’ll do in your real military job will be pointless, too.  (Heck, that’s even true for the civilian world.) 

A typical day at boot camp is long and exhausting.  You get up when it’s still dark and go to bed well past sunset. If I remember correctly, we usually only had 5-6 hours of sleep in our schedule.  In navy boot camp, we usually had to get up at 0300 or 0330.  Someone in the army told me once, that they hardly ever had to get up that early, but I didn’t believe them.  You get in uniform, march to chow (stand in line for 30-45 min, then get 15 minutes to eat) and shortly afterward march to physical training (PT) which is the usual round of calisthenics and running.  After PT, you march back to the barracks, shower (if you’re lucky – usually we weren’t allowed to shower after PT), and then march off to class, or to medical for one of your zillion shots or exams.  (You WILL get a gynecological exam at boot camp, even though you just had one at MEPS when you in-processed.) Usually in the evening you will be given an hour or three of free time for studying, squaring away your uniform, polishing boots, writing letters, preparing for some inspection, etc.  You are NOT allowed to go to bed before lights out.  People usually grab naps when they’re stuck waiting somewhere, if they have the privilege of sitting down while they are waiting.  A lot of people also seem to develop the talent of napping while standing up.  You will probably have some type of watch schedule, which means that you will miss a lot of sleep a few nights a month, because you’ll be watching the door making sure people don’t sneak out for cigarettes or a secret rendezvous with their one true love they met just yesterday in the chow hall (even though they shouldn’t have been talking).  Human beings are incredibly smelly and unattractive while going through boot camp – ESPECIALLY guys, because most guys don’t look good shaved bald – but a lot of people still manage to hook up anyway.  It’s pretty stupid, though – you’ll get in a lot of trouble if you get caught – it’s not worth it.  You’ll have plenty of opportunities for romance with handsome, patriotic, hormone-crazed young sailors or soldiers once you graduate boot camp, and you and they will have better access to hygiene products and attractive clothing then, too.

Regarding discrimination – you will probably very rarely, if ever, have any guy walk up to you and say, “You shouldn’t be here because you are a girl.”  Discrimination and/or harassment is no longer as open as that, because being THAT open about it can get a guy in trouble.  There are an infinite number of ways to get away with discrimination and harassment without breaking the rules, though, and I guarantee you will experience it at some point or another.  I’ve heard some boot camp sexual harassment stories that have genuinely scared me – and I’m talking about harassment from drill sergeants.  The anti-harassment rules are NOT set up to protect YOU, they are set up to protect the innocent until proven guilty – and since most sexual harassment situations boil down to “he said, she said,”  guess who the military is going to believe then?  If you make a complaint of sexual harassment against someone, and your complaint is dismissed, you are branded a serious troublemaker (that’s the polite language) and good luck trying to get any respect, professionally OR personally, after that.  I’m not saying, that you should never file a complaint if you are being discriminated against or harassed.  If you do file a complaint, htough, you will need an absolutely airtight case, WITH witnesses who are willing to go on record (most aren’t) and preferably with some kind of paper proof too, notes, e-mails, etc.  It is very, very difficult to fight harassment and discrimination in the military, especially if your harasser is higher-ranking than you.  The military rank structure is very rigid; it is based on the concept of unquestioned authority/unquestioning obedience (although of course it rarely works that way, thank God).  It is a structure that encourages cruel people to be even more cruel, generally without consequences. Most high-ranking people assume that most low-ranking people are out to get them.  Your chain of command will assume that too, and YOU will be guilty until proven innocent of such pettiness before your complaint could move forward. I’ll repeat here what they teach in our sexual harassment training – harassment is NOT about sex, it is about power.  You don’t have to be pretty or sexy to be harassed, you just have to look like an easy target.  Or, you could simply be the wrong subordinate in the wrong division under the wrong supervisor – every situation is different.

I place such emphasis on this very unpleasant aspect of the military because as a female, it will be a part of your life if you join.  You will not have the option of giving your two weeks notice, quitting, and walking away if you are stuck in a bad, irremediable situation.  If you are lucky, it will be little more than background noise most of the time, no worse than what you’d have to face in the civilian world anyway.  You’ll probably have a few friends you can unload on and who can help you cope with a lot of it.  Chances are, you will not experience worst-case-scenario harassment or discrimination (similar to what I experienced, that I touched on in my last letter).  I would guess, that most situations can be remedied to some extent or another, but you really have to be careful there.  Fixing almost all of these types of situations depends on the personalities and ranks of the people involved, not the rules.

Here is a specific, recent example that still makes my blood boil if I think about it too long.  Several weeks ago, I had the privilege of being in the classroom when one of my obnoxious classmates (I’ll call him B) said, during one of his endless complaining-about-everything tirades “All navy women are fat, ugly, and stupid.”  There were four other people in the class at the time, all male, including our instructor (the first link in our chain of command), and they all laughed.  I turned around and looked at B, obviously angry, and said, “I’m still here!”  His response was, “So, I don’t give a shit.”  Again, no one said anything.  Three of those other four guys were E-6s [note: I was an E-5 at the time] – one was my instructor, and one our class leader.  Now, if B had said, “All Navy Hispanics (or blacks, or Orientals, etc) are fat, ugly, and stupid,” he would have gotten into a lot of trouble real fast.

On the surface, this seems pretty straightforward – I make a complaint to my instructor’s supervisor, people would get slapped around a bit, and justice would be served.  Problem is, B is an incredibly obnoxious guy who never stops complaining, or fighting, once he gets started.  He’s already lost rank (from E-6 to E-5) for his inability to control himself, and if I had tried to complain about him, he just would have fought it tooth and nail, knowing he’s totally wrong, because he’s just stupid and hateful.  On the other hand, those other four people were really nice guys – and they would have gotten into trouble too.  These four guys respect me, and expect me to do like they do – just put up and shut up with B’s obnoxious behavior (even though his behavior, of course, is never directed at them – he treats them with respect).  Since the complaint would have been entirely female-related, then, the end result would have been (if any of them had been willing to corroborate my story), B and the other guys would have become martyrs for getting into trouble for something all the other guys in the navy consider to be a non-issue, and I would have gone from being a respected classmate, to Queen B!tch, for getting all those nice people in trouble.  (B, by the way, was at the time engaged to, and has since married, a Navy female.  It’s his second marriage – surprise!)  So, I haven’t officially complained.  This is the kind of stuff you will have to put up with – and the kind of decision you will have to face – as part of your ordinary military life as a female.  Hopefully it will not happen often.

“The military is a man’s job” is a load of crap.  No job in the military is so difficult that no woman could do it.  There are of course a few jobs that are so physically demanding that a lot of women couldn’t do them – but the vast majority of military jobs are gender-neutral in their requirements, because most of them require more brain than brawn.  There are a lot of women out there who are just as adventurous, patriotic, and/or energetic as men, and the military is a very good option for them.  Women have been good for the military – I believe their presence helps cut down on the macho crap, and puts more focus on the mission.  I don’t think any organization benefits from being all male or all female.

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Next and last installment in the series – productivity, commentary on the various services, travel, and advice about dealing with recruiters.

My E-5 ID (with important bits airbrushed out). The pink sticker was to identify me as stationed in Hawaii, so I could get military discounts and stuff that were intended only for Hawaii-based service members.

I look annoyed in the above picture because I had to give up my previous ID, which had a much better picture of me, because they messed up my SSN on it.  I was so happy with that previous picture, I didn’t check the really important information!

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Like you, I considered joining the military for a long time while I was in high school. I was interested in going to one of the military academies, though; I didn’t even consider enlisting at the time.  I didn’t realize it, but I was looking for a challenge, and looking for some place to fit in, some group to be a part of (high school definitely didn’t do either for me).  I initially went to college on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, changed majors, lost the scholarship because of the change of major, then enlisted in the Navy after dropping out of college after seven semesters.  I wish now that I had enlisted as soon as I lost my scholarship, because I accumulated $8000 in school loans that took forever to pay off [of course, that's a small debt in 2009!].  I enlisted because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and I didn’t want to live like a hobo for several years, working a minimum wage job in Quincy, until I figured it out.  Getting away from the Midwest for a few years was good for me too, but I hadn’t anticipated that when I enlisted.  I really appreciate the Midwest now, and I can’t wait to move back there someday.

I suppose most people consider discipline the challenging part of being in the military.  Well – IT’S NOT.  The discipline the military is supposedly famous for is actually almost non-existent in day-to-day life.  All those immature people in your high school class – lots of people just like them will be joining the military with you, you will be surrounded by them from day one, and if they make you nuts now, just wait until you have to share a room or a job with several of them!   You will never get away from such people.  “Military” discipline doesn’t change most of them AT ALL.  (In a similar vein, something I was looking forward to when I graduated high school, was that out in the “real world” people wouldn’t be judged by how much money their daddy makes, or what kind of car they drive, etc.  Turned out, high school was just like the real world.  The only difference is that in high school, teenagers (being teenagers) have an excuse for being shallow and immature.  The same shallowness and immaturity exists in the military, because the military is manned by human beings, and not the super-disciplined-looking, spit-shined, mature and selfless robots played by actors you see in the movies or on TV.)  Immature, disruptive people are everywhere, civilian and military, and you will never stop meeting them.  For the kind of discipline I think you are talking about, you would probably have to go to the academies – and even that discipline is only for four years, and then you graduate and have to face the messy, undisciplined regular military world.  The discipline you face in the everyday military is the same amount of discipline you have to face in the civilian world, it’s just more self-imposed – or at least more of a personal choice – in the civilian world.

You asked if I wanted to quit boot camp – yes, constantly.  Not because boot camp itself was hard, but because I was surrounded by idiots who couldn’t shut up when the company commander told them to shut up, so I and everyone else had to get punished all the time because the idiots refused to follow simple directions (this supposedly teaches teamwork – it doesn’t).  No service’s boot camp, however, is made to be impossibly difficult.  In fact, most of the time, all you have to do is shut up and listen to what you’re being told – but you’d be amazed, the number of people who can’t even do that.  So, the ABSOLUTE LAST PLACE you should go to get away from immature people, is the military.  I can’t emphasize that strongly enough!

You asked, what kept me going through boot camp?  Well, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to quit boot camp – they do make it difficult.  Mainly, though, it was the lack of options back home (I believe this is true for most of the people who join the military, regardless of the patriotic cover story).  I didn’t know what I was going to do if the Navy didn’t work out, so I knew I had to try. Also, a few of my fellow sailors weren’t idiots. Some of them were really great people, and it really helped having them around; they kept me from going completely bonkers.  I suspect you won’t have any problems with the discipline or training part of boot camp.  Unless you’re the type that gets homesick real easy, or can’t handle sleep deprivation well for several weeks, then you should do fine.  And there will be at least a few people in your company who you’ll get along with really well, so you might even end up having a good time.  I’ve met a few people who said they actually enjoyed boot camp, I guess because they had a few good buddies to help them laugh at all the silly stuff.  Going through boot camp together can help people forge a really strong friendship.

Also, you asked about personal time at boot camp – there is no such thing.  You will probably be sleeping in bunk beds in open bays (large open rooms, the size of a large school cafeteria) with your entire company of several dozen other females, using big group bathrooms and showers at the same time, etc.  The bathroom stalls at my boot camp didn’t even have doors!  Absolutely do not plan on having ANY privacy.  If you are at all squeamish about undressing / showering / being butt-naked etc in front of other women, you will have to get over it real quick because you simply don’t have any privacy options in boot camp.

Speaking of no privacy, something you will have to do many, many times while in the military is an observed urine test.  That is where someone (of the same gender) hands you a plastic cup, follows you into the bathroom, and literally watches you pee into it.  The urine tests are for drug testing, and devious druggies can be pretty ingenious in getting around it, hence the observation.  In the navy, we even have to roll up our sleeves to the elbows while we do this test, so the observer can see that we don’t have any hoses up our sleeves.  Also, I don’t know if the navy still has this rule, but they required females to get their hair cut above the collar for the duration of boot camp.  That’s pretty traumatic if you like having long hair, so you might want to ask about that.  The navy is the only service that has this requirement.  You can grow the hair out though, after boot camp, and just put it up in a bun or braid or something above the collar.  I have long hair, and I put it up in a bun every day.

All boot camps are segregated by sex for sleeping arrangements, hygiene time, etc, but for the most part, you will be training side by side with males.  Your company will probably be all-female, but you will have a brother company of all males that you will go through training with.  This is true for the Navy, and also what I remember from talking to some Army and Air Force chicks.  I don’t know about Marines, although I’m sure females share some training time with males there, too.

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Next post – more about boot camp, and dealing with sexual harassment and discrimination in the military.

Reenlisting on the USS Missouri, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, April 2003 (thanks to my friend Diane R. for the pic!)