Have lots of ribbons and medals, Air ForceI guess it depends on what you wanted to do while in.
Boss people around, be an officer.
Work on the gear, enlisted.
I guess it depends on what you wanted to do while in.
Boss people around, be an officer.
Work on the gear, enlisted.
Have lots of ribbons and medals, Air Force
Join the Air Force. See Texas.
Have lots of ribbons and medals, Air Force
Finally returning to this after a detour: to borrow a line from the surface Navy, that's not in my lane. GPA North of 3.0 would get you in the right stack of applications.Thank you for the write-up! I have a follow-up question: I have at least 2 years left of undergraduate study at IU. Anything you recommend I should do while I'm completing my studies? Should I join ROTC (or any other organization)? Consider a certain major/minor?
OP, I know you mentioned the military, but what about federal agency? Your degree would translate seamlessly into the Foreign Service, and if you want to carry a gun overseas, how Diplomatic Security Service (DSS)? You get the world politics, the gun, the travel, and a pretty nice chunk of change.
You can go to Party-U, get a Poly-Sci degree and someday have engineers working for you. USAF!!!
Or, you could enlist in the Marine Corps ( if they will have you ) and actually earn every ribbon and metal you get and see the world in the best looking uniforms The United States Armed Service has to offer.
OP, I know you mentioned the military, but what about federal agency? Your degree would translate seamlessly into the Foreign Service, and if you want to carry a gun overseas, how Diplomatic Security Service (DSS)? You get the world politics, the gun, the travel, and a pretty nice chunk of change.
I would recommend the Air Force. I come from a family of soldiers but my son decided to become an Airman. Best move he ever made. Since he is in and I want him to stay in, I ask every vet I recognize how long they stayed. With few exceptions, the ones that got out early wish they hadn't. The ones that got their 20 in are so glad they did. I would say that AF and Navy are close to 100% one of those two answers. Army, I run into more that say they put in their 4-6 and were happy to get out. Same with Marines.
My son is finishing up his degree while serving as a Tech Sgt. He has applied to OTS. Hopefully his will make it. He says even if he doesn't, he will make Master Sgt. and he is okay with finishing his 20 at that rank.
I am 30 years older than my son. If I am lucky and save my money in earnest I will be able to retire 2 years before he will. And I will scrape for the rest of my life while he can go on and do whatever he wants since he will have a pension and medical benefit to take with him.
I would encourage you to look very closely at military service. As long as you can accept the military way, you will do fine.
Unless, you are in the Republic of Korea. Those ROK troops salute everybody in uniform. It’s all good, ROKy takes care of business.
Take it from me, firsthand experience, if you are able to change your major to something more relevant, you should do it. BA in polisci is useful as a firestarting tool, at best. If you're not going to graduate or law school, don't waste your time. Can't comment on the military, but graduating from IUB with a BA in polisci was the mother of all "expectation meets reality" experiences for me. It's a history degree without enough history, a stats degree without enough stats, and a journalism degree without enough writing. It leaves you mediocre at a lot of things, exceptional at nothing, and in what I would call the lower 1/3 of marketable degrees.
If you want a cool uniform with medals...
You are joining for the wrong reason.
If you want to be a 'badass' you are joining for the wrong reason.
If you think you can do some good, and realize it's going to be a 24/7/365 job for little pay and a lot of grief, then it might be the right reason.
If you go some short of special forces, you will be trained into what people think are 'badass', but when you think of yourself as 'badass' its time for a reality check...
Learn a second and/or third language.
When you learn German, you will wind up in a Spanish or Arabic speaking country, and vise-versa.
I know that one first hand...
It's good to have options, and they occasionally screw up and send you someplace you can use it.
If you become an officer, find your senior NCOs and immediately ask them to keep you out of trouble.
When the s**t rolls down hill, take the blame.
When the (unicorn) unusual praise rolls down hill, give the credit to the NCOs/enlisted.
Don't be a 'Blue Falcon'.
Trouble in the ranks?, deal with it in house.
Make sure you have an open, TWO WAY door, information out gets information back, and the senior NCOs have their finger on the pulse of everything currently going on.
DON'T find something else to do when the unpleasant/unpopular things are happening (unless your NCOs ask you not to be there).
If you don't sweat & bleed with the rank & file, you get ZERO respect.
Screw the rank, when EVERYONE else is dirty, hungry & tired... get dirty, hungry & tired with them. They will tolerate anything, suck it up and follow you through hell itself if you do.
Actual 'Leaders' are in front, that's why they are called leaders, by definition.
I'm with the other guys,
With the education, go with State Department, stop the wars before they start!
Intelligence services are ALWAYS looking for someone that can make heads or tails out of those 'Governments' (and I use the term loosely).
Doesn't have to be CIA/secret squirrel stuff, just knowing the history and making sense of what other cultures are up to, someone with an actual education in those jobs would be a big deal,
And when the current administration is out, State will be hiring like crazy,
A third of State has been fired or resigned and not replaced, so LOTS of potential for hire and quick advancement.
I still have one semester to fully decide on a major, but PoliSci is strongly appealing to me. I started out at IU thinking I wanted a Journalism degree. Took some Polisci classes on the side as a recommendation from some older friends. Out of all the classes I have taken so far, ranging from media to writing to the required maths and sciences, the classes I have enjoyed the most, i.e. devouring every required reading and ended up buying those books after the semesters completed so I could re-read them, have basically all been PoliSci related.