Today the door to my military future opened. I’ve stared at that door long and hard over the last several months, but what exactly was behind that door remained a mystery. A small handful of possibilities existed, but only time and a panel of two Colonels, one Major, one Sergeant Major and one Master Sergeant, in addition to my orthopedic PA could say with any surety what would appear once that door was opened.
After presenting my case to the aforementioned panel, I requested, and was granted a job reclassification guarantee. The only thing now is to wait for the right paperwork to be signed and to meet with retention to determine what job I want.
My goal is to finally trade the tough-guy lifestyle for a less physically-strenuous smrat-guy future. I have proven to be particularly adept at learning foreign languages, and I would love to take advantage of attendance at the Defense Language Institute. Two jobs include a year-long tour at DLI as part of their standard training package:
That’s awesome! Thanks for the phone call today:):)
PS Did you mean to misspell smart?? Cause it totally fits with the sentence to see that you misspelled it:)
I vaguely remember seeing those two job descriptions as your reasoning for going into Army to begin with.
@raesha: You’re welcome and happy birthday on paper! Regarding the spelling “error”, please refer to the rules page!
@d: I vaguely remember the same thing …
You mean maybe I *actually* remember it?
d - I remember that too!!! And ian - yahoo to you:) I refuse to proofread my blog cause I spend all day proofreading at work.
@raesha: Heh, nice. Truth be told there are a handful of words I intentionally misspell pretty much without fail: smrat is one of those words. (So is Frnak :D)
YELL YELL EYLL
Those are both awesome job opportunities. Personally Rick would go interpreter, but that would keep him in country more. Hmm, ok. He did say that they both do about the same thing, which is what you already know.
Where is DLI school located?
DLI is in Monterrey!
Sweeet! You have to do that one.. then Jeni, Caleb, and I can come up and visit, and go to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium!!!! And maybe whale-watching!
I have to chime in with the job choice issue. Here’s my thinking.. You just got out of the infantry. You have the opportunity to choose a job that’s not going to require you to carry the heavy packs and go on patrol and end every day in pain. It seems to me, that if you were either of these jobs, that is exactly what you’d be back doing again. You’d be out on patrol talking to the locals, which put’s you back in with the infantry. Am I right or am I misguided about the job descriptions?
Personally I’d prefer it if you weren’t going back ot the sandbox in a job that you could get shot at. Maybe you should look at HR! Or data entry! Or USAF!!111
-Frnak
@frank: Honestly I was secretly hoping for door number 3, and a medical discharge. I’m so tired of Army, but it’ll be over soon (five more years, bleh). Regarding patrols and such, we rarely had Army interpreters with us - we used locals who were contracted. Most of what our ‘terps did was interrogations of detainees we brought back to the FoB, and written translation.
Ian,
Well, learning a foreign language and cryptology sets you up for a CIA job after Army life….remember, the best way to learn one is to go and live where it’s spoken. If I were you I’d consider these strategic languages:
Urdu, Arabic, Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Portuguese, or Farsi.
I imagine we’ll be needing fluent russian speakers again soon.
@mac: I would LOVE to learn Russian. There’s an overwhelming request for Arabic speakers these days, but I may be able to finagle my way into a Russian course.