First, for even thinking of volunteering for such a thing... You have my respect. You are willing to sign away upwards of half a decade of your life, to obey the direct orders of people you never even met.SpikedHelmet wrote:I'm going to be joining (or attempting to join...) the Army soon. Reserves to be exact (hells no I ain't signing my life away for the next 7 years). Can anyone give me any hints and advice as to what it's like at first?
I did sign up for the USAF two years ago. Unfortuantley due to some serious health problems I never made it through, but I can offer you a hell of a lot of advice and stories from basic training.
There are two parts to basic traning, Physical and mental. If you can do ~35 *real* pushups, run at a fast pace for 30+ minutes non stop, you pretty much have it made. As far as the mental part of it... Are you the type that can stand there and listen to your boss/manager go on and on about what you need to do, when you need to get that done etc? Im not sure if I was or not, before I left.
You will arrive in the base, and it should hit you in the face like a brick. The "what in the hell did I sign myself up for" reality. Its 2:00am, ive been up since 5:00am the day before, People with arms as big around as my legs pointing where we go, in voices loud enough to rupture ear drums.
We lined up outside some building, and sized outselves in. Unfortunatley for me, being 6'6"... I got to be in the front, just a foot or two away from the Drill seargents.... Grreeaat. We were filed inside, sat down. They were going through papers, called our names. Get up, grab the paper, and go and sit in another room and wait some more... Lots of waiting.
What seems like about after 3 years of sitting, we get piled into a bus, which takes us to our training squadron. Pile out of the bus, our TI is waiting there for us, yelling for us to hurry up and get upstairs. we pick a bed/locker, he tells us to unpack our crap and get to sleep.
I could have sworn that not a moment after my head hit the pillow, I heard a bugle screaming reveille (http://www.usscouts.org/mb/bugle_calls.html), followed by the TI yelling in a gruff voice "GET UP GET UP GET UP". Im still in the "What the hell did I sign up for" panic mode.
I could probably go on for ages and ages... but ill shorten it up.
The first week is spent mostly marching from here to there, setting up direct-deposit pay, getting your issued uniforms and clothing, hair-cut (shave-job), shots etc. This week was called "zero week". By the first week, our TI started cutting us some slack. basically left us an hour or two before lights-out, because he was saying something about how he had a family and never got to see them. We would wake up and form up outside without him, which was a hell of a lot less stressfull.
If your going to go, I would reccomend being sure you can not only meet the minimum requirements, but by far exceed them... That makes things far far easier.
Memorise facing movements, rank and insignia, and practice saluting infront of a mirror if possible. If you have any other questions, you can get to me by PM. Depending on the reasons you want to go, the military could be the best or worst experiance in your life.
but did anyone catch the New Simpsons episode last night where Homer joined the army? Damn funny 
