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Air Force enlisted is pretty cush compared to the other branches. The Air Force isn't exactly hurting for recruits at the moment. This isn't to say it's a better or a worse choice than the Corps. Just that you get dicked with much less, and the recruiters don't need to fight to get anyone in the door. It also won't toughen you up the way being a Marine would. If you want to feel like you're in the military all the time, the Air Force is def not your cup of tea. Don't enlist in the Air Force. Don't enlist in the Marine Corps. Don't enlist. Grow a beard and enjoy life.
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Dec 24, 2015 17:48
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Typical Gnu posted:So I can go to MEPS, pass all the qualifications, get to the job list, and walk away if I don't see anything I like? I was told that by the time you get to see the job list you're already past the point of no return. If your recruiter told you that, he's When you sign your enlistment paperwork, you fill out an Air Force form 3007. This lists the terms of your contract: years of service, AFSC (if any), etc etc. This is mine. The form has changed slightly in the years since I joined, but not in any meaningful way:  Note that there are three options in section 1. Options A and B are for suckers, option C is the one for you. Actually, option C is also for suckers, because really smart people don't enlist, but that's neither here nor there. The recruiters get a list (monthly or quarterly, I forget) of available AFSCs for their region, and the corresponding ship dates for basic training. They also have access to everyone else's list. This is important. If your recruiter wants you badly enough, he can and will call up a different recruiting region, and swap one of his unwanted jobs for the one you want. Assuming the other region agrees, it takes all of ten minutes. Back when I went to MEPS, I told my recruiter I wasn't signing poo poo unless I got the job I wanted. My recruiter liked me, and I'd done very well on the ASVAB, so he did the legwork to get me my first-choice AFSC. If you go Open General, you could get a 1N job. It is possible. It's also possible to win the lottery. You'll probably get Security Forces, just like every single Open General dude I enlisted with. Don't do that. Being a real cop is probably pretty cool. Being a junior enlisted Air Force cop will just make you an alcoholic. Arc Light fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Jan 26, 2016 |
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Jan 26, 2016 01:26
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Vahakyla posted:Well the Army decided to loving shaft me today. Informing that my ship out date of 11th april is pushed to the 1st of september due to security checks of green card holders being backlogged. Getting the green weenie already, and you're not even pulling a paycheck. Sorry to hear it. Godholio posted:They don't own you yet. You don't have the "option" to do poo poo because EVERYTHING is entirely up to you. You can go to MEPS and walk out the door if you want. Godholio's on point, as usual. Gnu, until you actually ship you can walk at any time. If you're a strong enough candidate - and if your recruiter isn't inept - you can work that to your advantage. In addition to the usual "open" career fields (open general, open electronic, etc), there will be a number of available AFSCs, released to regional recruiting offices on a regular basis. If you're dead set on only doing a job, you absolutely need to make that known to your recruiter. I scored in the 99th percentile on the ASVAB. I wanted to do some kind of computer system job, and I wouldn't sign for anything else. My recruiting region didn't have any comm jobs available, but another region did. My recruiter's flight chief worked a drug deal with the other region, and traded available jobs. This manifests in the form of an Air Force Form 3007, Guaranteed Training Enlistment Agreement. You sign it at MEPS to confirm your job offer. I've heard of some recruiters playing fast and loose with paperwork at MEPS, so if you do this, MAKE SURE you're only filling out the part of the form that promises the job you want. Leave the other sections blank and cross them out. This is important because it also guarantees you the option to quit if the Air Force can't follow through on its promise after you've already shipped to training. The example below was the form I signed back in the day. The form was updated slightly in 2010, but the substance is the same. Make sure that any promises are in writing, or else they're worthless. Edit: and for God's sake, don't ever believe a recruiter if they tell you to go in Open General, and that you can somehow get a job you want later.
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Apr 5, 2016 01:05
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LingcodKilla posted:Drilling is super lame and a terrible way to spend a weekend but some units do "flex drilling" and only meet once or twice a quarter. BaseballPCHiker: So, my experience has been entirely active duty, but my squadron shares a couple of buildings with a reserve unit. This is all Air Force comm/cyber personnel, so I don't know if it would be an option in, say, the Army National Guard or Reserves, but some of our Air Force reservists do their entire year's drilling obligation in a single shot. They just work as part of the active duty squadron for a month or so, and then disappear back to their civilian jobs for the rest of the year. Back when I was NCOIC of a network management (routers/switches/firewalls/etc) shop, it was always nice to have an extra guy around to help out. The real trick for guard/reserves seems to be whether or not your unit culture sucks. That's something that you may be able to suss out before joining. From what my various ANG buddies have told me, they all had the chance to visit their units before they joined up, to see if it would be a good fit (and, in turn, a chance for the unit to figure out whether they sucked). idk if that's a thing in the reserves, but it def seemed to be the case for the air guard. As you could probably deduce from LingcodKilla's post, luck plays a role, but your job plays an even bigger role. I'm 3D172 - Cyber Transport Systems, which is a catch-all for network infrastructure, telephones, data links, and some other stuff. I can basically go anywhere active duty, and I can get deployed anywhere we have computers. I picked the job because I wanted to travel and I wanted to deploy. There are a few comm & intel jobs for computer touchers (programmer, etc) that basically don't deploy, so you could always try for one of those (if your local unit has them) if you want to stay in one place. I've generally had a good time. Many, maybe most, of the posters here are pretty sour on the military. I guess I'll be other side of that scale. I dropped out of university because I couldn't stand to go to another day of class as an accounting major and I didn't want to sink even more money into a new major. I thought I'd do a single enlistment, then ride the GI Bill back to college. Almost 13 years later, I'm still in. I can live very comfortably on my salary. I deployed a handful of times. I've lived in Germany, Italy, Korea (the good one), and a bunch of US states. There's a lot of nonsense bullshit that comes with being enlisted, especially if you're active duty or you deploy and do the job every day, but it trails off when you get promoted beyond a certain point. After that, it's mostly dealing with other people and their bullshit. At the end of the day, if I could go back to being 19 again, I'd still enlist. Basically, if you want to join up, do your thing. Also, Reddit on the whole is a cesspit, but the Air Force subreddit is mostly focused on USAF, and it doesn't generally suck. They regularly have newbie threads that would probably provide better guidance from people who recently joined the ANG or AF Reserves. GiP doesn't have many people who are still in, so the advice that we provide is largely dated and colored by experiences that may no longer be applicable. Finally, you said that you do enterprise routing and switching. My career field, 3D1X2, is the one that maps directly to your current job. I spent most of my career working in and then running router/switch shops at both the airbase and enterprise level, so I can say from personal experience that prior experience (in particular Cisco experience) is treasured. When people come out of tech school later in life, they're usually treated a bit better than their 18 year old peers, and that goes triple for older Airmen who actually know how to do their jobs.
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Jan 5, 2021 01:28
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I saw that you were up for it a couple of months ago, but I didn't realize you'd gotten the job. Hell yeah, congrats. Forget about joining the mil; get that bread.
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Jan 6, 2021 16:21
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bird food bathtub posted:I just totally deuce'd the gently caress out when I was done with active duty so I still had IRR time, meaning this is not first hand experience but foggy memories of paperwork from years ago. I'm preeeettttyy sure if you do reserve time after active duty that satisfies your IRR requirement. If they've done active duty, then reserve, and I'm not stupider than usual, they should be totally done. It does. For enlisted, the requirement is 8 years. Whatever isn't handled by active/reserve/guard gets rolled into IRR, but once you've already done 8 years of any other service, you're not required to do any IRR.
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Nov 9, 2022 03:49
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