Asking about Joining the Reserves

Factual Questions
1

My friend is thinking about joining the Reserves. She has looked at their Web site, and sees it might be a good thing.

She has years of experience in data-communications and public contact; she’s smart, sometimes volatile but knows how to act with respect. She’d prefer the Navy or the Air Force.

What are the pros and cons? Especially, what should she sign up for or avoid, or otherwise start out right and avoid unpleasant surprises? Can she rely on all the nice statements by the recruiting site? What would someone with experience advise for her?

She is currently unattached and knows she could be shipped to the Middle East, and she’d probably find that interesting. She’d have to rent out her condominium.

She is a little unsure and doesn’t know people in the Reserves to ask. Other than getting blown up, which she is aware of, what would be worst case if she joins? What are the best-case positives? And what might be good career moves?

2

She should do a thorough investigation. My experience proved that the recruiters were misleading, even dishonest. That would depend on the individual I suppose. I remember a lot of the newly enlisted sharing all of the lies they were told by the recruiters. Tell her to speak to some active duty military folks as well as reservist.
She needs to be in excellent physical shape and able to endure some tests of mental toughness. I would suggest that she go officer training if she has enough college… or if there is any other way. Once she swears in, no looking back. Throw away the Bill of Rights. All due process will be carried out under UCMJ. Not that she is a criminal or anything but I remember the little “block of instruction” we had on UCMJ. It was a shock for me. For instance, you can be shot for some stuff. I don’t think they execute folks. I know they don’t. I just wanted to make the point that once you swear in, the rules of the game change big time.
Check out the rules on hair and be sure to get that situation in order before taking off for Basic Training. They really don’t know much about cutting hair in the military.
I was in the Army Reserves. It was something I am glad I did. It was very difficult, yet worth it. I was very happy to get back to civilian life once Basic and AIT was finished. The good and bad thing about the Reserves is that you are a part-time soldier. It can be disrupting to your civilian career. On the other hand, it could give one an opportunity to learn new skills and reach some career goals that might otherwise be unattainable.
I have noticed several dopers with military experience. I am sure they will be along shortly to offer some other thoughts.

3

Avoid unpleasant surprizes? Stay out of the military!

Sarcastic but deeply rooted in truth.

4

It’s hard to answer your questions without knowing much about her background. If you want, I can dig up a couple threads which go into pretty good detail on the pros and cons of joing the military (not specifically the Reserves, though, IIRC).

I’m a bit biased, so I’m going to say joining the Reserves is a good thing, be it Air Force or Navy. But I’ll also second the advice to take what the recruiters say with a couple grains of salt, and to actually talk with folks that are currently serving.

If she has any particular questions about active duty Navy, you can point her in my direction. My email is in the link below. Monty is also a good source for Navy info.

5

I recommend that you check with more than one Service’s recruiter. In other words: comparison shop.

Lastly, don’t listen to folks who are fond of saying that recruiters are dishonest. If the recruiter lies to you, he can not only destroy his career but also end up in jail.

6

All good advice, but there is more than one way to be dishonest. In my instance, having asked valid questions and having received partial replies with relevant data intentionally omitted is a lie of sorts, in my book. I wouldn’t trust a recruiter any more than I’d trust a lawyer or a politician.

Ack! If your friend has useful skills already, she’d be erring to ‘enlist’…simply because her hard-won knowledge would be squandered (example: “Specialist Numbnut, you sit here and look at those lights, if one goes out, or comes on, you come get me.” “Yes, Sergeant!”). She’d best seek a commission through whatever route is available to her.

And, not to dump on the US Army (which I was a member of), but if she has any aptitude whatsoever, she should check the services out in this order: USAF, USN, USA, USMC. The Coast Guard, of course, isn’t a “service”, but if she joined them, she could get stationed up around Reno, where she could hang out at Lake Tahoe. Cool.

7

Pottery: Let’s keep this in the realm of facts. The United States Coast Guard is, in fact, one of the Armed Forces of the United States of America.

8

Well, I was in the National Guard for a long time . . . sort of like the Reserves. :slight_smile:

Tell your friend to examine all the branches of service and their respective reserve components. Lots of pros and cons with each one, IMO.

As noted above, serving in the reserves will likely disrupt your civilian life. When I was in, Annual Training always came at the very worst time. Three-day drills bit into time when I should have been at my civilian job. Although you won’t spend a lot of time with the military (except for your government sponsored trips to Afghanistan, Korea, and Iraq :slight_smile: ), what time you do spend with them can cause you more stress than you think.

If your friend joins up, tell her to play Invisible Girl in basic/boot camp. What’s that saying about two ears and one mouth? However, if she is to be noticed, she should be noticed for being MOTIVATED. They like motivation. A lot. When I went through Basic (at Fort Leonard Wood, over ten years ago), they screamed the word at us. We sang songs about it. They painted it on the walls. Being perceived as being motivated by a drill sergeant was definitely a good thing. Being perceived as lacking motivation was probably among the worst of things.

It’s good to have friends. Make a cook friend. Make a medic friend. Make a mechanic friend. Most definitely make a friend out of the unit clerk. Get to know the chaplain.

Once you’re in, keep up with what kind of benefits you’re due–they change and those changes won’t necessarily be communicated to you like they should be.

Get in shape! Stay in shape! Tell your friend to look at her branch’s physical fitness test requirements and to get into shape before boot camp/basic training. She doesn’t necessarily need to be able to pass the PT test right now, but she should probably be able to come close. If it were me, however, I would be able to more than pass the PT test before I ever showed up for training. Also, be prepared to do things harder than the physical fitness test. For example, the Army tests you on your ability to run two miles but in basic and AIT–especially AIT–we frequently ran five miles or more, and I didn’t even have a particularly physically demanding job. Finally, the PT tests continue after Basic and AIT. And failure to pass the PT test can impact your career in a very negative way. Same with being fat.

“We don’t have any need for anybody with that MOS here.” That’s what I was told at one National Guard armory right before the recruiter and retention NCO tried to sell me on chemical warfare (no thanks). I did some checking around and found another National Guard unit looking for somebody Just Like Me not too far away. Seems that first Guard unit was just recruiting for themselves and not the whole military. So be aware of those kinds of possibilities.

I ended up spending time on the Guard outside of weekend drills and the like. Packing for trips to Wherever. Taking care of uniforms. Dealing with lazy supply sergeants who didn’t want to take care of my needs during weekend drills. Going to armory to deal with issues related to pay screw-ups, my missing bonus, and a bunch of other stuff.

I can almost garauntee that those weekend drills will be harder than the recruiter leads you to believe. Either that, or far less exciting. Anyway, for me they were usually hard and exciting or long and boring.

Be prepared to deal with a lot of stupidity. Some of those most intelligent people in the world are in the military. However . . .

Your friend may be offered a pretty big bonus to join up and take a job in a certain kind of field. Although she probably already knows to do this, tell figure out how this bonus will be paid to her and how it will be taxed. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen soldiers look at the first installment of their bonus with disappointment and disgust. “I went through all that . . . for this . . .”

Basic training sucks. Over time I’ve read and heard about changes in the various branches’ recruit training that are supposed to make it better, easier, whatever. However, I’ve met few people that have come back from Basic and said it was a good time. There are exceptions to this, however.

Find out what that military training can do for you in the civilian world. And find out from a civilian. The training requirements for a military job aren’t necessarily the same as those for the corresponding civilian job.

Don’t lie to the recruiter or the people at MEPS. Especially if you plan to stay in the military for a long time. I know a lot of people who have successfully concealed things from the military. I also know a couple of cases where somebody kept things like a medical condition or some trouble with the law hidden when joining the military and then paid for it later.

If your friend goes the Guard route and you live near a border, tell her to check out the other state’s National Guard. Benefits differ quite a bit state-to-state.

Prepare for lots of hassles. Think it would be cool to get that free license plate? Hassle. Need a security clearance? Hassle. Need to get one measley compass and some cheapo protractor from the lazy-ass supply sergeant who can never be found so you can go to some stupid school so you can promoted? Hassle.

Don’t volunteer for anything . . . during Basic Training. However, I used to volunteer for quite a lot of things after Basic, and it paid off quite well in many different ways.

As in all things, if it’s not garaunteed in writing, it’s not garaunteed. Your friend should read her contract carefully.

Okay, I’ve rambled long enough. I was in the Guard for years. It was a big hassle. It interfered with school. It interfered with my civilian jobs. However, I got to meet a lot of cool people. I learned some cool things. I traveled all over the place and saw things I otherwise would not have. I got to serve my country and do some good. I got to overcome some very interesting challenges. I’m probably a better person because of the military. And as far as part-time jobs go, it really can’t be beat.

Tell your friend good luck, whatever her decision.

9

Wow, folks, this is great.

She doesn’t have college, but she does have life experience. She is totally motivated. She only knows one person in the Reserves (the postman) and guess what, he’s on active service just now and unavailable.

I don’t get all the abbreviations. Is MOS like a resume? So with her tech background, she talks to more than one recruiter, and one might really want what she already is, but another might want to start her as a trainee in chemical warfare…Would that affect her signing bonus? Do they commit to putting you in a given field…I bet not, just get a probability depending on their needs, right?

Thanks, this is all valuable stuff!

10

Monty, even though their website declares that they are the “Fifth Service”, or something like that, they are in fact the law enforcement branch of the Department of Transportation. If that qualifies them to be a branch of the military, then the ATF, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, OSHA, Fish and Game (or Wildlife, depending on your locale), or the rest of myriad federal agencies who have gun-totin’ enforcers are military, also. I, however, don’t subscribe to that notion, and don’t see how a sentient human could. A badge and a mission don’t make it military. At least it doesn’t in my book.

11

Gak! Didn’t mean that to sound like an ad hominen attack, my friend. My implication that you are smart as a sack o’ hammers if you don’t see it my way wasn’t intentional.

12

Pottery: Please do a search of this message board for “Coast Guard.” This has been discussed quite a few times already. The United States Coast Guard is one of the five Armed Forces and one of the seven Uniformed Services of this country.

Actually, I’m not concerned about your book in this case. I’m concerned with reality, friend.

13

MOS stands for Military Occupational Specialty and is your Army (or Army Reserve or Army National Guard) job. The Navy (and I guess Coast Guard?) has “ratings” and stuff, although I suspect most sailors would know exactly what you meant if you asked them their MOS. I’ve heard Marines and Air Force guys talk about their MOS’s, but I’m not sure if that’s an official term for them or if it’s just a common term they know other military folks will understand. If you said to me, “What’s your MOS?” I would say, “I’m a medic.” Or an infantryman or helicopter mechanic or whatever.

When I first went to join the National Guard I was in a city with two units. The first was a unit in need of chemical warfare people. The second unit was an infantry unit which needed, in addition to more infantry guys, I think cooks. No thanks. The only MOS for me then was medic. So I shopped around and found an open medic slot in a different company (same infantry battalion, though). Crappy recruiter. Or maybe not, since he was looking out for his needs (slots to fill) rather than mine. But anyway . . .

At least some sign-on bonuses or reenlistment bonuses will be determined by your MOS. I don’t know what “general” bonuses are currently being offered by the various branches. In the past I found Army and Navy websites that went into this in great detail. I believe that National Guard bonuses are assigned to the MOS’s currently needed in each particular state. I know that when I was in Illinois, medics weren’t given sign-on bonuses but that in Arkansas medics were given bonuses.

The military will commit to putting you into a certain field if it’s in writing, and it almost always is. I do know somebody who joined the Marines (which I don’t know too much about) “open contract,” a course of action I would discourage. Tell your friend to decide what she wants to be and then, when the time comes to sign her enlistment contract to make sure that it’s on there. If she and the recruiter agree that she’s going to be a Space Craft Decoration Specialist, make sure that SCDS is on her contract.

I also remember that there was a back-up MOS in case I flunked out of school for my primary MOS (and quite a few did flunk out my class). In my case, my backup MOS was a job I would have hated, so it’s a good thing for me I didn’t flunk out of AIT. The wording was something like, “Mephisto will go to Fort Sam Houston and become a 91B (the code for medic back then) and if he fails he will become a 99X.*” The contract didn’t describe in plain English what a 99X was and the people I was dealing with distracted me from the question when I asked. I could have flunked out of medic school and ended up serving six years in an MOS I hated. Just something else to keep in mind, especially if she goes into a field that entails some very difficult training.

  • As far as I know, there is no Army MOS 99X . . . I just made it up as a “for example” thing.
14

Hmmm. I didn’t mean for my last posting to be snide, either.

At any rate, check this thread in which MEBuckner cites the actual law (38 USC 101), to wit:

The members of the Coast Guard are also, even in peacetime, subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, just as the Commissioned Officers Corps of both the US Public Health Service and NOAA are.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us back to the OP, I guess. One could consider pursuing a degree which would lead to a commission in either the PHS or NOAA.

15

Monty, what “book” are you referring to? It is irrefutable that the USCG is the law enforcement branch of the US Department of Transportation. How does that make them military? Regardless of what has been discussed previously, and regardless of their claims, they are absolutely not military, at least in any conventional sense of the word. If any person chooses to see it differently, then we have millions, MILLIONS, of military personnel in this country.

16

Alright, alright! I was typing the above missive and doing an IM at the same time, so didn’t get the chance to refer to the cited thread. You are correct, and I apologize. With one caveat…the law might state it as fact, but that doesn’t necessarily make it so. Whenever the NOAA is included in the same passage, that pretty much removes any relevance to the current discussion. But I will say “Uncle!” in the face of cold, hard documentation.

17

Back to the OP, here’s a similar question I posted a while ago:
Does the Army/Navy/Air Force Reserve really want ME?

18

Pottery: The fact of the matter is the law is what establishes a particular organization as part of the military. It’s a concept known as “by definition.” By definition, said definition being set in law, the Coast Guard is a military service. And they don’t wear badges akin to police officers’ badges.

And, again, the NOAA & the PHS have Commissioned Officers Corps which are considered, by law, Uniformed Services.

19

I suppose I should also add that the Coast Guard and the Commissioned Officers of the NOAA & PHS get paid under the same compensation scheme as the rest of the Uniformed Services.

20

Being in the Reserves is a bit dicey at the moment.

My brother, a former Ranger who wanted to keep his hand in it, reupped as a National Guardie/Reservist-type with Special Forces. Lots of reservists around him.

They are all going to Afghanistan this month. Little bro hasn’t even had time to finish the SF qualifying course yet, but no matter- they are sending everybody.

I think the logic is this- active-duty personnel are already somewhere they are needed, but if anything surprizing happens, we’ll call up a bunch of reservists (who aren’t doing anything constructive at the moment, right?).

And Monty & Pottery- you two better behave, or we’ll take you out back! :wink: