Plus, Air Force chicks…we’re hot. Give yourself a little time. At least until you deploy…you may find that you love that, lots of people do.
Oh, and totally this.
Wanted to pop back in and say that I knew many, many guys, myself included, who would have taken an easy, no ramifications out had it been available. *
That’s why you sign a contract. It’s a volunteer force up until the moment you ship to boot camp.
- disclaimer - this was in the late 90’s. I can’t speak to the situation of currently serving military members.
Man up, quit whining, honor your contract, serve your time, try to grow some balls along the way and learn responsibility. The fact that somebody actually has to tell you this shows that you’re exactly where you should be at this point in life.
Like I wrote, failing a drug screen gets you other-than-honorable discharge, which is not the same as dishonorable. Other-than-honorable is something that’s fine as long as you feel comfortable never working a government job and basically never mentioning your past military service for any reason. No jail time. Dishonorable is worse than that, but you won’t get a dishonorable just for failing a drug screen.
But as others have mentioned… the Air Force is what’s stressing you out? Seriously? You are never going to crawl in mud. You are never going to know the horrors of life without air conditioning. What’s to stress, really?
Yep, a question to the OP - what’s stressing you out? It may be better to get to the root of the problem than to just randomly going about finding a solution. Talk to a help-line or a counselor?
People tell him what to do all the time. Oh, the horror.
Yeah, no kidding. I don’t want to be an asshole, but “Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called everybody, and it meets at the bar on Friday.”
In other words, it sounds to me (just from what you’ve said here, mind you - I don’t know your life) that you aren’t having a hard time adjusting to the military, you’re having a hard time adjusting to grownup life. Which, mind you, sucks. And there’s only more of it. They want that mortgage payment every damned month, you know. And the dog absolutely has to go out in the morning - nobody else is gonna do it, so you absolutely have to get up. And the toilet does not fix itself. It’s all things that you just learn to deal with, and you do find out that there are compensating benefits.
No. Honor your commitment.
jampaintball, your situation is completely identical to someone I knew in the USAF twelve years ago: me.
I was a young A1C stationed at Moody AFB, GA. I enlisted for the same reason as you: I was 18, my college prospects weren’t good, and I had no idea what to do with myself. My recruiter knew I wanted in and that I would sign anything to make it happen. I went in on a 4-year enlistment with no bonuses and no guaranteed rank or job. I scored a 95 on the administrative portion of the ASVAB and only a 67 in the mechanical portion, but for some reason, the USAF decided to make me an A-10 mechanic. Since it became obvious that I would’ve killed a pilot if I were allowed to graduate from tech school, I was quietly reassigned to Transportation, a job that requires little more brainpower than a moderately trained baboon.
I was miserable. The Air Force was not for me. I hated my job and I was a high-strung Yankee living in what was probably the most conservative part of the U.S. I didn’t fit in with the other Airmen and spent all my time either on my computer or sleeping.
I eventually gave up trying. I started coming into work consistently late with a messy uniform and constantly made mistakes on the job. After a few LOR’s, an Article 15, and a demotion, my papers were finally on the desk of the Base Commander for my separation. He waited three months until the day after my 21st birthday to sign them, the punishment that stung the most. I ended up receiving a General Under Honorable after 23 months in the service.
I don’t recommend you do what I did, as there are far less humiliating ways to separate. Talk to your Shirt. Get it on the table right now that you do not want to be in anymore. They’d rather discharge an Airman who’s a problem before he or she does anything that kills someone or causes embarrassment to the Squadron.
You’ll be told you need to take responsibility for signing that dotted line and that you put yourself in this situation. While that’s true, 18-year-olds are not known for making the best decisions, not to mention the fact that it’s a recruiter’s job to make the military look like life in a college dorm. Eventually the message will get across and you’ll be given the boot, but not before several uncomfortable meetings with your entire chain of command.
Good luck.
Edit: The General Under Honorable discharge didn’t hurt me one bit. In fact, just the fact that I had military experience was impressive to a lot of employers. Just make sure you downplay it on your résumé… stick it way at the bottom under Education or bury it amongst your employment history.
I just want to chime in with the “a real job would suck twice as hard crowd”. Right now you are doing an important job for and effective and well-established organization. Most folks ‘in the real world’ don’t have that and it adds several layers of frustration and dissatisfaction. If you were my kid (and my kid is about your age), I’d advise you to stick it out. As someone who has worked for 30 years in the same building, I can tell you, it will go by quick enough.
I’m an Army medic (1022 days until I get to be a civilian! oh god please speed up time right now). I have been where you are and have seen others there as well. I have suggestions not so much for how to get out but how to deal with your problem, whether it results in getting out or not.
- Talk to your buddies. Seriously, there’s a very good chance that someone right around you feels the same way. I went from “I seriously cannot deal with this another day” to “Okay, it sucks, but I can cope” in the course of one evening by finally breaking down and talking with some friends. (I won’t advocate drinking if you’re underage, but liberal application of alcohol helped me in that case.)
- Talk to your leadership. Is there an NCO who you like and feel you can talk to? Talk to him - “Hey, sergeant, could I talk to you when you have a couple minutes free?” It doesn’t need to be anything soul-baring, but you’re most certainly not the first junior enlisted who discovers they hate life in uniform.
- Talk to someone in medical. I don’t know exactly how the Air Force works but I know that if you walk into the troop clinic here, you are presented with any number of opportunities to say, “I’ve been feeling really stressed out lately.” Within the Army there’s about five different routes you can go from there - and that’s assuming you don’t just go to behavioral health yourself. It is not for crazy people; they can connect you with someone who can A) sit and listen to you vent and B) offer coping strategies.
- Check out Military OneSource. They have a ton of resources, including free, anonymous counseling face-to-face, online or over the phone. They’ll probably also be able to point you at other resources if you call and ask.
- Go and talk to your chaplain. Believe me, you will not be the first guy to go to him with the main problem of, to use military language, “Fuck this shit”. Again, he may also be able to point you at further resources.
As Agent Foxtrot pointed out: they’d rather find a way to work with you even if it means getting you out, than see another idiot in the newspaper doing something incredibly stupid* and making them look bad, or - worse - seeing someone hurting themselves.
*Like a night full of drunk driving, car accidents, kidnapping, rape and assault, as happened here recently.
Non-military here. Injuries kept me out. Still, let me offer my opinion.
There are people who bitch and moan about their assignments, and hate every minute of them. there are those who make the best of their situations, and grow from them. Isn’t it better to make the best of it? At worst, it’s only temporary. At best, you get promotions, experience that can help you when you get out, and you get to go places you’ve never considered going.
The economy is improving, but still struggling. You get three hots and a cot, and a paycheck as well. By the time you get out, the job situation will (IMO) be better than it is now. You’ll be in a better position to get a job then, and an HD will be of benefit in your search. Or if you mkae the best of it, ‘find your own fun’ as it were, you may decide you like it.
My SO was in the Army for six years. The bad news is that she was sent to Iraq for the first Gulf War. The good news is that she was a Black Hawk pilot. She got to fly a machine I can only dream about (I can’t even afford to rent a Cessna – let alone a Schweizer 300 helicopter – at the moment), and she got paid for it. Is she glad she’s out? Definitely. It’s not easy to be a woman in a Man’s World. (At least it wasn’t at the time.) But she’s glad she did it. It has opened several doors for her in civilian life. She also has benefits such as preferred hiring and VA benefits that I can never have.
Nobody forced you to sign the contract. Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time, and now it doesn’t. But you’re in. You made a decision, and now you need to live up to your promise.
I can think of a lot of jobs that are worse than being in the Air Force. How about a soul-crushing job as a fast-food worker? Not that there’s anything wrong with being a fast-food worker. They are needed, and a lot of people like it. It’s just not for me. In the military you can see what jobs appeal to you, and you can probably get support to advance into them. My dad started out as an enlisted man, and was recommended for a commission. He retired as an O3 (Navy Lieutenant). Or you can take what they give you, do your job responsibly, and get out at the end of your hitch in a better situation for the rest of your life than you would have sweeping floors in a factory.
So change your perspective. Six years isn’t that long.
Thing is, if they let you go tomorrow, then what?
You’d have to get some crap job and you’d be living with a bunch of your asshole buddies in some run-down apartment, because you won’t have the income to live on your own. How is your life going to be better if you get out?
19 years old with no skills and no college means you’re back where you were when you signed up. Your plan can’t just be to get the fuck out of the Air Force, you have to plan for what happens next. Because when you’re stuck cleaning carpets or some such and can’t take it and want out, what then? There is no out, you either show up to work and get paid or you don’t.
We don’t know the OP’s full story. Perhaps he has a safety net back home. If you get discharged from the military, life isn’t guaranteed to suck. Obviously the military isn’t the right place for jampaintball… he may do better in Americorps or something… I wish I had known about Americorps when I was his age.
Yeah, it may be that he’s got some fallback. But my point is, he can’t leave the military unless he has a plan for what he’s going to do afterwards, even if that plan is go back home and live in his mom’s basement and work at his uncle’s carpet cleaning company.
I’m just thinking about what I would have done if I had dropped out of college at 19 because it was too much stress. My mom would have let me sleep at her place for a couple of weeks, probably. Then what? After I graduated from college, I went through a series of sketchy living situations and crappy jobs, and this is with a college degree. There were plenty of times I wanted to quit, but what would I quit from? I could leave my crappy living quarters or quit my crappy job, but then I’d have to find another crappy place to live and find another crappy job.
I’m not saying he’s obligated to stay in the military, or that he’s screwed if he leaves. Just that he needs to think beyond his immediate situation and think about what leaving would actually mean.
He’s not being discharged: he’s quitting. The discharge is just the piece of paper. It sets the tone for the rest of his life. Sign up for Americorps? Sure, then quit again when somebody wants you to actually earn your check. Mothers’ basements are full of 30-something “kids” whose solution to a bit of adversity is to quit and move home. Do the time, tough it out, be a better, stronger and more flexible person for it.
I mean, it’s the fucking Air Force, for god’s sake.
When did this board revert back to 1964?
This is pure and total bullshit propagated by the government to guilt wartime soldiers into not deserting. I quit the USAF and am doing just fine with a well-paying job, a good education, a nice house, two cars, a loving girlfriend, and four cats. Am I a loser?
So you’re assuming that if he quits the service, then that’s all he’s going to be for the rest of his life? A quitter that’ll move back to his parents’ couch, smoke pot and play WoW all day? You sure have this guy completely figured out after knowing absolutely nothing about him.
Americorps would give him a less structured (but still fairly structured) lifestyle that would allow him to see new places and make new friends, all while making a paycheck and earning college credit and tuition. Most importantly, it’ll allow him to make mistakes and learn from them without putting his life (or anyone else’s) in jeopardy.
There’s a difference between being a quitter and knowing when to cut your losses.
And what exactly do you mean by that? :dubious:
Would Americorps take him if he has an other-than-honorable discharge? And can he get out of the Air Force any time soon with an honorable discharge?
Obviously, we don’t know much about him other than he’s in the Air Force and he hates it. Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy. Everybody hates it. Now what? Is getting out of the Air Force going to solve his problem, or give him a worse problem?
Easy there, big guy. For most jobs, is the Air Force probably less physically demanding than other services, and probably more comfortable? Yeah, I’ll buy that. But I’m about to go spend the next several months of my life getting my socks soaked with blood while I help re-assemble the jigsaw puzzles that various explosives make out human bodies, and I’ll be doing it alongside 18, 19, etc. year old surgical technicians. And I’m not even anywhere slightly in the neighborhood of people like combat air controllers or PJs. It’s not necessarily the most grueling gig in the world, but we don’t all sit in front of computers all day.
A mere jape to take some sting out of my post. I was mighty glad to see the Zoomies laying down nape and high explosive.