Background: I have a b.a., masters, and PhD in linguistics, and my area of expertise lies (roughly) in phonetics. If I were to up and head over to a recruiter’s office, would there be any commissioned or enlisted jobs that my academic training would predispose me toward? (this is entirely hypothetical-I’m not the worst potential officer of all time but I’m pretty close. I was just curious what, if any, language-related jobs I could get in the military beyond translation/interpretation.)
Try looking at the State Department. Your education and language skills should place you highly in many fields.
They have linguists where you pretty much interpret stuff.
Or you could be an airborne linguists. That’s where you interpret stuff in a plane.
My wife & I were both enlisted Russian linguists in the Army. I was stationed at Ft. Riley, spent lots of time in the motor pool, was sent to Desert Storm and didn’t really use the language. Basically wasting all the money spent on the language training and Top Secret clearance. My job was supposed to be listening into the enemy’s radio traffice, translate what we could quickly, and find their positions using radio direction finding and triangluation. My wife was stationed in Berlin and did actual intel work using the language until the field station was closed down and she was sent to Ft Riley.
The Defense Language Institute at the Presido of Monterrey is a great school and experience.
With your education you would be eligible for OCS. I only recall Navy & Marine officers at DLI and never meet an Army officer with language skills. So I don’t know what the officer career track would be. (There were many college grads as enlisted linguists using the Army’s loan repayment program).
With the background in linguistics and not a specific language, you might consider NSA or CIA. I would assume linguistics would be useful in code breaking.
Is that like an Aer Linguist?
Everyone else here is WAAAY too conservative about your qualifications. My brother was an officer in Naval Intelligence. They would snap you up in a heartbeat, probably let you skip OCS and give you a direct commission, probably at full Leutenant or Leutenant Commander. Even if you aren’t good officer material. The only officering you would have to do is supervise a few enlisted and junior officer intel weenies. They would send you to intel school first, and give you a short officer course so you know what the rank insignia mean, and so you know not to pick your nose in the O-Club, but that’s about it. I had a friend who was a highly educated electronics engineer, and that’s what the Air Force did to get him to work on cruise missile systems.
You’re probably going to have to meet age/height/weight/physical fitness standards regardless of what type of job you get. If you’re even thinking about it semi-seriously, and you’re not already in good shape, you might want to start running/working out.
Yes. The Navy is really strict on the PFA (Physical Fitness Assessment) right now. Page 13 entries for failures. Four failures and you are administratively separated.
It is not difficult. Twice yearly you are weighed and taped if needed, touch your toes, do push ups, sit ups, run 1.5 miles. OPNAVINST 6110.1H contains standards that vary according to gender and age. Most failures are due to body fat percentage or run times.
Start running now if military service is in your future, and watch your weight.
Hmm, thanks for all of the replies! As far as fitness goes I’m in okay shape, and I’m going to start running as soon as I get back to the states- I’m in the foothills of the himalayas right now, so there’s no room to run in town, but I was running about 2 miles/day before and I wanna get it up to doing 10km comfortably when I get back.
The only problem I might see is that while I’m a healthy weight for my height, I’m quite tall: I’m 6’5, and have extremely wide shoulders, so I assume that I might have trouble if they wanted me in a job that required living in a sub/ship/working on a plane all day.
Also, while my academic training focuses almost purely on theory and experimental phonetics (think mad science with speech), I do speak shitty Egyptian Arabic, I can read Qur’anic arabic, Classical Chinese, and Sanskrit semi-literately, and I’m more or less fluent in Japanese, classical Japanese, kanbun, colloquial Tibetan, literary Tibetan, and Hawaiian pidgin. But I don’t know if any of those languages (beyond arabic, obviously) would be useful, and no matter what I’d probably end up needing a refresher course, especially if they wanted me to do translation/interpretation.
Oh, I do know how to blow somebody up using a portable ultrasound machine. But somehow I suspect that’s more useful as a CIA skill than as a military one. 
I’m picturing a brunette with the oratory skills of Cicero, the linguistic skills of Pope JP II, the looks of Halle Berry, and a great 80s hairdo. I like what I see.
I’m sorry what were we talking about?
The DLI would love you, even just as a civilian contractor, to help out with various linguistic needs. If you were looking for a commission, AF or Navy would be my recommendation, they could make good use of you, and at your height you wouldn’t have any worry of being in a small capacity vehicle (Sub/Plane). You could wind up being a Regional Area Specialist or something similar, where you’d just be advising Generals/Politicians on the how a culture/language/people are.
I have a peripheral question. A BA usually gets you 2nd Lt./Ensign/O-1. What would someone coming in with a PhD get?
Like I said earlier, something more. However, that would depend on how much they needed your skills. My friend, the EE, only had a masters, and they made him a Captain (O-3, Naval equivalent is LT). I would say a PhD in some field they needed badly enough would be good for anywhere between O-3 & O-5, possibly more, but likeliest would be O-3 or O-4.
When I was finishing up my PhD in medical entomology, I got cold-called by an Army recruiter. Med Ent is a big deal in the military, doubly-so now - leishmaniasis is a big problem in the middle east combat theater.
I listened politely, and said I wasn’t interested. “But you’ll come in at O-5!” he said, and waited for that to sink in.
“Sorry” I said, and hung up.
Based on this thread, I just looked up what O-5 is (8 years after the fact).
**Lt. Colonel!? **
Can that possibly be correct? That frankly scares me.
Now that my curiosity has been piqued, I’ve done a bit of internet searching - everything I can find says max incoming rank with PhD is O-4, and that’s after OCS. I think the recruiter was blowing smoke up my ass.
It actually makes me feel better. No way would I have been qualified.
May I suggest paging Monty ? I think I’ve seen him on the boards recently, and as I recall, he was a military man and his expertise is in linguistics.
They can and do make exceptions, depending on how badly they want you. They have waivers for every requirement, even though they have specific rules that they generally follow. The rules are thing which no higher level in the command chain is required to approve. If need be, they can go all the way up to the president, and if he approves, you can enter as a 4-star. I don’t think that even happened in WW2, but it was routine to bring people in as 1-star (Brigadier General/Rear Admiral)