Hello everyone I’m going to need to write a letter for a wavier I’m applying for the Army. 6 years ago when I was 22, I’m 28 now I went to basic training acted immature, was unmotivated and had one bad attitude. Since than I have realized what I did was wrong and over the last six years I earned my two year degree, my four year degree and have gotten 3 letters of reference over the last few years on my behalf.
Now in this letter I need to explain what happened exactly and how I have bettered myself. What format or how should I word this exactly? Basically I’m trying to organize my thoughts. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks
BTW if it matters I didn’t break any law, I didn’t go awol, do drugs, assault anyone. I didn’t get any article 15’s and i went in as an E-3 and left as an E-3 so I was never reduced in rank.
The format itself doesn’t matter too much. Pick a professional letter format and use it. Within that format I recommend trying to structure and speak in a way that will be close to the Army Writing style and mirror what the relevant approval authority would regularly see within Army memorandums. Feed them information the way they are used to seeing it if you want them to fully consider it.
Use the simplest language that conveys your meaning.
Strive for concise and clear.
Pre-writing homework. You should have been repeatedly exposed to the Army Values before your discharge. Go look them up now and read the Army’s description of each (not just the one or two word label for the value). Think about your previous failings and the corrections you’ve made in terms of them before you start writing. I can think of a couple plausible hooks based just on your OP. Don’t force using the words if you don’t feel/believe it though. Integrity is, after all, one of those values.
How I’d structure the presentation of your request:
-Purpose “paragraph.” State the bottom line of what you want concisely. If you can’t do it in once sentence for this issue, you probably need to try again. Hint - you don’t want them to consider your waiver request, you want approval.
A “How 22 yr old me fucked up” paragraph. The issue is a matter of record so there’s no point evading. This is where you specify how it happened. In your OP here you only mention your personal responsibility. That’s good. If there’s some outside factor you need to mention it better be in terms of a extra challenge that you failed to overcome. This might be a good place to slip in a sentence summarizing the issues then in terms of how you failed to live a specific Army Value.
Why you aren’t that 22 yr old anymore. Reference how you are different now than then with as much proof as you can. Proof may be an accomplishment or a characteristic mentioned in a reference letter. You don’t have to quote the whole reference letter since you can send it along. There should be a strong and explicit correlation between the personal failings in paragraph 2 and the changes made since then mentioned in this paragraph. If you cite three issues and only show growth in two that would raise a question in my mind about the third if I was the approval authority. You don’t have to be perfect. They wouldn’t buy that anyway.
Restate your purpose in other words including why they should support it. The argument about why should be above. This is a summary. If you can’t keep this entire paragraph to 2-3 sentences you are likely failing to be clear and concise.
If you want to drop the your proposed text to me I’d be glad to take a look. I won’t significantly alter your argument for a waiver. The hard part about making a case for a second chance is on you.
The military is in process of downsizing. A lot of career people- well-regarded, experienced, knowledgeable in their field, etc- are being bumped out through no fault of their own, and often to their dismay. Think about trying to convey why the Army should take a chance on a fuckup when they can’t hang on people they know they can count on.
How did you go in as an E-3? you must have had most of your four-year degree already.
Did you finish basic and actually get a less-than-honorable discharge, or did you not even finish basic? I was in the National Guard for eight years, and I remember the people who wanted out of basic. I can’t imagine any of them changing their minds six years later. Emphasize that in finishing college, you learned how to complete tasks, and that you learned that sometimes you aren’t going to love every detail about something, but you have to keep focused on the bigger goal that you do want, and realize that the entire thing is a package deal, the parts you like and the parts you don’t. In other words, my memory of the people who left basic is that they couldn’t hack getting up at 4:30 every day, and doing PT, and marching everywhere. They were OK with some of the fun aspects of basic-- the adventurous parts, like obstacle courses, but all the standing around waiting had them complaining, as though they hadn’t volunteered to be there. I remember similar people in college, who didn’t finish their degrees, because they couldn’t understand why a liberal arts degree meant literature courses AND science courses, AND a foreign language, and soforth-- whine I’m majoring in biology, why do I have to take a writing class whine.
If you had a problem like that, you could draw the parallel between finishing college, and show that you have learned how to buckle down and follow the course of study to its conclusion, so you can do so in basic as well.
Now, maybe you had some other problem-- maybe it had to do with getting along with people. But surely you can figure out how to use the successful completion of college, or your work history since then to show how you have changed, and this won’t be a problem again.
You should probably also point out that this time, you know exactly what you are getting yourself into, and are still sure its what you want.
