Career Un-Change

Being an adult is a lot of responsibility and not as much fun as everyone under the age of 18 thinks it is.  I have to make difficult decisions like what to eat, when to sleep, what to do with my free time and (by far the worst) what career path to follow.  Being in the military made things so much easier.  It was like being an adult but with training wheels on.  There was always someone there to tell you "Re-enlist", "Eat at this dining hall", " Go live here", "Don't step on that grass", and "Between the hours of 1300 and 1600 we will have fun today and you will like it".  Being a civilian means you make all your own decisions but it also means you take the blame for everything that results from those decisions.  Initially this was a liberating experience for me and I did what came naturally for someone like myself who had been recently liberated: I ran as far away from military stuff as I could.  This was fun for a while and then I started school again and made plans to change my career.

I have to say that I'd envisioned a career change as being a bit easier.  Call me naive (because I totally was and am) but I thought that making that decision would make it so (like an order from Captain Picard).  Little did I know that finding even an entry level position in a new career would be like trying to find an honest man at a political convention.  School was no problem as I easily got accepted back into college and have made an A in every class so far.  Trying to find part-time work in the Biology field with no previous experience, however is proving to be an impossible task.  The employers either want someone with some experience in the field already or someone who has no experience that they can train from scratch.  Someone with an existing degree and work experience in a different career need not apply.  I'm sure this recession creature has something to do with it too but I'd rather not blame my problems on a concept.

I'm a firm believer in the mantra that "Everything happens for a reason" because not believing that would just mean that I was getting shit on by whatever deity is responsible for doling out jobs.  So I decided to look back into the possibility of going overseas as a civilian contractor.  Why make my re-entry into the field overseas and not state-side?  There are two main reasons for this choice:  it's easier to get an overseas position and I'm not prepared to move again yet.  Once I know for sure if this is going to go down or not then I'll make long-term plans but at this point I'm just testing the waters.  I wouldn't be the first person in this field to come crawling back after getting frustrated with the "real-world" but I honestly didn't think I'd be one of them.  But, let's be honest, the civilian world is full of people that just don't seem to understand what it's like to have a career.  Simply having a job doesn't cut it for me.  I need a sense of purpose that working as an office assistant just doesn't give me.  Yes, it's about my pride and about the money but it's also about security and feeling like I'm contributing to society in some way.  If most Americans can do the job that I do then I don't want that job.  Perhaps this stint in the civilian world has made me truly appreciate my career.  It's been kind of like Rumspringa....I've allowed myself to lower my standards for a bit but now I realize the need to hold myself to a higher standard.  Here's to hoping I haven't already been shunned.  

Tag I'm it....

So after posting the remainder of my Hunchback of Zagreb true story, I checked my dashboard only to find a new post by Christina In Wonderland picking me as a puppet in her diabolical puppet show of freaks.  Ok, it isn't anything like that, but I must do her bidding.  Apparently I'm supposed to open up my first photo album and pick the 10th picture.  Here's what I got:

 My uncomfortable looking self is on the far right with the coolest shades.  This was a picture taken in Iraq in late 2008 with the rest of my team members.  I got this from someone else's FB photo originally anyways, so I figure it's ok to re-post here.  Looking at this pic brings back memories, but I'm sure glad that I'm out of the military now.

Exaggerate This!

I know that everyone exaggerates, it's just that some of us do it more than others. All of us know at least one person that can't seem to get their own stories straight, much less any other scrap of a fact that comes their way. There must be a chemical imbalance in some people that prevents them from just telling a mundane account. I've met several such people in my life, but there are likely several others that I've met that I never knew were liars (or exaggerators or embellishers).
I came across an article today about a man caught posing as a Military veteran of higher rank and distinction than he had any claim to (that article is at http://militarytimes.com/news/2010/02/army_stolenvalor_022210w/). Did this man, and the countless others who have done the same thing in the past, really expect to get away with this? He actually got out of the Military as a PFC after serving three years, but claimed to have been awarded all sorts of awards and claimed varying different ranks like Major and General. If you're going to lie, don't make it as obvious. Maybe he just got swept up in all the attention, or maybe he really is just a crazy. You hear about this crap all the time though.

Then you have the Military guys who exaggerate or embellish what they did/do in the Military. One such guy, let's call him Jim, felt the need to tell everyone he met about the super-secret-extra-cool stuff he did in the Military. Problem was, Jim would often forget that the person(s) he was telling the story to had been there when the event took place. That inevitably leads to the "Dude, that's not how that happened" speech, and Jim has to backtrack and add more BS to justify his version of the story. My husband works part-time at a local store while finishing up college, and he recently had a run-in with another Veteran who started spouting all sorts of nonsense. This guy claims to have went from the rank of E1 to E6 in two years. Anyone that's ever been in the Army can tell you that that is impossible. He also professes to have done all sorts of 'cool' tactical operations and such, but he pretty much lost all credibility already so that probably isn't true either. No one wants to be branded the liar, liar pants on fire type of guy (or gal).

                 

                                                   I fly this, and I'm a Navy SEAL
This phenomenon is more wide spread than most of us like to admit, and in fact we are actually encouraged to do it. Any seminar you go to or book you read on applying for a new job will tell you that you have to "sell" yourself (i.e. exaggerate your abilities a little to make yourself sound better). You're supposed to make every little thing you did sound like a highly evolved and sought after skill. At this point you pretty much have to do it or you won't stand a chance against the guy who claims he saved his last corporation millions of dollars as the supervisor of quality control (i.e. making sure the merchandise was all still there and working). I wonder what this says about our society; that in order to succeed we need to lie a little. This is a far cry from the traditional values of integrity that we like to think our ancestors had. In reality, who knows if they really lived up to the morals and values they espoused. Maybe they lied on their resumes a little too.

Basic Training ain't easy

  I'm putting together a series of articles on the Military for my Hubpages (check here: http://hubpages.com/profile/Melissa+McClain for these articles as I get them published).  In so doing it's given me the opportunity to reflect a lot on my days in the Military.  I still think that some of my worst moments were basic training.  Some people actually liked basic training though...go figure.  AIT (Advanced Individual Training) was a lot more fun in my opinion.  Then again, I'm not a big Hooah Army!, go-shoot-or-yell-at-something-or-someone type of person.  If you like guns, getting yelled at, aggressive behavior, getting very little sleep, anal-retentive behavior, and rolling around in the mud (or snow or mosquito invested swamp...depends on the place and season you are going in) then you'll absolutely love it.  If you don't love those things....then you'll be like the rest of us that just got through it so we could move on to the "real Army".  (Just so you know, there's a lot of talk about this "real Army" thing...it's like the Yeti in that it's existence can't be verified).
  Basic Training is meant to break you down so that you can be rebuilt in the Army's image.  There are certainly a lot of people that need to be broken down.  You wonder how some of these people ever thought they'd be good Army material, but I suppose everyone deserves a chance.  For those of us who do what we're told already, Basic Training can seem like an exercise in futility.  You receive contradictory instructions and information just to see how you'll handle it, and be given nonsense instructions to see how well you'll do whatever someone tells you to do.  This part of the process isn't trying to make a leader out of you, it's trying to make a good follower out of you.  The leader training comes later.
  I don't remember too many particulars about Basic Training, but I do remember the suck factor.  I must have said "Are they serious?" either to myself or out-loud multiple times a day.  You get to the point where you don't care about sleep or food or your physical appearance or anything like that.  You just care about getting through it and not making a royal a$$ of yourself.  You sure do learn a lot about yourself though.  I had no idea that I was such a slow moving individual...and I don't mean in running.  It takes me a long time to get ready to do anything and to actually get things done....I cannot be rushed.  The Army is not made for people like that so I had to do a lot of prioritizing to make sure I got the important stuff done.  Now that I'm out, I take it to the extreme and take enormous amounts of time to do even the most mundane task....because I can (thanks Army).
  If you ask current or previous members of the Military about Basic Training, you'll likely get a wide variety of responses.  Some loved it, some hated it, and some are just apathetic.  It all depends on the person really, and you can't predict how you'll react to it either.  Some people went in thinking they would love it, but they ended up hating it and vice versa.  There is one good thing about Basic Training that I think everyone can agree on; it makes any subsequent training seem easier by comparison (unless you are a super-soldier and go for Ranger school or Special Forces or something).  Looking back on that experience, I'm sure glad I made it through, but I'd never want to do that again.

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