[SlickyBoy]

Agree mostly with Waqqle. Explore the Coast Guard, then Air Force, but put the Army ahead of the Navy. And unless you have some deep seated, unmet need in your life for brotherhood and an obsession with uniforms, you probably want to skip the Marines too.

Whatever your friend may know about being red pilled (knowing what women are capable of - hopefully he does), he needs to triple that outlook in the military services and watch his step. There are all kinds of pitfalls and it gets worse every year. Both of those career fields that he has in mind are coed, so he will experience some of these threats first hand, he will witness how females are treated differently, given a pass for bad behavior and generally are cost ineffective, unmotivated participants in what they see as a camouflaged welfare system. But I digress.

As to his line of thinking:

It sounds like your friend is being fed a line from an Army recruiter about what slots are open in the next couple of months.

Why Chemical corps? Chemical on active duty is not a highly sought after branch, so he might want to ask himself why he really is being fed this choice. Recruiters have goals to meet - don't be just a number for them.

Why MP? It's ok as a job but he should also think twice about how it could set him up to be a civilian cop. If that's what he is after he may be surprised to learn that some departments don't like to hire former MPs because they are trained completely differently. There are some interesting jobs in MP branch, but many will not be available to him as a reservist - he should do more research and understand this before signing anything.

He should understand that the steady paycheck for one weekend isn't all that much money - has he looked at the pay tables lately? There are probably other ways to make $425.13 over the weekend. A large part of the appeal of the volunteer services nowadays is to those with few other economic options - like your friend, apparently. Remember too, if he only makes that as an O1, imagine the kind of person who puts up with a weekend of busy work for somewhere between $244.11-$292.61. Yeah, those would be the privates (E1-E4) he's going to be responsible for as a newly minted 2LT. If he's never led anything in his life or isn't at least the eldest brother of a couple of mischievous younger siblings, he's got no idea what's coming. Chemical Corps isn't exactly rocket science or high on the esprit de corp factor so it attracts a lot of sponges looking for benefits.

Speaking of sponges, as an officer he will be expected to do some more. If he expects any long term benefits, part time only won't get him very far.

[RIslander]

RVF, as always, delivered. I'm going to link him to this thread. I notice several of you spoke well of the Coast Guard, and that's something I have actually considered for myself as a Reservist. They have a direct entry NCO program for Port Security Units. Does anyone know anything about that?

[Waqqle]

[Waqqle]

(01-26-2019 11:03 PM)RIslander Wrote:  

RVF, as always, delivered. I'm going to link him to this thread. I notice several of you spoke well of the Coast Guard, and that's something I have actually considered for myself as a Reservist. They have a direct entry NCO program for Port Security Units. Does anyone know anything about that?

https://www.gocoastguard.com/reserve-car...d-programs

[Heuristics]

This is a very life-altering question, and as a civilian I can only tell you this:

For guys that really want to do it, they really get a lot of out of it. One of my friends was into military history and he loves it since he joined. He was basically into LARPing before joining the military, so now the military is just one big LARP for him. He would probably be the guy in one of those stolen valor videos yelling at the imposter, "x patch is in the wrong place, and you have too many combat ribbons for your rank, etc..."

For guys with little direction or no organizational skills it will improve them as people. The number of high school potheads I've seen join, and people with no direction, and turn their lives around is a testament to the power of discipline.

I have friends in the military, and as one poster said it's not a meritocracy (friends serving have confirmed this) and burdened by red-tape, and military is becoming pretty SJW-y these days, just google and you'll find photos of crossdressing and gay pride celebrations.

The one thing that deterred me (I'm college educated but was lacking direction), was injury or exposure to harmful substances/ working conditions. You name it, they have it in the military. All sorts of occupational injuries, not to mention military has a long history of exposing soldiers to potentially deadly substances (like DDT for example). Several of my friends are at least partially disabled because of military incompetence. You're government property.

On the other hand, joining the military to get an education (esp. post-grad) or learn an expensive trade/ occupation and then doing your service and getting out is not a half bad idea. You can leverage that into a career in civil aviation, medicine, government contracting, etc.

I can confirm via observation, however, that if you have one iota of game, being in the military will get you laid.

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

If you join the Army as a 35P (cryptologic linguist) you will get to spend anywhere from 6-18 months stationed in Monterey, CA learning a language full-time. The other services all have an equivalent of this MOS and send their people to the same school. By the time you graduate, if you graduate (it's one of the military courses with the highest fail rate), you'll be borderline fluent in your language.

The downside is that if you're a new enlistee, you can submit preferences but won't get to actually pick your language (if you've already been in for a few years you can re-enlist to go to school for a specific language, which is what I did to study Mandarin). The largest contingents of students at the school by far are studying Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Arabic, and Farsi--so odds are you'll get assigned to one of those languages although there are 15-20 or so other languages taught there and they're also possibilities. Obviously some of those languages are more attractive to the type of men reading this forum than others.

[Waqqle]

^
This was my MOS (35P) as well and I was at the DLI (Defense Language Institute) for a while. Only the Coast Guard does not have linguists so that is the only branch which definitely won't send you to the DLI but they do have a base of their own in town right across the street from the DLI and they all live in town because the Coast Guard does not have barracks. They also have other bases/stations up and down the rest of the California coast.

I didn't make it through the course myself so, if you want to know how to pass it, you would do better to ask someone else who has succeeded in doing so. I can only really say what not to do from my own experience. The class I started in had 18 people and there were 7 or 8 left by the time they graduated. The crappy thing is that, even if the coursework is easy for you (as it was for me), all the other stuff you'll have to deal with, as well as whatever personal stuff you might be dealing with unrelated to being mentally able to learn your target language, may wear you down and crack you. This happened to me and it happens to others too. Behavioral Health (Psychiatry) is always overbooked and understaffed, or at least it was for all of the time I was at the DLI. The DLI is more of a psychological challenge than a physical one.

Mantis is right about not being able to choose your language. I was initially assigned Levantine Arabic but pestered my superiors every day until they switched me to another language that I was more interested in but this is not common. Generally, what you are assigned is what you get.

Personally, I think that the method of instruction at the DLI, at least for the course I was in, is almost worse than self study and the restrictions placed upon you make it exceedingly difficult to get any actual speaking practice outside of class. I think you might be better off (assuming you have an aptitude for languages) choosing a different MOS that won't put you in TRADOC (training environment) for 2 years and just learning on your own time while practicing with online conversation partners and maybe the foreign spouses living on base who speak whichever language you have an interest in. If you learn a language at the DLI, it will be in spite of the Army, not because of it.

That's just my own two cents and other people would surely have different views. Another thing to consider is that signing up to be a 35P necessarily means signing up for 5-6 years (or at least it did in my case) because the training period itself is 2+ years. Most MOSs will let you sign up for 4 or even 3 in some cases. Also, to be a 35P, you will need to be able to get a Top Secret security clearance. I never got one because my investigation process took an unusually long amount of time due to my lifestyle prior to joining the Army (I wasn't involved in criminal stuff, I just moved around alone overseas for several years and I didn't have many references who could confirm anything about me or my life during that period). I had already dropped out of the course before it concluded and told them I didn't want the clearance and signed a paper requesting that they cease the investigation process. From what I saw, the investigation process normally takes around a year to complete and some people get their clearances right before or right after graduation from the language course. If, for whatever reason, you are denied the required clearance, you will be re-classed into a different MOS that does not require the level of security clearance that you were unable to acquire.

[jimukr75]

"Why MP? It's ok as a job but he should also think twice about how it could set him up to be a civilian cop. If that's what he is after he may be surprised to learn that some departments don't like to hire former MPs because they are trained completely differently. There are some interesting jobs in MP branch, but many will not be available to him as a reservist - he should do more research and understand this before signing anything. "

Most large depts hire from civil service list so its irrelevant. If I have a higher test score , I get hired before the former MP so its a moot point(I probably did beat out a bunch). Small depts might be different but then they pay crap usually. For FED law enforcement it will probably help since they don't hire everyone from the test scores on their civil service list. They have the 1 out of 3 rule so when they get to a certain test score 3 candidates are called and ONE hired and then they pick the next 3 highest scores. The 1 candidate out of 3 who has military background will often win out unless other 2 candidates have desirable skills like language ability , former law enforcement, etc.
Most guardsmen I know did it for the education benefits and then used the college credits to qualify for police exam.

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

(02-01-2019 05:23 PM)Waqqle Wrote:  

^
This was my MOS (35P) as well and I was at the DLI (Defense Language Institute) for a while. Only the Coast Guard does not have linguists so that is the only branch which definitely won't send you to the DLI but they do have a base of their own in town right across the street from the DLI and they all live in town because the Coast Guard does not have barracks. They also have other bases/stations up and down the rest of the California coast.

I didn't make it through the course myself so, if you want to know how to pass it, you would do better to ask someone else who has succeeded in doing so. I can only really say what not to do from my own experience. The class I started in had 18 people and there were 7 or 8 left by the time they graduated. The crappy thing is that, even if the coursework is easy for you (as it was for me), all the other stuff you'll have to deal with, as well as whatever personal stuff you might be dealing with unrelated to being mentally able to learn your target language, may wear you down and crack you. This happened to me and it happens to others too. Behavioral Health (Psychiatry) is always overbooked and understaffed, or at least it was for all of the time I was at the DLI. The DLI is more of a psychological challenge than a physical one.

Mantis is right about not being able to choose your language. I was initially assigned Levantine Arabic but pestered my superiors every day until they switched me to another language that I was more interested in but this is not common. Generally, what you are assigned is what you get.

Personally, I think that the method of instruction at the DLI, at least for the course I was in, is almost worse than self study and the restrictions placed upon you make it exceedingly difficult to get any actual speaking practice outside of class. I think you might be better off (assuming you have an aptitude for languages) choosing a different MOS that won't put you in TRADOC (training environment) for 2 years and just learning on your own time while practicing with online conversation partners and maybe the foreign spouses living on base who speak whichever language you have an interest in. If you learn a language at the DLI, it will be in spite of the Army, not because of it.

That's just my own two cents and other people would surely have different views. Another thing to consider is that signing up to be a 35P necessarily means signing up for 5-6 years (or at least it did in my case) because the training period itself is 2+ years. Most MOSs will let you sign up for 4 or even 3 in some cases. Also, to be a 35P, you will need to be able to get a Top Secret security clearance. I never got one because my investigation process took an unusually long amount of time due to my lifestyle prior to joining the Army (I wasn't involved in criminal stuff, I just moved around alone overseas for several years and I didn't have many references who could confirm anything about me or my life during that period). I had already dropped out of the course before it concluded and told them I didn't want the clearance and signed a paper requesting that they cease the investigation process. From what I saw, the investigation process normally takes around a year to complete and some people get their clearances right before or right after graduation from the language course. If, for whatever reason, you are denied the required clearance, you will be re-classed into a different MOS that does not require the level of security clearance that you were unable to acquire.

This is mostly true, I was not a 35P but re-enlisted to go to DLI after I'd already been in for a few years (and already had my clearance). Doing it this way means more total time in service but also allows you to pick your language and makes your time in Monterey more enjoyable, as you are not still in an extended form of basic training and are generally treated like an adult.

The one thing I strenuously disagree with is that studying a language on your own can be just as effective as DLI, it simply isn't--your full time job for 6-16 months depending on your language is studying, you're in class 6-7 hours a day (usually full immersion after the first couple months) plus 1-3 hours a night of homework. It's intense but it's the best way to get fluent or near-fluent in a foreign language, especially the complicated ones like Chinese and Russian, without living in that country (and depending on the language you may get to spend a month or so living abroad--I got to study in Taiwan about 2/3 of the way through the course, the Russian students got to go to Estonia or Lithuania IIRC).

My Chinese is pretty rusty now (need to get that back up) but at the time I graduated it was as close to fluent as I could've possibly gotten without spending several months living in China or Taiwan.

[Waqqle]

^
Taiwan must have been really fun. I hope to go there at some point and maybe pick up some Mandarin too.

Language learning I think is one of those things that can tend to be pretty personal and different people have their own methods. In my case, I really did not like the teaching style in my particular class or the fact that there were so many restrictions in place and there was virtually nobody in town who spoke my target language (Korean) that I could practice with. For me, speaking practice is the most important element in language learning and classrooms have always been a bit difficult so I tend to prefer short bursts of self study followed by lots of speaking practice out in the world. If I can't get lots of speaking practice, I tend to lose interest pretty quickly because I don't care for texting in HelloTalk and all that stuff (to be honest, I should have considered this more than I did before signing up but I didn't know what I was getting into and what's done is done). In my mind, language is a means to an end and that end is communication. If I'm not doing that, it feels pointless.

That's just me though and my way certainly isn't the end all and be all. My Korean is actually unacceptably rusty as well and I want to go back to Korea to polish it up soon. It was never very good but I could at least converse on a basic level and I want to revive it. I'm thinking of teaching English in Korea so I can get my level up off the clock.

[BBinger]

(02-01-2019 08:01 PM)Dr Mantis Toboggan Wrote:  

This is mostly true, I was not a 35P but re-enlisted to go to DLI after I'd already been in for a few years (and already had my clearance). Doing it this way means more total time in service but also allows you to pick your language and makes your time in Monterey more enjoyable, as you are not still in an extended form of basic training and are generally treated like an adult.

The one thing I strenuously disagree with is that studying a language on your own can be just as effective as DLI, it simply isn't--your full time job for 6-16 months depending on your language is studying, you're in class 6-7 hours a day (usually full immersion after the first couple months) plus 1-3 hours a night of homework. It's intense but it's the best way to get fluent or near-fluent in a foreign language, especially the complicated ones like Chinese and Russian, without living in that country (and depending on the language you may get to spend a month or so living abroad--I got to study in Taiwan about 2/3 of the way through the course, the Russian students got to go to Estonia or Lithuania IIRC).

My Chinese is pretty rusty now (need to get that back up) but at the time I graduated it was as close to fluent as I could've possibly gotten without spending several months living in China or Taiwan.

Mandarin or Cantonese?

For the longest time I though enlisting when I was 18 would have been a quick fix for life, but now. Not so sure. Sure, the Coast Guard could have trained me to be a pirate, but...

[Waqqle]

(02-01-2019 08:54 PM)BBinger Wrote:  

(02-01-2019 08:01 PM)Dr Mantis Toboggan Wrote:  

This is mostly true, I was not a 35P but re-enlisted to go to DLI after I'd already been in for a few years (and already had my clearance). Doing it this way means more total time in service but also allows you to pick your language and makes your time in Monterey more enjoyable, as you are not still in an extended form of basic training and are generally treated like an adult.

The one thing I strenuously disagree with is that studying a language on your own can be just as effective as DLI, it simply isn't--your full time job for 6-16 months depending on your language is studying, you're in class 6-7 hours a day (usually full immersion after the first couple months) plus 1-3 hours a night of homework. It's intense but it's the best way to get fluent or near-fluent in a foreign language, especially the complicated ones like Chinese and Russian, without living in that country (and depending on the language you may get to spend a month or so living abroad--I got to study in Taiwan about 2/3 of the way through the course, the Russian students got to go to Estonia or Lithuania IIRC).

My Chinese is pretty rusty now (need to get that back up) but at the time I graduated it was as close to fluent as I could've possibly gotten without spending several months living in China or Taiwan.

Mandarin or Cantonese?

For the longest time I though enlisting when I was 18 would have been a quick fix for life, but now. Not so sure. Sure, the Coast Guard could have trained me to be a pirate, but...

I never heard of anyone being assigned Cantonese but that doesn't necessarily mean it has never happened. Everyone I knew who was in Chinese was in for Mandarin. There were some Chinese-Americans who grew up speaking Cantonese at home there though. They tended to have an easier time learning Mandarin than their non-Chinese classmates. Same is true for the Chinese-American students who spoke Mandarin and were assigned to Korean because something like half of all the vocabulary in Korean is derived from or identical to Mandarin. That's only what I saw. Mantis definitely knows more about the Chinese program at DLI than I do.

[BBinger]

(02-01-2019 08:59 PM)Waqqle Wrote:  

I never heard of anyone being assigned Cantonese but that doesn't necessarily mean it has never happened. Everyone I knew who was in Chinese was in for Mandarin. There were some Chinese-Americans who grew up speaking Cantonese at home there though. They tended to have an easier time learning Mandarin than their non-Chinese classmates. Same is true for the Chinese-American students who spoke Mandarin and were assigned to Korean because something like half of all the vocabulary in Korean is derived from or identical to Mandarin.

Thank you. I have a couple friends looking to make friends with native level Chinese speakers for access to all that good manufacturing shit, but...

The advantage of knowing when other English speaker dealing with Chicoms are not going to get their "promised" outcome would also be a big boon.

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

Mandarin. The purpose of the school is to teach military personnel critical languages for national security (hence the most common languages I listed a few posts back), I can't say they've never taught Cantonese there (maybe back in the 50s/60s?) but they don't now.

As for classroom vs live learning...speaking with strangers is the best way to develop your skills but it's only a major difference if you're in a full immersion environment, outside of Spanish you aren't going to really find that in the US. You can get some practice with the Asian languages though both in Monterey itself and especially if you go up to San Francisco or San Jose. Some friends and I also met a bunch of mainland Chinese students from MIIS--a small university in Monterey aligned with Middlebury College that focuses on international studies and has foreign students from all over--I actually went out on a date with one but then got paranoid about getting spied on by MSS and ghosted her (one guy actually married one, but he was kind of "special"). It'd probably be easy enough to get outside practice in a lot of the other languages like Farsi and Russian too.