AlaskaTeach wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2023 9:23 pm
Just using my own experience, I really enjoyed the Psychology courses, as they overlapped with Management courses. By the time I finally graduated at the age of 27, I was taking a Bachelor's degree program in a non-traditional program for adults. I was required to document my experiences and competencies in the work force and write a paper based upon the experiences. It was a 70 or so page paper. That was the "Capstone course" for the adult degree. I had to concentrate on three areas or so. I chose Psychology, Business Communications and Business Management.
Right after college I became a restaurant manager for 8.5 years and then found my niche as a teacher, in an alternative certification program.
If I had it to do over again in today's environment of high tuition and fees, I would find the degree program that would have exposed me to the most different kinds of people, and get the degree as quickly as possible, while at the same time doing a "minor" in Military Studies. Iow, join the Guard, go ROTC/SMP and graduate with a commission in the National Guard or Army Reserve. The government would pay for loans through the Student Loan Repayment Program. Retiring as early as age 38 from the Guard enables a person to receive health insurance benefits - either free or almost free when the Guardsman retires from the military at age 60.
I say this because I served in the Texas Army National Guard starting senior in high school and finished at age 27. I went ING, which is Inactive National Guard and then IRR, Inactive Ready Reserve.
A person who has a "boring desk job" during the week can do all kinds of fun stuff on the weekend in the Guard, like shooting a machine gun, getting troops lost at North Fort Hood, Texas, camping in the woods, etc.
That poor 2nd Lt. who got us lost at Fort Hood must have been sick to his/her stomach. We drove around for hours and finally found the place, got off the truck, shot M203 grenade launchers and Light Anti-Tank weapons for about an hour and jumped back on the truck to go back home.
You can't get that kind of leadership experience at a young age in many places, I would think.
This is all good re leadership experiences. At least for an outdoors-oriented person.
However my (non-US) impression was that 9-11 was a game changer. After that, as part of the War on Terror, just about everyone with National Guard or Army Reserve status found themselves mobilized at some point, and in most cases rotated through either Iraq or Afghanistan, and sometimes more than once? Years out of their lives (besides high levels of danger and stress, of course).
Now right now the USA does not have those sorts of commitments, and political leaders would be wary of re-entering into them. However there's plenty of international flashpoints. As I understand it, the US military is now highly configured around using its "Reserve" units in times of crisis to fulfil essential functions.
But the point is that when they say
service, they
mean it, and it can be really disruptive of one's life, and put one behind one's peers significantly because of the length of deployment.
I may just not understand how the system works. But this is the impression from someone outside the USA (but interested in issues of military readiness).