How do you know you are "military material"

[wiscRD]

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Reading through these forums there are a lot for posts similar to the following: the military is not for everyone, one needs to do the military for the right reasons and not for money, some people just aren't made for the military, etc... I agree that all of these are true, but am wondering what makes someone "military material?" How did you know that you were (or were not) a good fit for the military?

 

[Kingfisher]

Reading through these forums there are a lot for posts similar to the following: the military is not for everyone, one needs to do the military for the right reasons and not for money, some people just aren't made for the military, etc... I agree that all of these are true, but am wondering what makes someone "military material?" How did you know that you were (or were not) a good fit for the military?

Unfortunately, you are not going to find the answer to your question here. Best of luck though.

 

[orbitsurgMD]

Reading through these forums there are a lot for posts similar to the following: the military is not for everyone, one needs to do the military for the right reasons and not for money, some people just aren't made for the military, etc... I agree that all of these are true, but am wondering what makes someone "military material?" How did you know that you were (or were not) a good fit for the military?

Like any mature decision that substantially affects the trajectory of your career and life, deciding to commit to military service requires self-assessment. There are a lot of specifics in this forum about the various branches and what has and hasn't worked out for military medical folks. I hope you have taken or will take the time to read through them. Some experiences are perennial and seem to affect people who entered 20 years ago just as much as they do today; others represent new demands of the military on its members and may change by the time you are on active duty where the military is a part of your daily life.

The desire to do service in a recognizable way that the military affords is really not enough.

There is no one "test" you can apply to yourself, but if you object to fundamental requirements of the military, you really should not join. You must be willing to accept orders and do your best to follow them. If you are assigned to deploy for a year, that is what you will have to do, and others will be counting on you to do your best, and do a good job, along the way. You also have to accept military lifestyle disciplines. If your workday starts at 0730, that is when you start work. You have to wear a uniform, maintain weight and fitness standards, show appropriate courtesies and observe military regulations that affect how you spend your free time. You do not have the freedoms you would have as a civilian. You are not free to use drugs or even associate with those who do. You cannot do business with anyone you please, and you are not free to say anything you like, no matter what you may think.

Despite your willingness to do all of the above, there are harder realities you must also accept. While you may "love" being in the military, there are many circumstances by which you my feel the military does not reciprocate. You must understand that the services are under no obligation to please you and the exodus of the majority of HPSP accessions early in the years of a typical military career ought to be strong evidence that many medical officers conclude their futures would be better without a military obligation. That doesn't just mean more money elsewhere, although that is often the case, but it also means opportunities to train in a chosen field and the opportunity to train when you want. A lot of important things in your life will depend on the latter; it will have a lot to do with how soon you will be able to stabilize your life and have more time for family and other important things. Don't assume the services will help you in that way.

Good luck with your decision. I guess I would add that if you have any reluctance at all, walk away.

 

[colbgw02]

As already indicated, there's no way to answer that question. I've met people who I think belong on a commune in northern California spending half their day weaving hemp rope turn out to be excellent career officers. I've also seen hard-charging, high-speed, super-hooah dudes separate at the first chance and never think twice about it.

 

[haujun]

Like any mature decision that substantially affects the trajectory of your career and life, deciding to commit to military service requires self-assessment. There are a lot of specifics in this forum about the various branches and what has and hasn't worked out for military medical folks. I hope you have taken or will take the time to read through them. Some experiences are perennial and seem to affect people who entered 20 years ago just as much as they do today; others represent new demands of the military on its members and may change by the time you are on active duty where the military is a part of your daily life.

The desire to do service in a recognizable way that the military affords is really not enough.

There is no one "test" you can apply to yourself, but if you object to fundamental requirements of the military, you really should not join. You must be willing to accept orders and do your best to follow them. If you are assigned to deploy for a year, that is what you will have to do, and others will be counting on you to do your best, and do a good job, along the way. You also have to accept military lifestyle disciplines. If your workday starts at 0730, that is when you start work. You have to wear a uniform, maintain weight and fitness standards, show appropriate courtesies and observe military regulations that affect how you spend your free time. You do not have the freedoms you would have as a civilian. You are not free to use drugs or even associate with those who do. You cannot do business with anyone you please, and you are not free to say anything you like, no matter what you may think.

Despite your willingness to do all of the above, there are harder realities you must also accept. While you may "love" being in the military, there are many circumstances by which you my feel the military does not reciprocate. You must understand that the services are under no obligation to please you and the exodus of the majority of HPSP accessions early in the years of a typical military career ought to be strong evidence that many medical officers conclude their futures would be better without a military obligation. That doesn't just mean more money elsewhere, although that is often the case, but it also means opportunities to train in a chosen field and the opportunity to train when you want. A lot of important things in your life will depend on the latter; it will have a lot to do with how soon you will be able to stabilize your life and have more time for family and other important things. Don't assume the services will help you in that way.

Good luck with your decision. I guess I would add that if you have any reluctance at all, walk away.

👍

Insightful post!

Also make sure you are okay with your pay not depend on your productivity but rather on your longetivity. 🙄

 

[wiscRD]

Thanks for the posts so far!

I know there isn't one clear cut answer, but how did you know military medicine was the right choice for you? Did you just try it and it worked? Was there a characteristic of military medicine that stood out to you and this is why you choose it? Did you grow up in a military family and because of that you just knew military medicine was what you wanted to do? Military medicine seems like a pretty significant decision so I would think each person had a reason for choosing it.

 

[colbgw02]

but how did you know military medicine was the right choice for you?

Fourth-generation Army here. I grew up in the Army, and while my parents never forced me into anything, it was pretty clear that some sort of service was expected of me. The decision to be a physician came later.

 

[orbitsurgMD]

Thanks for the posts so far!

I know there isn't one clear cut answer, but how did you know military medicine was the right choice for you? Did you just try it and it worked? Was there a characteristic of military medicine that stood out to you and this is why you choose it? Did you grow up in a military family and because of that you just knew military medicine was what you wanted to do? Military medicine seems like a pretty significant decision so I would think each person had a reason for choosing it.

I joined because of the HPSP program and I was going to an expensive (at the time) medical school and I had several friends who were doing the same thing and didn't have anything negative to say about it (they were also students, so they really had only school experience themselves). We weren't at war. The last casualties the USA took was in the Beiruit Marine Barracks bombing, and the invasions of Grenada and Panama hadn't taken place. We were secretly funding an insurgency in a far away country called Afghanistan. Saddam hadn't yet invaded Kuwait. Ronald Reagan was still president and turning over to the first Bush presidency. The Berlin wall was still standing with many hostile governments to its east. The Navy's main job was preparing to destroy Soviet ballistic missile submarines at a moment's notice. It was a very different world.

My dad had been in the Army as an enlisted reservist after college, but I was under no pressure to join the volunteer military.

Also, at the time, the military medical services had not yet undergone the huge contraction in size it undertook when it released most of the retiree component it had once accommodated within the military medical system to the civilian sector under CHAMPUS, then, and later Tricare. The training opportunities when I joined were far more robust and plentiful; that changed quickly as there was massive downsizing, closing of training hospitals and a general loss of patients from which to train. Unfortunately, I was already signed on. I would have at least strongly reconsidered joining the Navy had I had any foreknowledge of what was going to happen between the time I signed my contract and the time I had to report for surgery internship. Also, at the time, word-of-mouth was the only way to have any information; the World Wide Web wasn't available, and the internet was a non-commercial, text-based, rudimentary affair with mostly government and institutional clients (except for Al Gore, I guess)--few forums or anything we take for granted now on the web. Personal computing was not yet part of student life, except for library article searches. (An Apple Macintosh SE/30 cost over $3000 and those clunky brick cell phones that are featured on TV ads as retro-jokes were new and expensive--and analog. [/geezing])

 

[colbgw02]

Dude, you are officially old.

 

[orbitsurgMD]

Dude, you are officially old.

Do I get a wall plaque?

We had old (even for then) Motorola squalking radio pagers at Portsmouth. The hospital administrators were too cheap to buy newer commonly-used digital-display pagers. The things were so bad you couldn't hear messages half the time and there was no saving the message, it was live over the phone. If you were somewhere noisy, you had to hope they would call you back. They finally caved and bought new ones but were really stingy about replacement. I know some housestaff had to deliberately disable the useless old ones to justify replacements.

Oh, the hospital also took away all the resident sleeping accommodations mid-year. This was in the bad old days when the limit on weekly hours was 168. There was literally no place to get any sleep if you had any time to rest. Interns and residents were going into equipment storage rooms to sleep on unused gurneys. The place was a real hole.

 

[SFGuy2011]

I've been in the military for almost 9 years now - with both active duty and guard time, and I still don't think I'm military material. 🙄

 

[DiveMD]

I've been in the military for almost 9 years now - with both active duty and guard time, and I still don't think I'm military material. 🙄

Love it!

 

[SFGuy2011]

Love it!

Obviously, you're someone who knows what I'm talking about.

It's pretty much a constant kick in the cajones. What's kept me in it for this long are my teammates. That, and then there are those occasional moments where you actually get to do the stuff you were trained to do. During those times - it's almost actually worth it. Then you go back to getting kicked in the nuts again until the next time.

For reasons beyond my own comprehension, I'm going to try and get commissioned to attend medical school and beyond. It's a constant battle that goes on in my head - especially for someone, like myself, who severely dislikes most officers.

 

[turkish]

Right off the bat you need to understand that not all military schools will accept troubled teens. Some schools have a policy that youth in trouble with the law or with a serious mental problem or a history of drug and alcohol abuse will simply not be admitted.

You might be in the wrong forum, dude.

 

[Perrotfish]

Right off the bat you need to understand that not all military schools will accept troubled teens. Some schools have a policy that youth in trouble with the law or with a serious mental problem or a history of drug and alcohol abuse will simply not be admitted.

I LOL'd