It's been a while since I last posted, I know my viewers and readers were waiting to see when my next post was gonna be, and well here it is.
First things first! I have officially sworn into the United States Air Force as of July 19, 2011! Okay..continuing blog.
The reason I haven't posted anything was because i wanted to wait until after I swore in to the Air Force to create a new blog. Makes sense right?...considering this is Part 2 of "The Decision". Now believe it or not, in reality it was only a few of months for this processing to finally come to an end (April 2011 - July 19 2011), but to me it seemed like an eternity. I'll tell you what happened that caused me to take forever to swear in to the Air Force.
The main thing that really held things up was the fact of the DEP discharge I had to get from the Marine Corps. Even after I got a letter from the Commander saying I was discharged and had no official obligations or affiliations with the Marines, and even after i was "discharged from my recruiter", it was the same damn recruiter who was holding on to my information and wouldn't sign it to transfer my information to the Air Force. It's messed up and honestly karma button is gonna be functioning for him, but I won't know when that would be considering I really don't care about the guy too much.
I know it's a recruiters job to be all buddy-buddy with you, so it makes it seem like everything's all sunshine and rainbows when you join a military branch, but my question to him would be, why couldn't you be real with me and the information you were giving me. Instead of trying to pressure me into swearing in and recruiting, you should have (in my opinion of course) just said, "Look, here's what you are doing, here's what we do and what your getting into etc etc". I would've been okay with that, but life is life and your gonna encounter people like that.
In any case, there were a couple lessons learned from this process:
First lesson is if your gonna join the military, KNOW which branch you wanna join before you go to MEPS, don't be wishy-washy on deciding between branches. Second lesson, if your going to DEP discharge from the Marines, prepare for a long ass process, because some Marine recruiters will actually hold you up from joining another branch (it's a fact from personal experience, and from researching these kinds of things).
If you're in that position and you're really determined to get out of a military branch and things seems like they are going really slow, you are more than welcome to call your local MEPS and talk to the operations or the higher ups of the specific branch. That's what they are there for, to help you out in case you are having any problems. That's what I did to get out of the Marines. I talked to the operations officer after talking to the Commander of MEPS, and the operations officer did in fact help me out, and got my information processed to the Air Force.
In any case, after filling out so much paperwork and signing so many things that made my head wanna explode and waiting an eternity for this process to end, it finally came to an end. I finally raised my right hand, said the Oath of Enlistment, and was officially a member of the worlds greatest air power, the United States Air Force.
They said the journey is more fun than the destination, or something like that. That's a bunch of bull, in this case anyways.
So what's next? When are you leaving? Are you excited?? When's the next blog post??
These are probably questions your asking now as your reading this, and I'll answer those in order.
So what's next?
Right now the next thing for me to do is to prepare myself for basic training. Like I said in the previous "Decision" post, basic training is in Lackland, Texas (or San Antonio if you want a city). Whether it's working out, researching jobs, learning insignia and rank, these are the things I need to do as basic training comes around the corner.
Besides keeping up with this blog and creating new blog posts, I will take my talents to YouTube and create videos about the Air Force and my experiences. Those videos are a future project and I will let you readers know when my videos are coming out. In the meantime I'm sticking to blogs for right now.
Also, in the meantime, i'll just be chillin out with friends and family and spending time with them
When are you leaving?
The goal is for August or September.. one of those two months are okay with me.
Are You Excited?
You dam right im excited! You would be too if you just swore in today and were in my position.
When's the next blog post?
It will be pretty soon honestly, I wont hang you readers out to dry like I did last time! I promise =) I'll actually be blogging a LOT more frequently nowadays. Plus I got some interesting topics that I've gotten from just taking a break from blogging. I'm always searching for topics that I can blog about too, so if you feel like you have a topic that you would like to see me talk about, contact me via on here on on twitter @TheBlackPH03N1X.
Until then my readers, god bless, and I'm ghost. Stay tuned for "The Decision: Part 3" and other various topics.
