One Year Down

Brandon was sworn into the Army a year ago today.  Here we are on that life changing day.

Over the past year we have learned a lot.  Some things didn't turn out like we planned, somethings turned out better.  I want to take a minute and talk about what we've observed along the way.  Keep in mind these are our opinions.  They don't reflect what every military family feels, and they certainly don't reflect what the Army thinks.  This is just what two people, who never thought they'd be affiliated with the military, have observed in the past year.

Where we were coming from:

First off let me remind you of where we were coming from when we decided to join the Army.  Brandon had spent years pursuing his dream of becoming a commercial airline pilot.  He took out a lot of student loan debt to pay for flight school.  The flight school was poorly managed and so Brandon ended up leaving the program before he was done with all of his certifications.  He was lucky to get a bachelors degree, but without his commercial or flight instructor ratings he couldn't earn any money as a pilot.

He tried working for the airlines as a baggage handler/customer service agent, but they hardly paid enough to keep us afloat - and we certainly weren't able to afford making any payments on his student loans.

Brandon started applying for jobs within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).  After spending almost a year on this process he was informed that he didn't meet some of the qualifications for those jobs.

This is when he finally started to consider the military as a possible career path. After MUCH deliberation we finally decided that Brandon should join the Army. (Read this post for the details on how we made that decision.)

Observations about Army life:

A few nights ago we sat down and made a list of all the pro's and cons of Army life.  Let's get the negative stuff out of the way and start with the cons.

CONS

It's not like the commercials
Being in the Army, even as a member of the Infantry, isn't as cool as it looks in the commercials.  Brandon isn't jumping out of helicopters and saving people every week.  When he is "out in the field" he's usually sleeping on the dirt and sitting around bored.

It's boring
Some of you have wondered what Brandon's work day is like.  Get ready to really either appreciate your job or hate it when you read this.

6:30 - 7:45 Physical Fitness Training.
            Usually they run on Monday's and do a Ruck March on Thursdays.  The other days are spent doing pushups and such.
7:45 - 9:00 Time off/ change clothes
            It's not worth it for Brandon to drive all the way home so he'll usually shower and change on post.
9:00 - 12:00ish Formation and explanation of the days activities (if any.)
            Brandon likes the days that they actually have assignments.  There are classes, work details, and other things that help fill the time.  But other days there is absolutely nothing planned for the grunts like Brandon to do.  Those are the days he hates because he is literally sitting around doing nothing.  He hates wasting time like that.
12:00ish to 1:00ish Lunch
           Again it's not worth it to drive home so Brandon will usually go to the USO and work on projects on his computer.
1:00ish - 5:00ish Finishing Day's assignments (if any).
           The hardest part is that he has to be released from work each day.  He can't just leave whenever he wants to.

Even on the days that they go to a shooting range things are still pretty boring.
First they have to draw weapons. Then they either walk to the shooting range or ride in one of the LMTVs.  Then they wait while the range gets set up. Then they have to "zero their weapon" (align the sight).  Then they have to wait their turn.  And finally they get to shoot their weapon.  Then there is more waiting.  Maybe a little bit more shooting.  And finally they all have to walk out onto the field and clean up bullet casings before going back to the company and returning their weapons.
         
Occasionally away from home
Brandon has been away from home for a total of about 6 months of the last year.  That's annoying and I know a lot of people would never join the Army because they don't want to be away from their family.  However, as hard as it is, Brandon and I are okay with it.  Remember he has always planned on being a pilot.  As a pilot he would be away from home a lot - and I've always been okay with that.  So when we decided to join the Army the time away from the family wasn't really that big of a draw back to us.

Most of the time when he is gone he is able to text and talk to me with his cell phone.  There are times he can't, but usually he and I will talk at least once a day and catch up on everything.

Basic training was different.  His Drill Sergeants were in charge of his phone privileges.  That was awful, but we knew it was temporary.

The only other time he didn't have his phone was when his unit was "in the box" at the NTC in January.  That was hard because I happened to find out I was pregnant during that time.

Of course there is always the probability of deployment.  That's just part of the job.  My only hope is that when Brandon is deployed he will be a Warrant Officer and flying.  Neither of us wants him bored out of his mind during a deployment as an infantryman.

Live away from extended family
This has been kind of a hard pill for some people to swallow.  Despite our constant reminders that we would move out of state when Brandon finished basic training - it still caught people off guard when we actually did it.  But again this was something that we expected to do if Brandon had become a pilot.  As a commercial pilot he would have moved his family to where ever the airlines decided to station him.  Actually this applied to the FAA jobs too.

And honestly thanks to skype, facebook, blogs, cell phones and so on, my relationship with 90% of my friends and family really hasn't changed that much.  Yeah it's kind of a bummer that we can't all hang out in person whenever we want, but let's just be thankful that these aren't pioneer times and we didn't set out for the frontier with only the promise of an occasional letter to keep us in touch.

Salary 
Brandon is paid the same amount no matter how many days he works.  Which is awesome in some ways (long weekends don't affect his pay amounts.)  But it's also hard because he works long days and doesn't get overtime.

Contract
Brandon is a member of the Army for the next 4 years - whether he wants to be or not.  There's pretty much nothing he can do about that.
But in a way its also nice to know that he isn't in danger of getting fired or laid off anytime soon. We've never had that kind of job security before.

Work Environment
How do I put this nicely?  Um, most people who are in the infantry aren't the most "highbrow" people in the world.  They tell crude stories and use crude language.  There are a lot of things that go on each day that would probably be considered hostile work environment sexual harassment.  The Army is working on dealing with sexual assault and sexual harassment, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.  For the most part Brandon just ignores the conversations around him.

Many people are also very negative about everything.  That wears on Brandon almost more than the obscene comments.  And a lot of people have huge chips on their shoulders that make them difficult to work with.

Lack of Advise/Mentors
Most people with Army experience gave Brandon tons of advise for how to handle basic training.  But hardly anyone talked about what to do once he was at his first duty station.  It was a huge adjustment.

It also didn't help that, because of his college degree, Brandon started as a Specialist/E4 instead of a Private/E1.  So he outranked a lot of people, but didn't have a clue what he was doing.  People would rattle off acronyms and jargon and Brandon would have to figure out what they were talking about.  His original team leader was also a pretty big jerk and wouldn't explain anything to Brandon.  He just assumed he should know it all.  (On the other hand the pay for an E4 is better than an E1 so we aren't complaining about that.)

It took about 5 months for Brandon to really get the hang of regular army life.  He recently got a new team leader who is much better to work with.

Aren't paying student loans
This is about the only Army "promise" that didn't pan out.  We were originally told, by the Navy Recruiter, that the Army would probably pay up to $60,000 of Brandon's student loans.  But when it came time to sign up they didn't agree to pay anything.  The fiscal situation in Washington meant that recruits weren't getting their student loans paid off as part of their contracts.  I was sad that we were still stuck with the debt, but at the end of the day it is our debt and we should be responsible to pay it.  And hey, at least with Brandon's army paycheck we can afford to pay it.    

Slow Process for everything
The Army moves at a snail's pace for anything you want done.  (But if they want something from you they expect it done yesterday.)  The Warrant Officer Application is a prime example of this.  We've been working on the Letters of Recommendation part for months now.

Poor Communication
It's a well known joke that "Army intelligence" is an oxymoron.  A lot of the issues comes from bad communication from leaders.  

Traffic is terrible
We've been told that this is more of a Fort Hood thing then a whole army thing, but traffic is terrible on post- especially at the gates.  It's one of the main reasons Brandon doesn't drive home during breaks.

For a while Brandon had to store all of his stuff at home.  It was a huge pain to come back home if his leaders forgot to let him know what gear he'd need that day.  Recently his company moved to a new building.  The new building has lockers so Brandon can keep all of his stuff at work.  That's made his life easier because he doesn't have to deal with driving home for one little thing anymore.

Fire Ants
Yes, fire ants are something everyone in the south has to deal with, but most people don't have to sleep outside and crawl though the dirt.  Brandon is still itching from the bites he got the night he ran out of bug spray during gunnery.

Okay enough cons.  Let's talk about the good stuff.  And the good stuff FAR outweighs the bad.

PROS

Money
Let's not kid ourselves here.  For all the talk about civic duty and national pride the real reason Brandon joined the Army was for the money and other benefits.  Some people say that the military doesn't pay that much, and I can see how that can be true, but for us this is more money than either of us ever made.  Sure it's not a TON, but we can pay our bills, the student loans, and still have some left over for fun.

I also really appreciate that there is enough money that I don't have to worry about getting a job to help pay the bills.  As much as being a stay at home mom wears on me, I think it wears on me a lot less than working and trying to maintain a household would.

Medical Insurance
None of Brandon's other jobs provided affordable insurance for our family.  Our three older kids are all Medicade babies.  Having good insurance for the whole family was a huge reason we joined the Army.

The House
Oh gosh, let's talk about the house.  This is my huge incentive to love the Army.  You have to understand I grew up in a house with 5 kids and only 3.5 bedrooms.  Brandon's house wasn't super big either while he was growing up. (It had more room once they finished the basement when he was older.)  Neither of us had air conditioning, dishwashers, or garages when we were kids.

So to be provided with a house with 4 large bedrooms, AC, a garage, and a dishwasher feels like luxury to me.  Heck, I'm still fascinated by the ice maker in the freezer.

If we didn't live on post we would be given a Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH).  This would allow us to rent or buy a pretty decent house too.

Extra Pay for College Degree
As I said earlier, Brandon started out as a Specialist/E4 instead of a Private/E1 because of his college degree.  There is a pretty big pay difference between the two.  Having an employer reward someone for their degree is pretty unheard of in this economy.  So I was happy that the Army would do it.

Regular work schedule
Unless he has overnight training scheduled, Brandon is home every evening.  He rarely is kept at work after 5:00 pm.  Some days he's home even earlier.  He also only has to go to work Monday through Friday.  Occasionally he'll get assigned a work detail for an evening or a Saturday, but I can count on one hand the times that has happened.

Get paid to Exercise
Brandon was somewhat overweight as a teenager.  Even after he lost a lot of weight on his mission he still never considered himself as an "athletic type." In his pre-army days he could do maybe 6 pushups before he got winded.  Now he can do 50.  At basic training he learned that he actually likes to run.  Most days he really likes getting up early to go exercise as part of his job.

Opportunity to do things out of the ordinary
Less than 1% of the United States population currently serves in the military.  As boring as the day in and day out routine can be, Brandon still gets to do some pretty unique things.  He's intimately acquainted with several huge caliber weapons.  He's lived on 4 different forts in the past year (Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Irvin in California, Fort Polk in Louisiana, and of course Fort Hood here in Texas.)  He's learned first aid for major trauma wounds.  He's learned battle tactics.  He loves doing land navigation courses.  One day he is going to be the coolest scout master ever.

I also really like the opportunity to live on post.  I think it's a cool experience.  I've gone from being scared of the guards at the gate at Hill Airforce base in Utah to casually scanning my ID to get home on Fort Hood.  The girls think it is normal to need to show "our ideas" to the "army guys."  They even have imaginary wallets where they store their imaginary IDs.

Time off
Brandon gets quite a bit of time off.  Yes it depends on the Army's time table when he gets to take it, but never the less its still a lot of time off.  We usually get a 4 day weekend for every federal holiday.  Every so often there is a "training holiday" where he gets a Friday off.  Extra time off is provided before and after the company leaves for training.  On top of all that he acquires lots of leave time that he can take at approved times.  It's very nice to have a day off and not have to wonder how it will affect his paycheck for the month.

Get to live outside of Utah
We love Utah a lot, but we've always wanted a chance to move away.  We think it's fun to get to know a new state.  And it's nice to get away from the "Utah Bubble."  As stressful as the move out here was, it was totally worth it.

Work with great people
Yes there are some "interesting" people in the Army, but there are also some really great people.  For every jerk that Brandon has to deal with there are five decent people that make up for it.  Even the guys with less than perfect attitudes still have things that make them good people.  And there is a big sense of community around here.  Every soldier is considered to be a "battle buddy" to every other soldier - whether they know each other or not.

We would do it again:  

Looking back, we can say that it was a good decision to join the Army. And given the same circumstances it is one that we would make again. At the time Brandon enlisted we had 3 kids, were living in a 2 bedroom apartment, and had one car. Now we are about to have our fourth kid, we live in a 4 bedroom house (with a garage!), and we have two cars.

We are able to afford making payments on his student loans (though no double payments yet). Brandon is also in the process of applying to fly helicopters as a Warrant Officer. This is probably the best thing that has come from joining the Army. Last year at this time we didn't even know what a Warrant Officer was, and Brandon had basically given up on flying as a career. Now we are back to chasing the dream.



We are excited to continue this adventure.