So who am I? I'm currently a 25 year old man in his third year of enlistment as an 0311. What makes me tick? The sound my wallet makes three days after payday-its tearful shrieks of fear and loneliness are a constant reminder that 11 days of ramen are a very real possibility. How did I get where I am today? That is a much harder question to answer. I had the idea of joining the military as a child. I would run around pretending to shoot strangers, I'd play only war games, watch only war movies, and knew the history of any major conflict the US had taken part in since the beginning. Throughout high school, I kept a serious eye on the military, using it as a back-up in the off chance I didn't make it into college. I graduated high school with high honors and was given a full scholarship to the University of Florida.
After 3 and a half long years of futility in pursuing a degree that served no purpose, I lost my scholarship, and, for a while, my will to continue in education. After taking a semester off, I decided that the military had waited long enough for me, and I requested information on the USMC website. Less than 12 hours later, a recruiter drove up to my apartment without warning, and less than three days later, I had signed the contract and was ready to go to MEPS. Scoring high on the ASVAB, I decided that the only job I wanted was to be in the infantry; my recruiter wasn't quite as happy with the idea and attempted to steer me away from it. Apparently, he thought I was intelligent enough to go into a job more suited for my ASVAB score. I proved him wrong. My logic was simple: If I'm going to join a military branch that everyone looks to in war for changing the tide of battle, I want to be on the front lines. I wanted to be like the guys in the movies, running and gunning, explosions and bullets everywhere. Little did I know, I'd be sent to a unit that gets its jollies off of Okinawa deployments, ITX sandstorms, and Bridgeport blizzards.
