Thread: Army Reserve
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Old 07-20-2011, 9:12 AM
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Snoopy47 Snoopy47 is offline
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I will take a major risk in chiming in here. I’m a newly enlisted reservist with no prior experience and 38 years old with extensive civilian experience and credentials. I ship in 2 months for BCT and AIT.

I just barely made it in by 3 days. Because when I started the application process the age limit was 42, and in the process the army lowered it back down to 35, and I signed up 3 days before that took effect, and I could only do so as a reservist because the moment I signed was the moment the my in service clock started. To have gone active would have required I ship out before that dead line and that was impossible to find a job and unit in that time and still be able to tell work I’m quitting in 3 days.

I’m not your typical young soldier looking to set out in life after high school or college. I am seeing two kinds of soldier in my unit in the time I’ve drilled with them.
1) Young ones just counting their time till they are out after having served their stint as active duty, and trying to milk the education incentives the best they can.
2) Older ones like me who are using the reserves as an enhancement to their otherwise lame civilian lives.

I’m also not intimidated by the “discipline” of my unit. I’ve seen a lot more discipline in marching bands (this is not an exaggeration).

I think I got lucky, and my MOS is everything. My unit actually does things, and picks up the slack for the regular army. In fact, the administrative aspect of being “mission ready” like range, and vehicle and supply maintenance seems to get in they way of keeping up on our MOS mission.

Our two weeks a year is spent overseas. So as for the ease of earning ribbons yep, it’s there. There is a reserve ribbon for training overseas for 10 consecutive days. POOF, I’ll get a ribbon just for showing up to annual training.

However, not being MOS qualified I spent my last entire drill both days sitting in the supply Sgt’s office with the others not MOS cleared just screwing around. The only productive thing we did was inventory obsolete uniforms to be returned and replaced with new ones (and that only took an hour).

My company is only 30% strength. Officers and Warrants out number enlisted. However, there seems to be really poor coordination in letting the rest of the world know about these openings. I don’t know if they only like to fill one at a time or what, but I was given the impression I was lucky to find my MOS opening, only to find out the unit has 80 openings at all sorts of ranks and MOS’s.

My impression is I can excel in the reserves if I want to, and opportunity is there for those that can navigate the system.
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