To those who went through the process or thought about joining

Almost joined, so glad I didn't. My father warned me against it and I now understand why; after his years of service he came out with no useful transferable skills or anything to show for it.
Go to college or university and study a STEM major.

I joined but regret doing so. Fuckin sucked.

>>17784665
My feelings about this cycle quite a lot.

Background:
>Cadets at school
>Officer Training Corps and Cadet Instructor at uni
>Was pretty fucking good at this shit
>Not able to balance it with my studies
>Slowly wind down and stop

Every now and again I realise that remaining in the reserves would have made me a more interesting person to others. However, it is a massive time-sink; you will be spending up to 1 in 2 weekends training. That's a lot of time.

Also, there are great opportunities to travel, meet new people, have sex with debutantes, the whole shit.

I think about joining up again now. my civilian skill-set is closely related to those which the army will make direct use of but my field is not something that the army use day-to-day. I would need to spend time in civvie street training myself up for my military role and this puts me off quite a bit. I don't want to spend a year out of training in order to wear a beret.

Having said that, I always feel a pang of jealousy when I meet serving or former soldiers/officer. I have huge respect for them.

>>17784756
tl;dr- consider reserves but active military is a lot less chill

>>17784665
I decided to leave USMC boot camp if you have any questions.

In general I wonder about it a lot, who I would be. Kierkegaard said that perhaps the saddest experience is remembering the future, particularly the one you will never have.

Currently in the Marine Corps. It is really what you make of it.