by Jason Martin

Created on: February 06, 2009

With some qualifications, I disagree with that premise. The military is a highly structured environment that builds people into the type of people who will meet the military requirement for "success". Now, it should be understood that "success" in the military is not necessarily what success means in the civilian world.

For young people, perhaps just out of high school or college, they are probably at the peak of their life in terms of independence. They have spent the recent years learning and questioning the values that were presented to them in school. The military is not an envirinment to question. In the military, you will be expected to conform and react, not to question. This may present a problem for many people with an independent streak. Depending on the specialty that you are trained for in the military, you may have little to no opportunity to exert any creativity or individualism. The military values conformity and will spend time and money to make you fit the mold, beginning with Basic Training which will remove most issues of individualism from you to begin with.

The US military offers many fine forms of compensation for your service. All your basic needs-of-life will be provided for during your service, and many benefits will last long after, such as educational expense, perhaps some health care and other veteran's benefits. The length of service will determine the benefits.

Another consideration for potential enlistees, is career choice. The military can be a source of great training, some unique to the services. You can sometimes get a recruiter to guarantee the training that you will get after 'basic'. Be sure to try to get them to guarantee that you will actually work in that field. They have been known to give you the training that was guaranteed and then assign people to some other 'grunt' work that has nothing to do with the training. Mismatches of skills and assignment are rampant in the military.

So back to our original question; is the military the best choice? You have to take a long look at yourself and your desires. If you are the kind of person who has no direction and doesn't really know where to turn, it might be a good choice. The military will give you a direction, and provide you a world of skills to use. If however, you know your direction and just want help and experience in getting there, you might think twice. There is also the question of ethics. Are you willing to become a reactive instrument of your senior officers? Do you have deep feelings about the acts of war? Are you dedicated to the military methods of helping to achieve the country's desires? If you have reservations about any of these things you might want to seek some other avenues. Strong personalities are seldom valued in the military until you reach the officer ranks.

Consider carefully what you are signing at the recruiting office. It's a contract to provide service to the nation. It requires your total alliegence and dedication for the duration of the contract. Anything less is cheating the service and yourself.

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