Joining the military

If you guys don’t mind, I will indulge your patience once again in my self reflections about future career ideas.

So I was reading the Chronicle of Higher education today and saw an interesting article on the recent US supreme court decision to open up all university campuses that receive federal funding to military recruiters. Interestingly, and thankfully for once, the article wasn’t a diatribe against the military and how awful of a development this was. It was written by Second Lt. John Renehan, a field artillery officer with the Third Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga.

The first major point of Lt Renehan’s article is that the opening up of these elite campuses to military recruiters won’t increase military enrollment since many of the students at these universities have never considered military service as a viable career option and in fact view military service as just an outright bizarre way to make a living. Unlike in the past, say the 1800’s and early 1900’s when a stint in the military as expected and normal for many community leaders, people now tend to avoid it like the plague and associate with so many negative things. Of course this change in the view of the role of the military in our society stems from the 1960’s anti-vietnam war movements. The greatest challenge facing the armed forces in recruiting is the huge ideological transformations that have happened since the 60’s. (It is only emerging now how our society has changed since the 60’s and how the acceptance of its ideas have changed and are changing our society, but that is a whole other post).

A realization that has dawned upon me in the past few months is that I should have seriously considered joining the military straight out of high school. This may sound weird to those of you who don’t know me terribly well, but one of my most keenest interest as a young child was military stuff. I would devour information about the military regardless of what it was about. Weapons, tactics, leadership, history, intelligence, you name it.

So what are some fo the reasons why I didn’t join at the time. (I actually recall considering it but rejecting it at the time as just not something a doctor’s son does).

1) Perhaps greatest was the general ideology that I subscribed to at the time, which was some version of the punk ethos. This ethos simply rejected military life as being tied in with all those nasty things of the ‘square world’: authority, discipline, regulation, working hard, short hair. I felt somehow that I couldn’t join the army because it would conflict with my beliefs. Yet over time, having thought about my flirtations with the whole ideological world of punk rock I realized that it was never me or my views (I could write a whole book about the ideology of punk rock).

2) My folks, Okay guys, for some of us, our parents were 60’s kids that internalized a lot of that 60’s stuff and tended to poo-poo the military. My parents expected me to attend university and I did, even when I wanted to drop out in first year, they made me stay (Thankfully). Needless to say there was never any discussion of the military as a career option, partially because neither of them have military people in their families. My mom thought I was deviant and troubled because I spent so much time trying to understand how tanks worked and military tactics and strategy.

3) My Folks #2. I knew that if I chose to pursue a military life I would be letting down my parents a whole lot. For them, such a choice were for the desperate and poor. Only people from lower socio-economic backgrounds chose to serve out of necessity not out of some feeling to serve their country or that they thought working in the military agreed with them. My father had, and still has high expectations of me to become some sort of professional. My mom thankfully doesn't care what I do so long as I am happy. I remember when I told my dad and his wife that I chose to go to law school they said 'we knew you would come around'.

That is about it. I recall meeting a guy who was doing his PhD in political science who was an officer in the Canadian armed forces and worked for the UN. He lived in Rome with his family and helped the UN set up when it entered into a new area. (Actually he did more than help, he was the head guy). I thought, I haven’t achieved anything except have read a bunch of books in my short stint on this earth and here is this guy who is doing so much.

I dread the idea of sitting in an office for the rest of my life never having experienced the world. It would be nice for my life to involve some outside work as well. And if that includes commanding tanks around a field in Gagetown New Brunswick so be it.

And what about Lt. Renehan? Well to my great surprise he enlisted at the age of 32. And would you guess what he did for a living before then? He was a New York Lawyer.

That’s right a goddamm lawyer who chucked all that being a lawyer entails to join the army. How crazy is that?