Essay On Military Experience

An opinion is the formulation of personal experiences. After my four year career in the U.S Army, I can officially profess that I am one combat veteran out of very few. During my time on active duty it was constantly mentioned how only one percent of the nation’s population serves in the military. In stark contrast, the U.S has one of the best military defense yet only attracts one percent of its citizens. There must be reason for this, which led me to revise my priorities during my tour. Living in the lifestyle of a U.S soldier molded my perception on what is truly important, which is education. Education is a tool that may enable a person (such as I) to jump through the hoops of generational poverty into a life of stability. This is a component

that the majority of the struggling members in my family lack. Overall, it is the meaning of hard work and persistence that I learned while serving my native country.
Five days after high school graduation and exactly twenty five days after my eighteenth birthday, I commenced my adventure into the military. Without hesitation, I enlisted into the hazardous occupation of an Infantryman. There is only one training location to become an Infantryman, which is Fort Benning, GA. Looking back now I realize that the whitewashing was happening since I stepped into the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS). What I wanted to know was never what I needed to know and everything from there on was on a need to know basis; this is the life of the enlisted soldier. Jumping into my occupation training, I was bombarded with a new identity. This new self was supposed to be a professional, a hero, a grunt, a battle buddy, and a pawn. What to say, when to say it, what to wear, what to do, who to know, what to know; was all decided for me by my chain of command. This continued even after I graduated training and was stationed at Fort Wainwright, AK.
Once settled at my new station, it was predominantly all about training for war. Being scheduled to go to Afghanistan in five months, everyday my platoon would wake at zero three hundred and slept after twenty-one hundred. Non-stop work for the soon to be war veterans. From the exhausting labor I began to ponder options for my future occupation. Being forced by stress and desiring more I decided I want to become a Pharmacist. Furthermore, just as Malcolm X in “A Homemade Education” I knew the best thing I could do is get ahold of educational resources (93). However, during the war I had no support, nor time for online classes. My interest in medicine was ridiculed by those who had no intentions of doing more after their military tour.
After transitioning back from Afghanistan I chose to start my paperwork to change my career in the Army to a laboratory technician.

I did my time, went to war, and was fed up with the redundant life of being a grunt. Yet, my superiors did not seem to empathize with my situation enough to agree with my career change. Anytime a soldier expressed their goals or dreams for when they discharge from the military they’re quickly countered with, “I bet I will see you working at McDonalds one day.” These statements were endless and this is the mentality that we were trained to believe. The dependence of the military is the same as the need for the commonness of the cave in Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave. In Plato’s essay he writes his account of Socrates conversation with Glaucon about humans who are imprisoned in a cave, which symbolizes ignorance. The escaping of the cave is symbolic of the man for attaining knowledge or enlightenment. He writes, “any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck around will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows” (284). This is the same as soldiers trying to leave the military and fear what will happen since they will not have the financial support they once had. Yet, their words were lines of motivation to my ears, so I started a new path to satiate my hunger for

knowledge.
This path to knowledge forcefully started with my departing the military. Leaving the military was the most difficult moment in my life. I had a wife who relied on my reliability and the stress of accepting my own disabilities. However, I always knew that I could rely on my mind. I am driven by my personal experiences from the army because I do not want to live a body breaking life. The life I led for four years was not challenging my intellect. Instead, the struggles I endured prepared me to excel as a college student. Also they enabled me to live my life of education, to finally do as I please. By overcoming countless obstacles, I came to the conclusion that I desired a profound education and to ascend to the status of a doctor. This is my approach for breaking the trend of impoverishment in my family tree. After all this is my opinion that was formulated from my own experiences.