Jam,
This is about a kid who either can't decide or has no preference. Yes, those kids exist when they are 17 years old and a high school senior.
And your response is to toss a coin? Yes, I know 17 yo are young, BUT we need as parents and posters to press upon them that this is not 4 yrs of your life, it is at least
9 YEARS. Instead of flipping a coin, how about advising them to research each SA?
Flip a coin, well, that really sucks if the coin says Army over Navy and you hate TANKS. Sucks if the coin says NAVY over AF and boats aren't your thing.
Every branch in the military has some positions which are like a VEN diagram...CG, NAVY, ARMY and AF all have Helo's, but let's be real in the AF that is a small % compared to the other services. All branches have jumpers, but again, if you want to be a jumper it would be wise to go Army. You want to become a PA officer/JAG/Weather/Nurse than you are on the mark...it doesn't matter.
You want to specialize in military ops than flipping a coin or seeing a smile does more harm than good because every service exists for a specific mission. Gates does not expect the AF to run an Army mission, nor does he expect the Navy to run it either.
Additionally, we hurt posters by not acknowledging the differences between the branches. 17 yo who will be at least 27 yo when they can leave should take the time to investigate the branches. Be honest and real, treat them like the adult that the military sees them as! Do you want an SA candidate to accept an apptmt because they thought every service was the same, and flipped a coin regarding their decision? I truly hope not.
AS far as the slam to me regarding my DS and the AF inference. Here goes:
You are 180 degrees off the mark. Guess what, after 20 yrs of traveling around the globe, the last thing we desired for our DS was the thought he would join the military and now we would follow him around the globe to spend time with him. We would have been happy like pigs in mud if he went the civilian route. He didn't opt for this, and I will not apologize for him being his own person like every other cadet when he decided he wanted to serve this great nation. Our very proudest moment came when he got winged last week. He could have taken gold props, but elected to take silver BECAUSE HE EARNED IT, he didn't want gold just because Dad was AF. He wanted it to be about him, and him alone, he denied his own military heritage...how does that work for your conditioning theory?
Yes, our DS lived the military life, he carries in his wallet his military dependent card, but please don't say or insinuate
"Not every child was conditioned from birth to believe the AF is the latest and greatest and nothing else will do." , because in this family, with our DS as a college student that was offered merit scholarships from other colleges and who interned on the Hill, I have bit my tongue on what path he chose. If I had my druthers our DS would have gone the diplomatic corps route just for my own selfish reasons so in your perception I failed conditioning my child!.
I know as a wife what his family will endure. I know that the tears his wife and children will shed over the course of his career will be thousands of tears. Every time they say goodbye to me or Bullet there will be tears. Every time he deploys even in a safe zone, there will be tears shed. Every time their children move and say goodbye to their friends they will cry. The list goes on and on.
Military children who follow their parents footsteps understand every tear because they endured it already as a child of a military member. G Bless them for still believing in this country enough to say I am willing to put my own family through it, knowing the pain they endured. SO if you want to say "conditioned" when military children opt to follow their parents go for it...I say G Bless because they love this country enough to walk in with eyes wide open and still say SIGN ME UP.
"Condition" a child was inflammatory, gross, and down right rude to military parents who have children that decided to take up the flag for this country.