Hello everyone! I have been lurking the forums, but finally decided to register and ask my questions. A little background on me: I am 31 years old and have been a single mother for the past 7 years. Joining the air force was one of my "if only" dreams, but obviously single parents are not allowed in the military due to the fact that it can be detrimental to both the military and my child. I am lucky I fell in love with a man who encourages me to follow my dreams - I now have a "standard family" and I am able to pursue this dream right before I approach the "too old even with a waiver" mark. I have spent the past 5 years struggling to obtain a degree, and since I was working full-time, I had to settle for an online generic liberal studies degree. I was 36 credits away from graduating when we decided to backtrack to allow for AFROTC. I am in the midst of leaving my job to concentrate on school and AFROTC, I will be graduating in 2015 with a BA in Physics (Physics is what I REALLY wanted to do with my college coursework). I would have rather had the BS, however I only have 3 years to complete the degree and I have so many "liberal arts" credits, it would almost be a waste of all my schooling.
So we spoke with the recruiter at the local college in April and he also encouraged me to join AFROTC to pursue this dream and he made it sound like it would be fairly easy to commission, but after reading some of the threads, I am not sure about this. I will have to take the freshman and sophomore GMC's concurrently and from what I have read it is very hard to be competitive in so little time. The recruiter told me I have until spring to compete, but it seems that you do your AFOQT and PFT in the fall, is that right? Up until April, I had not exercised on purpose in about 15 years. I know it's silly, but I've always been underweight, so I was always afraid exercise would cause me to lose weight. I have been working hard since then to prepare myself, but I get so nervous thinking about how I am competing against individuals who are fresh out of high school sports teams. In the past 4 months, I have only been able to get my 1.5 mi run time down from 17:23 to 14:28. I went from being able to do 0 pushups to 10 in one minute (still failing!). The only portion of the PFT I can excel at is 52 crunches in a minute. So it seems at this point I'm only a mediocre candidate. On the bright side, I have gained 13 pounds in those 4 months, but I am still 10 pounds shy of the minimum weight requirement. In addition to that, I've been taking practice AFOQT's and I don't seem to be doing too well since all the math and science questions are basic concepts I have not thought about since high school! MY SAT scores were only at a 1030 in 1998, would they be used today? My GPA at my previous university was 3.35, but I assume it will reset and I will have to start from scratch now that I am at a new university and that is what the air force will use, correct?
I have been working for the DOD at the nearby military installation and currently (or at least until my last day of work) hold a secret clearance. How will this be taken care of in regards to AFROTC? I know I will still be in JPAS, so it will be a matter of re-activating my clearance if I get that far, but at what point do they start doing background checks on cadets and will I still need a background check or does the clearance already cover that? I am just so nervous, this is a major change in my life to take a risk at chasing a dream and only getting one chance to "win" (if I don't get a field training spot for 2013, I will be too old after that to be able to get in the air force period). Regardless of what happens in AFROTC, I am still happy with our decision to allow me to pursue the degree I want for a career change (I've hit the glass ceiling in my current career). I suppose besides answers to my questions, I'm looking for some encouragement. Is there anyone else out there who thought they were "too old" but beat the odds? Thanks for listening to my rambling, I look forward to your responses.
So we spoke with the recruiter at the local college in April and he also encouraged me to join AFROTC to pursue this dream and he made it sound like it would be fairly easy to commission, but after reading some of the threads, I am not sure about this. I will have to take the freshman and sophomore GMC's concurrently and from what I have read it is very hard to be competitive in so little time. The recruiter told me I have until spring to compete, but it seems that you do your AFOQT and PFT in the fall, is that right? Up until April, I had not exercised on purpose in about 15 years. I know it's silly, but I've always been underweight, so I was always afraid exercise would cause me to lose weight. I have been working hard since then to prepare myself, but I get so nervous thinking about how I am competing against individuals who are fresh out of high school sports teams. In the past 4 months, I have only been able to get my 1.5 mi run time down from 17:23 to 14:28. I went from being able to do 0 pushups to 10 in one minute (still failing!). The only portion of the PFT I can excel at is 52 crunches in a minute. So it seems at this point I'm only a mediocre candidate. On the bright side, I have gained 13 pounds in those 4 months, but I am still 10 pounds shy of the minimum weight requirement. In addition to that, I've been taking practice AFOQT's and I don't seem to be doing too well since all the math and science questions are basic concepts I have not thought about since high school! MY SAT scores were only at a 1030 in 1998, would they be used today? My GPA at my previous university was 3.35, but I assume it will reset and I will have to start from scratch now that I am at a new university and that is what the air force will use, correct?
I have been working for the DOD at the nearby military installation and currently (or at least until my last day of work) hold a secret clearance. How will this be taken care of in regards to AFROTC? I know I will still be in JPAS, so it will be a matter of re-activating my clearance if I get that far, but at what point do they start doing background checks on cadets and will I still need a background check or does the clearance already cover that? I am just so nervous, this is a major change in my life to take a risk at chasing a dream and only getting one chance to "win" (if I don't get a field training spot for 2013, I will be too old after that to be able to get in the air force period). Regardless of what happens in AFROTC, I am still happy with our decision to allow me to pursue the degree I want for a career change (I've hit the glass ceiling in my current career). I suppose besides answers to my questions, I'm looking for some encouragement. Is there anyone else out there who thought they were "too old" but beat the odds? Thanks for listening to my rambling, I look forward to your responses.