Recieved a Nom. to USMMA this past Friday from my Congresswoman! OH-3! I'm not sure if it's principal or not... I'm just happy I got it. The process as to how I got it was nothing short of an Act of God XD
Do tell!
Aight so boom. I began working on my USMMA application a week before Thanksgiving. That week was spent miraculously managing to get a university I went to send my transcripts to USMMA even though they put my account on hold since 2014. But that's a different story for another time.
After the holiday, I began emailing MoCs in WA(Where I'm currently stationed) to see if I could apply for a nomination. One Senator's office called me back and asked me what address I put down on the application. I told them that I put down my home of record address which is in OH. That office said that they would provide an exception to me and give me an interview If I changed my address to WA and submitted my packet in to them. For some reason I felt a bit more comfortable asking MoCs from Ohio. So that's what I decided to do instead. Since I missed the deadline to submit my packet for a nomination, even after telling them my story of how I'm an AD soldier who is 23, just found out about the Academy, and needed to receive a nomination before I aged out It was "sorry tough luck" I managed to find a MoC, in the district my mother and grandmother resides, who was willing to give me a shot given I submitted the packet of everything with in a week.
The packet is pretty much ACT/SAT Scores, 3 letters of recommendation, an essay of why you want to attend, school transcript, and a few other things that needed to be submitted as ONE entire packet. I managed to talk to my sources for writing me letters and they wrote them almost immediately. I worked with my mother who was able to visit the sources and gather all of the letters together as I sent her my other information from WA. The interview coordinator was very surprised and impressed with how I was able to put it together that quickly.
The next step was the interview. I told the nomination interview coordinator that I was not going to be able to come back to Ohio in time for the interview. So we decided to Skype. Two nights before the interview day, I was calibrating everything in my barracks room to get ready for it tomorrow. I spent an hour with one of my friends who lived in UT making sure the webcam worked and everything by skype calling me. It turned out that my webcam had a problem where the mic volume would keep shutting off after 5 minutes. I troubleshot it and found out I had a virus on my computer that I was unable to remove. So I tried to wipe the hard drive and do a full reinstall of windows. I spent the entire next day trying to reinstall windows 10, but I think the malware got really deep in the HD and now the master boot record was effed up. Computer is still fried and I'm only able to run ubuntu on it... I had no time to really research deeper about the issue so I asked one of my buddies in my unit if he would let me use his laptop. He was gracious enough to let me use it for the interview.
Crazy enough that was the same day that the Amtrak derailed on I5 and my unit was called in to help redirect traffic. I called the MoC office to make sure we we're still good for the interview. The guy on the phone that I was talking with told me that I was the only person that had MMA as my #1 pick and I had a really good shot at getting it. At the same time, my maintenance squad was put on a 72 hour mission with 4-6 hour shifts resupplying the Military Policemen in my company with food, water, and fuel. My squad understood my situation and two of the soldiers took a shift during the interview so I wouldn't have to.
The interview went smoothly. For a situation like this I decided to wear my dress blues.The nomination interview coordinator said that I would receive a reply in January.
I'm a pretty patient guy, but the wait was really getting to me. I started to doubt myself as to whether or not I would receive a nomination and how I would feel about pursuing a second course of action towards a commission like ROTC or Green to Gold. (To be honest those courses of action felt very sour to me after managing to make it this far) Last Friday I got a message from the MoC telling them to call them back. I did so and the interview coordinator told me I got the nomination. Fast forward to today. I called them back and asked what was the nomination process like and whether or not I got a principal nomination. They also said they had some other applicants but practically no competition for USMMA so I was the only name they sent to the school. So yes I was the primary/principal nominee they sent to the school.