After my meetings last Wednesday night, I drove over to the recruiting office at 8:30. We didn’t end up leaving til around 9:30 because some of the boys wanted to get Burger King. They better thank me for buying them!!! It was nice to have three boys go with me…. so that I wasn’t just with my recruiter. I don’t even think that’s allowed anyways…. they had me sit in front so that Sgt could see me the whole time. The boys would honestly never hurt me, but it’s protocol. The whole drive was not that exciting until I started seeing some landmarks of the city that our MEPS is housed in. Besides that, I was just excited to see signs for where my best friend lives, which is just 40 min outside of the city.
Now, I’m a big girl. But they as I checked into the hotel and got my card number, I turned around and realized that I’d be the only one moving forward from that point. Some flash backs popped into my head.
Mom leaving me at day care for the first time.
Mom leaving my sister and me alone at night because she had to leave for work.
First day as the new kid.
My parents leaving me in my college dorm room for the first time.
It wasn’t like they were abandoning me at any of these situations, but it was the same raw nervous sensation in my stomach. I wanted to know what was ahead. but the only thing I could do was to find out for myself.
I quietly entered my hotel room to not wake my sleeping roommate, realized that I forgot toothpaste… decided fuck it, and collapsed into bed.
It was 4:45 AM when the wake up call rang. It wasn’t just some wake up call. It was a shrieking, peircing, shreaking, shrill noise that startled me awake. The empty stomach pit sensation was still there.
While my roommate hustled out of there real quick, I took a few minutes to gather myself and put on some nicer clothes. I ate alone in the dining hall…. well more poking at the flurescent looking eggs. No thank you.
My chatty nature came in handy because I had said hi to a girl on the elevator. At first she was really reserved and didn’t say much. But after breakfast, she found me and we started talking. Our conversation eased my anxiety as I learned about her pregnancy at the age of 14 and how she’s turned her life around for the better. And through that, we didn’t get on the right bus. Ooops!
We got on the bus and rode about 3 blocks. SERIOUSLY!!? We couldn’t walk that distance? Apparently we couldn’t. Filing off the bus, a huge group of us got into line at security checks. Lots of lines. Up to floor 10. Find your military branch’s office. Marine Corps? There you go.
“Now every one of you listen close! This is death by powerpoint! Listen carefully because we are only going through this once! When you are here you are not to lounge around in this lobby! No putting your feet up on government furniture! Address everybody as Sir and Ma’am since you’ll be doing that at boot anyways!”
Every sentence literally ended with an exclamation point. But instantly, I saw that those joining the Marine Corps were expected to follow a higher standard than other branches. Sorry to hate on you, Coast Guard.
I went into another line to check in.
“Where’s your ASVAB score?”
“I didn’t take it yet, Sir”
“What do you mean you didn’t take it?”
“Sir, my recruiter thought it was arranged for me to do all of the processing in one day because I’m in school.”
“Well, that isn’t possible today. You’ll have to wait until 2 PM to take the ASVAP. We can’t do your physical until that is done.”
what. the fuck.
And so that was my fate. I had to call in to work, and my cooperating teacher to say that I had to miss a whole day with my students, my kids. Then I proceeded to go out in the lobby and tried to fall asleep with good posture. No luck…. someone from the marine office shook me awake saying I couldn’t nap there. At that point, I was frustrated. All this had happened by 6 AM. I had to wait 8 hours before I could go any further into my military career. I was bored out of my mind. Even though I had brought homework and lesson planning, the wait was excruciating and I was frustrated. I called Sgt extremely agitated. In the end, I asked if it would be appropriate if I asked to do office work for them.
“Sir? Do you have any paper that needs to be shredded?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes Sir, I need to do something. I’m really bored.”
Another marine: “Well that’s a first.”
And I shredded through all their paper in 30 minutes. They decided that I should get my IST run out of the way so they sent me to another part of the Marine branch to take to a Corporal. Well the guy wasn’t showing up because he was in apparently “retirement mode”. So I ended up shredding paper there too. For two straight hours. At that point, the monotonous task of feeding exactly 3 sheets of paper into an electric machine wore me out. I went to the leather couch and fell asleep there. Nobody woke me up this time, I’m assuming because this was an office that was more tucked away.
I had a conversation with a marine… he mentioned his experiences in Korea and how he had friends that were teachers too. I noticed he had great waiting patience. Whoever or whatever he was waiting for, he waited in that same spot the entire time I waited for the ASVAB.
marine or not… I can’t do that.
I noticed that once in a while, a really chipper and happy marine would walk in and out singing. He would even jump up and do some pull up just for the hell of it. I instantly noticed his energy and humor.
When I woke up finally from the couch, he was bringing in some younger looking guys (so I assumed they were enlisting) and popped in a DVD. Long story short, I started talking to the chipper marine. I guess he took a liking for me because he had me hanging out with him the whole time. We ate together (thank you government for lunch) and we even dropped another potential officer candidate at her university and we continued to talk about my future in the military. He was confused as to why I wasn’t going Officer if I was going to have my college degree. I’ll talk more about that later.
But when I got back, I saw the other Sgt from the same recruiting office. My friend and a couple guys were there to do their final physical tests because they were shipping soon. It was so good to see familiar faces. But time had flown by and I had to take my ASVAB.
The ASVAB is a diagnostic test to see basically what jobs you qualify for based on your “smarts”. I found myself embarrassed at the fact that I struggled through it. My brain was fried from the anxiety and long periods of waiting earlier that day. I had trouble doing long division. I had barely heard of some of the terms, and the puzzle work was frustrating. At the end, I was drained. After the last question, I pressed NEXT.
But an “error” sign came up. Thinking it was just a glitch, I called for help.
Guess what? The computer had kicked me off after 2 out of the 10 parts of the test.
what. the. fuck.
This was beyond frustration. I had just powered through an extremely annoying test. And the computer had lost it. I was given the choice between taking it again right then and there or wiating till morning. I knew that I would do poorly if I retook it. But I just needed to finish. Asking to take a rest room break, I just randomly walked to the first marine corps liaison office.
At this point, I could tell the marine guys had a soft spot for me. I was professional the whole time, and I had come in to ask several questions. They could tell I was serious. Explaining my situation, I had to keep myself together. I kept thinking about how I had to stay another day already and now I had to take this humiliating test. Right when he left to get someone to see what was going on, I turned my face to hide my hot angry tears. They were gone by the time he was back.
I told them I’d do it again, and went to the bathroom first. The tears weren’t kept back then.
You see, waking up early is no biggie for me. But the last 3 weeks, I had 2-3 hours of sleep. I have an extremely busy schedule, and coming down to MEPS for even one day was a huge sacrifice. I didn’t want to miss a day with my kids, to see their beautiful and smiling faces. I cried silently in a bathroom stall… and it was just a flood. I was stressed. I was tired, and I didn’t want to take another computer based test. I couldn’t stop.
But when they did, I splashed some water on my face and marched into the testing office. I powered through that fucking test and called for the helping person.
“What do you mean you were worried?”
“Did I do ok, Sir?”
“You got a 92.”