On June 17, 2016 I swore into the United States Texas Army National Guard as an E2 – (Private). I have been a part of JCC (Junior Cadet Corps) and JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps) for six years. Since I had over two years in JROTC I was able to enlist at a higher rank. Earlier this year I decided that the military was the way to go after graduation. After taking the ASVAB, passing medical, and signing my contract – I was ready to join the Texas Army National Guard.

I decided to join the United States National Guard because they train one weekend a month and two weeks out of the summer. Basically a “Citizen Solider”. I’ll be able to attend college full time when I get back from basic and I’ll be able to live at home. I won’t be placed in some other state to live. My plan is to attend TCU in 2017 and be part of their ROTC program.

I leave for basic and job training in October for six months, coming home for two weeks at Christmas. Basic will be ten weeks and job training will be six weeks long. I will be going to job training for 92G which is a food specialist, or in simple terms – a cook. I selected this job training since it will not delay me returning for college, since some of the other options required me to be gone for much longer. I can change my job option after college.

I am extremely excited to take on this new journey in my life and will definitely be blogging all about basic training after I graduate. I won’t have any communication besides letters for the first ten weeks, but during job training I will have access to my phone and laptop so I will be able to be in contact with everyone a lot more.

Stay tuned for my next blog post “How To Survive Meps”