I'm the newest investment accountant at BNY Mellon

[Ben Kenobi]

Congrats Albert - but please, please, please, listen to regexcellent. He has excellent advice for you. You'll get the service and training in. Most important thing is to GET IN. It's far easier to get into the marines with service time as a grunt in the Army, then to get into the Marines on a straight shot. Plenty of marines out there who started in other service branches.

[Kidlicious]

I have a friend whose trying to get into the marines and he has to lose weight first, but he's not even fat.

[Al B. Sure!]

Congrats Albert - but please, please, please, listen to regexcellent. He has excellent advice for you. You'll get the service and training in. Most important thing is to GET IN. It's far easier to get into the marines with service time as a grunt in the Army, then to get into the Marines on a straight shot. Plenty of marines out there who started in other service branches.

This is exactly why NONE OF YOU except for Pax should say ANYTHING about this.

Officers, as a general rule, can not do inter-service transfers. It could happen in special circumstances but good luck. It doesn't work like a ****ing private sector job where you need to get your foot in the door. There are freaking enlistment contracts for one. There's the fact that you still have to do Marine OCS no matter what. There's the fact that I'm getting older and there's no way in hell the Marine Corps will take me at 35+ years old after an 8 year obligation with the Army.

I'm sick and tired of the unsolicited advice from people who know nothing. You think some college student who signed up for ROTC knows more than me about how USMC officer recruiting works? Me, someone who has been in the system for four years and attended OCS twice?

We have had only one Naval officer on these boards. He is the ONLY ONE who knows more about this than me. The rest of you need to stfu.

[Kidlicious]

They are just trying to help. Don't get mad.

[Al B. Sure!]

They are just trying to help. Don't get mad.

They're not helping when they know nothing.

Like seriously. Say I wasn't as informed and I actually took their advice as if they were knowledgeable... holy **** they could ruin someone's life.

Freaking Ben Kenobi, a freaking Canadian! Giving advice on how the US military works!


Like do you think I don't know people in the military? Do you think I don't know all the guys I went to OCS with? Do you think I don't know former military, including officers? You think you people, including non-Americans, who have never served, could impart knowledge on me?

I know everyone wants to have an opinion on something they know nothing about but this is absurd.

[Jon Miller]

We have had only one Naval officer on these boards. He is the ONLY ONE who knows more about this than me. The rest of you need to stfu.

GP?

JM

[Al B. Sure!]

GP?

JM

Pax

Or are you saying that GP was an officer? I don't know but he doesn't post anyway.

[Jon Miller]

IntgSpin was also navy, but not an officer I believe. I am fairly certain that GP was an officer, but it has been a long time since he posted for another reason than asking how people are doing or asking for a ban. True.

JM

[Kidlicious]

They're not helping when they know nothing.

Like seriously. Say I wasn't as informed and I actually took their advice as if they were knowledgeable... holy **** they could ruin someone's life.

Freaking Ben Kenobi, a freaking Canadian! Giving advice on how the US military works!


Like do you think I don't know people in the military? Do you think I don't know all the guys I went to OCS with? Do you think I don't know former military, including officers? You think you people, including non-Americans, who have never served, could impart knowledge on me?

I know everyone wants to have an opinion on something they know nothing about but this is absurd.

That's the beauty of the internet. You don't have to be an american or even a marine to know stuff.

[giblets]

This is exactly why NONE OF YOU except for Pax should say ANYTHING about this.

Officers, as a general rule, can not do inter-service transfers. It could happen in special circumstances but good luck. It doesn't work like a ****ing private sector job where you need to get your foot in the door. There are freaking enlistment contracts for one. There's the fact that you still have to do Marine OCS no matter what. There's the fact that I'm getting older and there's no way in hell the Marine Corps will take me at 35+ years old after an 8 year obligation with the Army.

I'm sick and tired of the unsolicited advice from people who know nothing. You think some college student who signed up for ROTC knows more than me about how USMC officer recruiting works? Me, someone who has been in the system for four years and attended OCS twice?

We have had only one Naval officer on these boards. He is the ONLY ONE who knows more about this than me. The rest of you need to stfu.

I think it's mostly just Ben Kenobi who insists on offering people advice on things he knows nothing about. Everyone else is insisting that you don't waste your time trying to get into the military, which doesn't require any specific knowledge of its inner workings.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

And they're probably swayed by the fact that you're set on joining a service centred around amphibious assaults, but you can't swim.

[regexcellent]

This is exactly why NONE OF YOU except for Pax should say ANYTHING about this.

Officers, as a general rule, can not do inter-service transfers. It could happen in special circumstances but good luck. It doesn't work like a ****ing private sector job where you need to get your foot in the door. There are freaking enlistment contracts for one. There's the fact that you still have to do Marine OCS no matter what. There's the fact that I'm getting older and there's no way in hell the Marine Corps will take me at 35+ years old after an 8 year obligation with the Army.

I'm sick and tired of the unsolicited advice from people who know nothing. You think some college student who signed up for ROTC knows more than me about how USMC officer recruiting works? Me, someone who has been in the system for four years and attended OCS twice?

We have had only one Naval officer on these boards. He is the ONLY ONE who knows more about this than me. The rest of you need to stfu.

This is why you're impervious to advice. You don't have to be in the military to understand the situation. If it's any consolation to you, in the vain hope that this fact will get you to listen to me if not anyone else, I have been a ROTC cadet for four school weeks, I'm aiming to become a weekend warrior officer (ooh special), and I did all my homework with respect to researching the different branches and what joining them entails, at least on the officer side. If none of this convinces you that I'm well-suited to advising you on this, well, good! It's about as much experience as you have with being an officer by washing out of BCT (or whatever the marines call it) some number of times.

None of this is actually important to understanding the situation. The situation is that you are getting a number of low-end, entry-level jobs, that might have some future, but you squander it by repeatedly attempting to fulfill your dream of joining the marines. Dreams are nice, but this one is interfering with your ability to build a life for yourself. It gets increasingly improbable that you'll succeed as you get older. Older recruits in training get injured more and have a higher washout rate than younger ones. Older recruits who have failed before a number of times probably failed for a reason.

There's another piece to this. Judging from your posts on this board, you don't look like officer material. Your inexperience with basic things, your expression of fear at things like dogs, guns, and water don't give us much confidence in your ability to lead men up a beach against enemy fire.

The enlisted men on this board are perfectly well-suited to judging that. I doubt a single man in the enlisted corps of the US military has gone through without experiencing at least one bad junior officer. You're already expressing one key trait that those officers tend to have, and that's your refusal to listen to advice.

[Elok]

Like seriously. Say I wasn't as informed and I actually took their advice as if they were knowledgeable... holy **** they could ruin someone's life.

You're ruining your life anyway, so it wouldn't much matter. I know you're not going to give this up, but please, tell me: what's your backup plan? What are you going to do in the increasingly likely event that you turn 35, look around and realize that you have no career or romantic prospects, no hopes or aspirations remaining, no family or close ties to the community--in effect, nothing to really live for, just a yawning abyss of crappy jobs you'll be working till you're 75 to make up for the years you wasted chasing your big army guns? Unless there's something I'm missing here, I give you an even chance of simply killing yourself when that day finally arrives. To forestall it, I recommend you act prudently for once in your life and find something remotely plausible that you would be happy doing.

[Wiglaf]

Maybe he'd be happier in the marines than some accountant job. It seems that way. And it is ridiculously inappropriate to suggest he should or would kill himself at 35 if he realized his life sucked. I know lawyers who have realized this at 35, quit law entirely and gone off to run dog daycares, which they find immensely fulfilling because for once they are doing what they want, not what other people do.

He's failed, what, twice at OCS? If both were injury related it doesn't seem unrealistic to try just one more time. Anything less would honestly make him a quitter.

[Wiglaf]

Why can't we condemn posts instead of thanking them. I hereby CONDEMN Elok's post. He has now been CONDEMNED 1 times in 1 posts.