In the past five weeks while at commissioned officer training in Alabama, I learned very quickly that the commitment I had made in order to finance medical school was much bigger than I had ever dreamed. Luckily for me, that decision which I made on blind faith and rash independence turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life.
I recognize that as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, being a female, in medical school and the military makes for a unique combination of roles and as such, I want to share my story of how I got here.
To untrained eyes, my decision to join the military looks completely random, but in a way, I've been preparing to take on this role for years.
I can trace my fascination with the military back to second grade. The student teacher/substitute who was also a family friend, had been in the military years before and told my class stories about boot camp. There must have been something innately attractive to me in the exotic stories and tough attitude, because he was my first teacher crush.
In high school, JROTC kids were mocked by everyone in the school. However, I remember my idolized mentor and science teacher Mr. Parker suggested I look into ROTC to finance college. He wasn't ignorant of the fact that JROTC kids were social pariahs and assured me that in college, ROTC was a lot different than what I had seen. I shrugged it off, cause I knew that wasn't my place in the world. I was too busy planning a way to truly impact the world, make a name for myself, and find a way to be part of something bigger while getting out of the little town I was trapped in and getting to see the world.
I was also busy with cross country and track. I was addicted to running, fitness, and health. I loved challenging myself physically and making gains in my strength, endurance and discipline. I wanted to see how far I could push my mental and physical barriers.
Fast forward to my freshman year in college, I met Stephen, the retired Air Force fire-fighter. We became close friends. During sophomore year, I dated Yannick, who had been training for the Green Berets. I heard first hand stories of intense training, motivations to join and then reasons to leave the military. Both of those men talked about the military with solemnity that at the time I didn't understand. Their words came back to haunt me over and over again during COT training though.
My desire to see and impact the world finally led me to take action and serve a mission. My mission to Mongolia not only turned my heart to a career in medicine, but awoke in me a streak of intense patriotism and gratitude for my home country. One by one, the pieces of the puzzle which was my future were starting to fit together.
The semester after I got home from Mongolia, I attended a pre-health conference at UC Davis. That was the first time I was exposed to the idea of the military financing medical school. A bubbly blond dentist shared her story of being stationed in South Korea with her family while working as the dentist on base. The military had paid for her school and she paid them back by working for three years in her chosen profession in a country most people only dream of seeing. She loved it, and I couldn't get her story out of my head.
Since I was a kid, my parents urged financial readiness and responsibility. They had repeatedly counseled me to stay out of debt. They wouldn't allow me to even think of taking a student loan to finance my undergrad education. Even if it meant going to a lower quality school or sacrificing study time to work as a waitress, staying out of debt was the most important consideration. With all of the work I was putting into applying to medical school and the passion I felt for my new career path, I didn't want to sacrifice the quality of my medical education for something as trivial as finances. However, I knew my parents would be anxious about the large amount of debt I would be incurring.
I played with the idea of financing school by joining the military. I had thrown the idea out there with the guy I was dating. Things were going well with us, and I wanted to guage his response to the possibility. Long story short, he hated it. He didn't want someone to own me, or to tell me where I could or couldn't live. He especially hated the idea of living in Korea. I tried to hide my disappointment, which was more intense than I had anticipated. We broke up a couple weeks later.
During the summer of applying to medical schools, I was doing research at Stanford University. I loved summer internships because it meant I got to live someplace other than St. George. I had lived in Salt Lake, Iowa, Mongolia, and added California to the list. This went along perfectly with my plan of living in many different places for short amounts of time, a plan I had made when I was a stir-crazy senior in high school.
When I returned to school that fall, I had a high MCAT score, a dozen med school applications filed away, and high hopes of graduating and getting into an MD school. I was single, had the world at my fingertips, and happened to see a flyer advertising the Air Force HPSP scholarship program for nurses. I called the number and asked for information about HPSP for medical school.
I wasn't dating anyone at the time to tell me no, so I went ahead and asked for the information about joining the military. I wasn't sure if I wanted to join or not, I just wanted to get some more information. Pretty soon though, I was connected with a recruiter who wouldn't take any of my non-committal attitude. He pushed and I responded, progressing step by step, while never fully committing in my heart. I filled out the necessary paperwork and got the physical. Finally the day came when my recruiter told me I was on the final step and I needed to review the contract before I signed it.
I had started dating someone by then, I was even engaged, and he was super supportive of my joining the military. That meant we wouldn't have to worry about finances and he wouldn't have to provide for me and support me during medical school. It made sense and would make life a lot easier.
My recruiter had done a good job of emphasizing the financial gains and opportunities to travel that the Air Force would provide me with. I saw it as a way to pay for medical school and support myself along the way. It seemed like a daring thing to do and this time around, the guy I was dating supported the idea. So, I told my recruiter I was in for the long haul and he made the necessary arrangements and submitted my application.
By the time my acceptance had been granted and it was time for my commissioning, I had broken up with my fiancee. I took my commissioning paperwork to a bank notary and in basketball shorts and a messy ponytail, I signed the next fifteen years of my life over to the military. The bank notary had a big smile and eagerly told me that the notary fee is waived for military documents. I had no idea what I had just done.
That night, Sergeant Something-or-other came to the church by my house and gave me a huge certificate and said congratulations. That's when I learned that the signature I had notarized at the bank earlier that day was the extent of my official commissioning paperwork. I had been an officer for 6 hours and didn't even know it.
Obviously after commissioning and even the awkward ceremony that my ex-fiancee and his whole family showed up to had ended, I felt no different. I was just doing this for the money and so I could go to medical school. I was just there to become a doctor. No big deal.
I maintained this casual attitude for the next year. I told a few people about being in the Air Force, but only in connection with financial conversations or in regard to my workout plans in order to pass the physical test. That was the extent of my loyalty to the military.
So, when I arrived at Maxwell Air Force Base and heard the deafening and threatening bark of the military trainee instructor ask an officer trainee why they were at COT, I realized I had better figure out something better to say than, "I'm just here for the money".
That first day at COT, amidst a sea of trainees I realized that I had been playing for a fool, one of the most powerful entities on earth. I had entered into a contract with the United States Air Force. The most respected and formidable Air Force in the world. I was not going to get away with skirting by. My attitude changed then and there, and I began to ask myself for a new reason to be there, because I knew that when push came to shove, and I was asked to do things that scared me, that stretched me and hurt a bit, I would need an answer that I believed in.
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