Recruiters are so notorious for lying that one line in a popular Army cadence goes:
My recruiter told me a lie
Join the Airborne and learn to fly
(for the unaware, the Airborne corps is composed of people who jump out of airplanes, which, technically speaking, is controlled flying)
My recruiter actually didn't lie to me too badly. It was only after I signed the papers that the big lie came, but I will get to that in a later post.
Anyway, I was the one that approached the recruiter. I chose the Army, or rather fate chose the Army for me, because it was a toss up between Army and Airforce, and the Airforce recruiter was out to lunch, so I talked to the Army recruiter. The rest is history. BTW, I had ruled out the Marines, cause I thought they were all nuts, and the Navy was out of the question for 2 reasons: they have a rank named after a bodily fluid, and their uniforms look stupid.
So, the Army it was.
I had one simple demand: I wanted to be a linguist.
Well, they said, not so fast. I needed to pass a couple of tests first.
The first test was the ASVAB. Kind of a general knowledge test. If you kept your eyes open for maybe one day in your high school career, you could pass this test, but there were some who tried to join along with me that had to "study up" cause they had failed it once or twice before and they REALLY wanted to join.
Anyway, having passed that with flying colors, I then had to take the DLAB: Defense Language Aptitude Battery. It supposedly measured your potential for learning a language. All I remember is that I scored a 112. Out of what I do not know, but it was high enough for them to accept me. This test was very difficult, probably more difficult than the SAT, although I took the SAT and DLAB about 6 years apart, so it is hard to really compare.
Well, with the tests under my belt, I was assigned the job code of 98G. You can look at this list to see all the job codes and descriptions that the Army has. My official title was Electronic Warfare Specialist or something like that.
All of this occurred the summer between my Junior and Senior year of high school. Now all I had to was graduate High school, and ship off once I graduated.
Next stop: Shipping off for Basic Training.
Stay tuned!
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3 comments:
You know what's interesting? The article says you have to have over 100 for a Cat IV language. You had a 112? Wonder why they gave you Russian (a Cat III) language? Very curious.
Ok, I'm lame. I'm commenting again. Next time: look at ALL the links and THEN comment. Are you laughing at me yet? :P I think the army's title for 98G is far more important sounding than what you said. 98G E3-7 CRYPTOLOGIC COMMUNICATIONS INTERCEPTOR/LOCATOR
I've wondered that myself. It probably has something to do with "needs of the Army" at the time (i.e. the Russian school had first dibs on the next qualified person) or they actually looked at the DLAB and saw that my potential for oriental languages was lower than for something different. I can't imagine that they would be that logical though...
As far as the job description,
I think they changed a little since I started 13 yrs ago. It looks like there is an ongoing MOS renaming scheme.
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