Imagine being abruptly woken up at 4:30 a.m. to your drill sergeant yelling at you. You scramble to put on your uniform and boots within the allotted time and then race outside to begin your daily physical training, which mainly consists of running and push-ups until breakfast at 6:30 a.m.
Generally, seniors spend the summer before college preparing their goodbyes for their family and friends, but seniors who join the military leave their homes at the beginning of summer to attend basic training for 10 weeks. At least five Northwood students have enlisted in the military.
Senior Mercedes Magnon has been thinking about joining the military since her sophomore year. She will become a Wheeled Vehicle Mechanic once she joins the Army. Magnon believes that serving in the military will better the world.
“There are not equal opportunities for every gender or for every race, so I want to make sure that everybody is getting the same amount of attention,” Magnon said. “They are humans just like I am.”
Staff Sergeant Donald Braun joined the Army after high school. He has been recruiting in the triangle area for the past four years.
“I have the easiest, best paying job that there is,” Braun said. “A lot of people are scared of deployments, and they are just not that big of a deal. You think they are because of the fear of the unknown. You don’t know what it is going to be like in Afghanistan and you don’t know what it is going to be like in Iraq where you are going. But it is going to be that way every time you transition to a new job. You don’t know what it is going to be like.”
DeLisa Cohen, CTE coordinator, schedules military recruiters to visit Northwood and helps students find other options besides attending a four-year university.
“I think a lot of it is breaking the stereotype that it is not like the war movies that you’ve seen,” Cohen said. “People can be a chef for example in the military, or someone can be a mechanic or they can do almost anything that you can think of in the military.”
Senior Caleb Stewart is looking forward to the discipline and organized schedule associated with the Army. He hopes to attend college after serving the minimum of three years in the military.
“I just want something different,” Stewart said. “Living in the Army is [different] because you have a set schedule for everything, and not only that, but I’m going in as an Airborne Ranger, so I get to jump out of planes. So I’m looking forward to that.”
Braun believes the scariest part of being in the Army is the fear of the unknown.
“The scariest experience I have ever had being in the Army was as an 18 year-old leaving,” Braun said. “I left home.… I was going to do my basic training but I had no idea what that experience was going to be like…. The first time I deployed was pretty scary too. I went to Afghanistan and I was going to be stationed in [Kandahar]. But I did not know what it was going to be like…. I realized that it was not what I had built up in my mind. Because we all do that, as humans we do that, the fear that we build up, of what is my first day of school going to be like and what is my first day of college going to be like, whatever it is, we just build that fear up.”
Senior Kyle Sirls will be going to basic training in South Carolina eight days after graduating. Sirls wants to enjoy his last few months of high school before he joins the Army.
“I’m ready to leave for basic [training], but I am also trying to enjoy being a kid, because unlike other people, our lives are going to start sooner,” Sirls said.
Braun hopes to reach out to students to let them know the many benefits of joining the military.
“In all honesty, I try to not be a salesman,” Braun said. “That is not what I want to be. I want to give people the real idea of what the Army really is and how it can benefit them. Not everyone has the money to be able to go to college; we provide that money for them to go to college. You do three years, you get a full-ride education to any state school…. The Army is merely a stepping stone. I use the army today, how can you use the Army to get to where you want to be.”
Cohen hopes that students will not feel pressured to only attend a four-year college to further their education.
“There are so many options out there I don’t think kids realize that you don’t have to go to a four-year college. There are great careers from a community college or if you don’t have enough funding you can go into the military,” Cohen said. “You can get your college while you are in the military and job skills at the same time.”
Magnon hopes that high school students will consider the many opportunities associated with the military.
“I think that the military is definitely a good choice that every high school student should look at and not cancel it out of their plans for the future,” Magnon said.
– By Sarah Helen Shepherd
