The Military Enlistment Process

Some poor saps throwing away years of flipping burgers to serve the agenda of THE MAN.

Do you want to see the world? Get a career? Get out of your hometown? Serve your country? Then you’re on the right track by considering enlistment.

I will be describing the process of enlisting in the military itself and what to expect. I have been in the delayed entry program for the Marine Corps for over four months and am waiting to graduate high school before I get shipped off to boot camp.

If you decide to enlist in the military, you’ll be sent to the closest Military Entrance Processing Station(MEPS) in your state. I’m just going to be upfront about it: MEPS sucks, and if you enlist, it’s likely one of the more cancerous things you’ll do in your life. Before going, your recruiter will give you a rundown of what to expect, what to do, and will probably make you take a practice ASVAB test. The ASVAB is an aptitude test to see where your skills and intelligence lie and is taken on your first day at the MEPS station. You ought to study for it, although I didn’t, and scored quite high. The minimum score to get is 35, and if you can’t get higher than that, then I’d recommend cracking open a few books for your own sake. Contrary to popular belief, the military doesn’t want their ranks full of knuckle-draggers. The math and English portions of the test are fairly basic, but the concepts are easily forgettable if you haven’t been in school for a few years. The rest of it consists of automotive, electrical, science, physics, mechanical comprehension, but it can differ depending on what branch you’re joining.

Things get bad during your second day at MEPS. You’ll start by waking up from an(actually quite nice) hotel at 4 AM after watching Hell’s Kitchen until 1 AM. I can’t remember the name of the hotel I stayed at in San Jose, but I thought it was top notch, and the food was good too. I recommend the bacon burger.

From the hotel, you’ll board a bus after receiving a New Testament bible or two clad in digital camouflage from a pair of enthusiastic men, and will be taken to the MEPS station once again.

The second day of MEPS is 10 hours of getting your dick yanked and your blood drawn. Every crevice of your body will be inspected after taking a questionnaire that tells the government if you’re a wack job or a terrorist or not. If your recruiter is decent, they’ll tell you to answer no to every single question. Answering yes to questions such as “Have you ever smoked marijuana?” or “Have you ever been depressed?” is grounds for disqualification. You’ll be greeted by signs with big, bold text warning you of jail time in the case FRAUDULENT ENLISTMENT and the employees at MEPS will try to scare you into spilling your guts, but don’t listen. Don’t feel bad either, because if anyone told the whole truth, we’d have about 10 people total in our military. The way I see it, these things are a product of our over-regulated society, but also a mental test: if you crack, you are weak. I made friends with this one guy at MEPS: a starry-eyed 19-year old, longing to be a Marine Scout Sniper. He made the mistake of answering yes to the depression question, and explained that after his dog died when he was 12 or so, he went through a depressive funk. They put him on hold, and told him that they would need to do a mental evaluation on him with a state-sponsored therapist before he could enlist to make sure he doesn’t brain himself on field day. Put all his eggs in one basket too. No job and no backup plan. I couldn’t tell you if he got disqualified or got a waiver for it, or what, but the entire hassle could’ve been avoided by simply putting “no” instead of “yes”. Everyone has been depressed. Some more than others. My pickled liver is evidence of this, but that isn’t the government’s business, is it?

A US Marine having the time of his life in Okinawa after keeping mum about his severe depression.

If you do smoke dope, be sure to get all the THC out of your system before going to MEPS because they will drug test you, and keep in mind that your days of being a spaced-out degenerate are over. But it really is nobody’s business. I recall a fantastic oration that one of the Marines gave to all the enlistees in his liaison at MEPS: “One girl told us here that she never smoked marijuana. Later, we find out, while she was in boot camp, through our investigations, which- we will investigate you, we have FBI agents who work for us- we found out that she had indeed smoked marijuana before. She got disqualified and I hope she gets fucking dishonorably discharged. That is fraudulent enlistment, you see that sign? FRAUDULENT ENLISTMENT. If you lie, we will find out.” Yeah, right. Don’t believe any of it.

My best advice for the physical part of MEPS is to not have any physical problems. You can be disqualified or put on hold due to a number of things including:

-Health problems

-Breathing issues

-Drug usage

-Mental problems

-Scoliosis

-Past surgeries

-Acne

-Shitty flexibility

-etc.

You may be wondering about why acne can disqualify you, and a few zits here and there generally won’t be a problem, but severe acne can interfere with equipment and putting on gear and whatnot. I had a buddy get put on hold from joining the Air Force because of this… Part of it was also because he had a “penile lesion” from jerking off too much prior to going to MEPS.

If you do have what is a very obvious surgery scar from the past(which will need medical docs and possibly a waiver), I wouldn’t advise lying about it. I have a huge surgery scar from a few years ago running down the middle of my stomach, and I told the doctors that it was from a barbed wire cut, which was quickly closed off with stitches, as recommended by my recruiter. They saw right through this, told me it was bullshit, and obviously a surgery scar, to which I fessed up, and all I ended up needing were the medical documents for it, and I was good to go. I also suppose they won’t actually charge you with fraudulent enlistment if you get caught in a small lie like that. If you lie about being a felon or something, sure, but the military is starving for new recruits in a nation full of junkies and porkers.

The average American woman in 2018.

Your vision, ears, flexibility/joints/muscles will be tested, your blood will be drawn, you’ll need to take a piss test, a breathalyzer, and be weighed and measured. Don’t be a fatass or a skeleton, and you should be alright. Weight requirements based on height can be found online. You’ll have a personal interview with a doctor, which is the final inspection of your body. You will likely find the things they do to be odd, but don’t question them. When I went, I had a female doctor, and I was told to jerk off while she recorded it. If anyone else had this happen, please e-mail me, and let me know, because I’m not sure if it was standard procedure or not.

But in all seriousness, they will feel your cock and balls, your tits if you have them, make you pull back your foreskin if you’re uncut, check for scars, your joints and muscles and bones, and will make you spread your ass cheeks to check if you anal cancer or not(no seriously, they will) and they might stick a finger up there. It’s weird and awkward, but just ride it out: it won’t last very long anyway.

Remember when your parents made you sit through church service when you were little and you were bored out of your mind for an hour and a half? Multiply that boredom by 10 million, and the hours by 10, and you’ll get the level of dullness during your second day at MEPS. Despite being tested on, most of it will be spent just sitting around, so find a decent television channel, or someone who can hold a conversation. Do what the employees there tell you to, also. There are plenty of kids who end up looking like children who lost their mom in the supermarket, and for the love of God, at least look presentable. It’s essentially a job interview. I was talking with some guy from San Francisco and mid-conversation, a girl walked by with her hair unkempt, and dyed bright orange, as we both stared at her. He looked back at me and just shook his head in disapproval. Fucking comical. I can only imagine that every employee gave her shit for it, but she was joining the Air Force, so then again, I couldn’t expect too much from her.

If you did everything right, you’ll finally be able to take the enlistment oath, and depending on what branch you’re joining, you might have to take a final physical test before you swear in. In the Marines, it’s either 2 or 3 pull ups, and 35 sit-ups in two minutes, if I recall correctly.

Congratulations, you are now officially an enlistee. Your reward is a shipping date and some merchandise from your branch.

Realize, also, that your orders are coming from higher ups. At the end of the day, you are obedient to the orders of the US government. The guy I met from San Francisco told me he wanted to be a cop, and clean up the city streets, but this isn’t a Dirty Harry movie. I understand his sentiment and I’m well aware that many officers feel the same way, but both lines of profession boil down to the same rule of thumb, which is that you can only really do as much as your superiors want without getting yourself in trouble.

The situation that Bay Area politicians have created.

However, I’d like to not end this article on a depressing note, so look forward to your time in the military. You’ll get to travel, make new friends, and form bonds for life. You’ll be able to do and experience things that 99% of the population can only dream of. If you’re in a shitty situation, it is a fantastic way to escape. Good luck out there, future military personnel.