coffee282 wrote:
I am so sorry about that. I cannot imagine how crushing it is to wait that long for that answer. I really hope your AF endeavours work out better. Waiting for MEPS is a special kind of hell.
+1, really sorry to hear that.
howell wrote:
Most deployments are still going to southwest Asia/northeast Africa, and Afghanistan is definitely included. But most assignments tend to be at relatively established bases. I'm at a great location - the struggle tomorrow is that the pool is closed for cleaning. There are assignments in other places (South America, southeast Asia, etc.), but there are fewer of those.
A lot of us have good access to the Internet, so I could call/e-mail/Facetime my wife any day I wanted out here. This isn't true for all locations, but probably more than you think. That definitely helps with the time apart.
I can't compare/contrast the two well enough, but there is a lot of responsibility early on. Not just from what's dumped on you, but from what you can take for yourself. I tried my first sex assault case to a jury 6 months out of training. Any part of the case/trial would likely have been open to me if I put in the work and showed that I could do it. There's a lot of opportunity.
I think you're right about the exit opportunities. Certainly it depends on what you get your hands on in the JAG Corps, but I would imagine you would have more flexibility.
Probably, but that says more about what I think would be involved in being an ADA. There are definitely politics in the AF JAG Corps, and it's not a pure meritocracy by any means. It's more about who you can convince that you're a golden child. Many of the golden children will tell you this.
Probably, yes. Your wife's salary will put you in a different boat than most JAGs, but we generally murder the IRS. I'd have to be making ~$100k in the private sector in flyover country to get the same take-home income/benefits (and that's not factoring in the possibility of the retirement benefit).
This, or rather meaningful and/or unique work, is a big draw for me. Sometimes we work on issues that civilians would never get their hands on. That's pretty cool. But there are plenty of TPS reports too.
The training can also be fun. Certainly some of it is death by PowerPoint, but getting sent to study a subject for 1-2 weeks at a cool location is probably something you don't get to do much at a law firm.
Thanks for all of this. Yeah, I think there are a lot of advantages, but I think it might be too logistically difficult for me to do. I just have no idea what to do with myself generally. I just know that I probably can't and certainly don't want to last more than another year at my current job, and my wife's situation makes this impossible to figure out.
shintopig wrote:
Recently, accepted USN SP here. Technically commissioned, but awaiting detailing.
So, for SP (student program) I was accepted in December, commissioned last month (May) and I still don't know where I'm going for my first assignment. So I've signed my service agreement & been commissioned, but all I know is that likely the USN will send me to 1 of my 6 preferred duty locations.
As far as I know DA (direct applicants) undergo more-or-less the same order of events; eg. you won't know where you're going until you sign. Check out the DA Website (
http://www.jag.navy.mil/careers_/career ... es_da.html)
Yikes. No idea how/if I could make this work. Thanks.
howell wrote:shintopig wrote:
USN JAs focus more on advocacy & legal assistance.
I keep hearing that you guys get a lot more ops law experience as well. That seems to be a dirty little secret no one tells us, because I've had several AF JAGS get disappointed when they find out ops experience isn't really that plentiful for us.
This actually sounds pretty interesting. Will look into it more. Thanks guys/gals.