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Ahmed Baria discusses the call to action and duty of serving in the military. He emphasizes that joining the military should be a natural choice, not something forced upon you by family. Ahmed shares his own story of how his parents came to the United States with little money but found success. He explains that there are different branches of the military, each with its own designated job. Ahmed focuses on the Marine Corps and his desire to work in intelligence. He acknowledges that being in the military is challenging and requires commitment and dedication. He discusses the process of going to Officer Candidate School (OCS) and the different routes one can take. Ahmed also mentions the physical fitness test and the importance of being selected for OCS. He touches on the enlisted route and the service time commitment. Ahmed concludes by briefly mentioning college and the military's financial support for education. Hello everyone, my name is Ahmed Baria. I'm going to be talking to you guys a little bit more about joining the actual military and What I'm doing currently in order to do that So the first thing that we're really just going to discuss is the call to action the call of duty of actually serving your country so Being in the military isn't for everyone. It's something that you doesn't need you essentially get like assigned That's the best way I can explain it it shouldn't be something that you force yourself to get into just because your Parents from the military your brother went into the military sister You know any loved one went into the military. It should be something that just comes to you naturally and If it does happen naturally because your parents or someone was in the military and that's fine, too But for me, it was always something that kind of got brought upon me Now my story came in when my parents joined our my parents came over to the United States my dad came to this country with roughly $500 in this in his pocket and He just went from there now. He currently has a house. That's worth I don't even know how much and He is doing really well for himself The United States has given him a million opportunities and has helped him become a better man Because of it same thing with my mom. She came over here at the same time with my dad and then later on they had two kids myself and my brother and Now we are reaping the benefits of them doing so much hard work and the United States Opening its arms for my parents now When I was younger This is the direction. I want to go with my life I never really told my parents originally and when we did when I did tell my parents I wanted to go into military. It was a shock factor for my mom because there's this designated Ideology that military means you're gonna be on the front lines at all times and there's a risk of you Passing away at any given moment. So I want to get rid of that connotation right now If you were in the military that does not mean 100% you're gonna be on the front lines Yes, there are people who do that, but it's not designated like that. For example, there are many different branches of the military including the Coast Guard's Air Force Army National Guard Navy and then the Marine Corps and each one has their own designated job so for example army is predominantly on the ground and they are more like your stereotypical what you think soldiers Navy they're in boats they're in Huge huge boats in the ocean for the majority of their tours Coast Guards they stay in the in the ocean as well, but on stateside same thing with National Guard They are stateside and the Air Force. They're in planes predominantly, you know, like They do a lot of work with drones and things like that and we could go more into detail about every single one of them But I'm going to be talking specifically about the Marine Corps because that's the knowledge that I have Marine Corps our Marines are supposed to be amphibious meaning we both do in water and on land activities and The Marine Corps is there's a lot of jobs within it So for example what I want to do, so what you do in the military is your MOS That's essentially your job. So I want to do is I want to work in intelligence intelligence essentially means as an officer would mean I'd get a stack of papers on my desk and I was Deciphered through every little part of it and figure out what's important. What's not important Whatever is important. That's who I bring up to my higher-ups and then from there we can make a Plan essentially of how to What the best course of action is for that But there's a million other ones like infantry infantry are the men and women who are on the front lines and there's field artillery Those are the artillery that we use When we're when we're at war like like tanks Big Armored trucks those kinds of things and there's a million more that you can do research on on your own time about how to get there I Also want to talk about with military like that it is hard You know being in the military is not supposed to be an easy thing it's something that you have to be really committed to and you have to be really dedicated to and if you're not then You're gonna find a lot of problems coming within your life The biggest one that I could think of is being away from your family there's gonna be periods of times where you might not see your family for a long time a typical deployment can look anywhere between nine months to Over a year and if you're okay with being away from your family and not having that much communication with them Then maybe this is somewhere to go But that is the hardest thing about what I'm worried about in the future is not being able to say hey to my family or friends even when I'm at OCS this summer, which we'll talk about a little bit more. I will not have my phone with me. It'll be six weeks where I am Discluded from the entire real world and I'm only there to for one purpose to train So talking about OCS a little bit. There are there are many ways to get to OCS so for example, what I'm doing is I'm doing a course called PLC platoon leader course and Essentially what that is is I'm in a pro. I'm currently a sophomore in college and I am Going to OCS this summer now. I'm going to OCS for only six weeks. The actual OCS is ten weeks long so I'm going to PLC for six weeks this summer, which is called juniors and then my Junior going into senior year. I'll go again for another six weeks of 12 weeks combined And the six weeks that I go to the junior going to senior year That's called seniors when I graduate from there, then I'll technically be considered a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. I would have to Graduate college and then I can be commissioned and then I'd go to something called TPS TBS is not like OCS at all OCS is breaking you down essentially and seeing if you're physically equipped and physically able to lead other people There will be drill instructors yelling at you and you know all that fun stuff But TBS is more of a classroom based exercise So you're learning how to be a good Marine you're learning how to be a good Marine Officer how to lead people what you can expect when you're actually in the fleet There's also something called OCC which is Similar to PLC. It means that you graduated college, but you just want to go straight to OCS. So that's a 12 week course and or excuse me, it's a 10 week course and You would go at whenever you're physically equipped and whenever whenever you get selected Also, another thing I forgot to mention for the PLC and OCC is it's not like anyone is able to do this You would have to have a good PFT score, which is your physical fitness test your physical fitness test is comprised of three things your your How many pull-ups you can do how long you can do a plank and a three-mile run and it's graded out of 300 points each respective exercise is worth 100 points So if you do really well on that and you had a good GPA you'll most likely be selected now what does selected mean you have to send an original original application and That's where your GPA, you know your PFT all that comes in but if you get selected that means you're actually going to OCS Not everyone gets selected. I don't nobody really knows what like the but the acceptance rate is But it is not easy to do So that's that's for PLC and OCC. Now. There is another side that you can go with this It's the enlisted route. Let's say you enlist into the Marine Corps or any branch for that for that matter You enlist into the respective military branch and you say okay after a couple years I want to go become an officer So then you from there you go to OCS, which would be 10 week 10 weeks at least for the Marine Corps. It's 10 weeks and a common question is what's the service time going to be like when I Graduate college and I start my I signed my contract. I will be signing a contract for eight years Now it's not really eight years though It's for active duty and for reserve reserve means that if we ever God forbid get into a war That the people in the reserve would go first instead of they're actually being a draft Also the current currently what I'm doing right now is is training to go to OCS so We do Tuesdays every Tuesday and Thursday at 6 in the morning. We have a little PT for but roughly about an hour And And we yeah, we just do it Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it's really about yourself you're gonna have to Put in the hours put in the work to make sure that you're physically equipped to go to OCS Also another question that I would I was thinking about a lot when I was doing this is what would college look like with With the military or with trying to be in the military Especially with who pays for that so currently I can say that my family is paying for my tuition right now but let's say I want to go to graduate school or something like that after I graduate college and if I am a Military if I'm in the military Then the military would take over from there. There are a few finer details But overall, yes, they would pay after you're in the military So essentially to got to kind of go over everything I just wanted to Really explain in further detail of what what the process actually looks like and I hope you guys have a better understanding of it now Thank you. Take care