5 Year Plan
I have always asked myself where I would be when I was done with high school. Every
kid grows up wanting to be a firefighter, police officer, or astronaut but it isn’t until life is
coming at us fast that we actually give that question real thought. I have gone through a
couple of different scenarios throughout middle school/high school and I feel as if I
finally got it down.
When I was younger I wanted to be a marine, something about being a soldier
fascinated me. I did and still do have family who serve, most of them marines while a
couple were with the army’s special forces but all were from my mother’s side of the
family. I stopped wanting to be a marine around the age of 12 since on my father’s side
I didn’t have a single family member who was ever in the armed forces and they
influenced me since I lived with my dad. Law enforcement was what I began to look at
and from there it manifested into S.W.A.T. I didn’t know why I chose S.W.A.T. but
looking back now it is the closest I can get to being a soldier without the cons of one.
Fast forward to high school and my plans in life were still the same. I wanted to
be in law enforcement and I was fine with that but I wasn’t necessarily content with it. It
wasn’t until the military began coming to our classes that it sparked my old dream again.
Still though I didn’t act upon this even though I knew I wanted to deep down. My best
friend let me know he was thinking about going into the Navy and since my family
background was Army/Marines we had a discussion over which was the better branch.
What he didn’t know was that he was about to change my life goals for good. He went
on to talk about the Navy’s Special Warfare and one of the jobs were the Navy SEALs. I
never learned about the other branches and what they had to offer all I knew about the
military is what my family had told me which wasn’t very much. Special operations
forces was something that was relatively new to me. From the moment I heard about
the SEALs I started to dive into what they were and what they do. I did the same for the
Army’s special forces aka the Green Berets. I fell in love with the idea of being a part of
something this great and elite. My old military ambitions were not only relit but were
burning brighter than ever.
I spent my Junior year thinking about this and during the summer I decided to to
my dad and that side of my family. They weren’t necessarily happy to hear the news,
they were scared of the idea since they knew nothing about it and tried to persuade me
to look into other options. I stood strong though and they soon began to accept the idea.
It took awhile for my dad to accept it, he would occasionally question why I wanted to do
this and tried to convince me that I didn’t need to. Even to this day that conversation is a
touchy subject. I understand where they are coming from soldiers fight wars it is what
they do and with me wanting to be in the special forces I would be right in the middle of
it.
I made up my mind too late to go straight out of high school. I would need more
time to train for something like this. This isn’t a matter of if to me it’s when, I have no
doubt in my mind that if I want to be an operator for the Armed forces I’ll be one it is just
a matter of which branch I choose. I’m going to train for the SEALs once high school
ends. I plan to get a gym membership and get working right away. There are plenty of
training programs I can follow and with my best friend already enlisted and training for
AIRR he’s been telling me all the workouts he does and all the food he eats. I plan on
living with my parents throughout this time, they will let me stay as long as I continue to
go to school so I plan on attending Merced JC. This works out great since they have a
great law enforcement program and when I’m finished with the military, whenever that
will be, I can jump right into the next step in my life. So in five years I see myself within a
special forces group fighting for my country and doing what I love. I will do whatever it
takes to get there.