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Comment by jensue0 on July 29, 2015 at 11:12am

Menzvibe, Gabby's take is spot on for your son's schedule after graduation. No coming home until after he's done with A school. While he's in school, he's considered active. He'll switch to reserve status and come home after he finishes his schooling at Grate Lakes.

My son is IT (graduated 6-month A school at Pensacola in March) and has not pursued FTS, since he's going back to college. So I'm not too familiar with that process. I think it has a lot to do with what rates they need to fill in as to which reservists have a better chance at FTS (if they want to do that.)

Comment by Gabby 1969 on July 28, 2015 at 1:42pm

My daughter is also reserves.  She graduated boot camp on May 1 and flew to her A school the next day.  If he is staying in Great Lakes, he will probably move his stuff across the street right after graduation.  You will then should be able to spend the rest of the weekend with him (although he will have to be on base at a certain time each evening.) I do not think any of the ones who graduated with my daughter were allowed leave between boot camp and A school.  Hope this helps! 

Comment by Menzvibe on July 28, 2015 at 10:08am

His Rate is a MM. He says he will do his A school at Great Lakes. Does this qualify him for FTS in the reserve?? 

Comment by Menzvibe on July 28, 2015 at 9:52am

My son is presently at Boot camp. Graduates on Sept 4th 2015. Went in as a reservists. Would like to go active and is attempting to do this at present. Was told this would be difficult.  Can someone tell me if he will go directly to A school from Boot camp? His rate is MM and suppose to go to Great Lakes Illinois which is across the street from RTC. Will he do this or come home for a period of time?  Help no understanding.

Comment by xfactormom on April 16, 2015 at 2:28pm

FTLW- Thank you again. You have hit the nail on the head. I am glad we have someone who can point out the positives and the negatives so we can continue to encourage our sailors, active and reserve.

Comment by FireTeamLeaderWife aka FTLW on April 14, 2015 at 3:18pm

There have been a lot if positives, the biggest being able to fulfill a dream of serving. You take the bad with the good. Everything thing in life affects us, has an impact on us and then impacts others. I hope to be able to use the good and the bad for good as best as I can.

Bottom line is...he would still serve. It's just in him to do so.

I'm not trying to turn anybody off from serving...just the opposite actually. 

What I want to convey is the need for support and for folks not to feel that they are all alone in this. 

I wish the best for your son and his dreams and goals!

Comment by Huggybear on April 14, 2015 at 2:41pm

My son is leaving for bc on May 19. He is going to be a reservist. His goal is to go to the ROTC at Purdue. His recruiter told him that his chances would be better if he was already in the Navy so he chose the reserves. I hope it all comes together like he plans. I certainly hope he doesn't have any issues like what you are all talking about. 

Comment by FireTeamLeaderWife aka FTLW on April 14, 2015 at 2:41pm

maryjo - Thank you! I have been on this site now for about four years...helping on the PIR groups and so I am hesitant to voice some of this stuff. I just never have and I don't want to be a Negative Nancy. I don't want to bitter either or angry but rather constructive and goal/soul oriented.

I want to do it with integrity. I will TRY not to let my emotions get the better of me :-D If I do...anyone please feel free to let me know. I'm working on it. I know as I do more writing about our experiences on my own privately first the "feelings" part will come out and then I can make sense of it better.

Don't get me wrong I am so proud of our nation and it's military. I will speak up for it in a heart beat.

But over the last several years my heart has started bleeding for the troops and their families.

It's conflicting for me on a personal note because part of me wants to run screaming from the room never to be seen again :-D, but the part that feels the need to help in whatever way God wants to work this out is bigger. So, I know I am on a new journey with this...to get this to a balanced area and to give back in someway.

I know I'll mess up sometimes...but I'll try my best not to do it on a regular basis!

Comment by maryjo on April 14, 2015 at 8:37am

Thank you for speaking up, both the good and the negative!  My son just finished ATT school and is starting A school as a reservist and there's so many things already that we don't fully understand and seem to be getting mixed messages about.  And he's not even back home yet.  So keep posting and blogging so that we can learn from each other.  I've made notes about some of the things you've mentioned over the last few weeks.  So thank you! 

Comment by FireTeamLeaderWife aka FTLW on April 11, 2015 at 5:48am

Warning! Long post...

As far as "I hope you realize just how many people you help"....I am just now starting to realize it.

And what I also realizing... is that there is much more that I can do than I have been.

I try to be positive when on here. Encouraging. Folks are struggling enough. But if I truly believe my own words, "this site was designed for much more than just BC and PIR...that it is meant to help for the lifetime of your Sailors career" then I need to be contributing in that way as well. There has to be a balance. Sometimes the negative needs to be talked about and exposed in order to help others and possibly bring change. It may not BUT we do have a "voice to speak".

Because quite frankly...the negative can be very damaging.

Miss Conception (thank you for your responses btw)said something that I have watched my husband go through for 29+ years and am now watching our son go through:

"I was soooo frustrated and still am at how in the dark reservists are left all the time. I have to count to ten almost every time I walk in to do drill just to deal with the new things I was supposed to telepathically know. Lol."

Her words ring true. Many, many times it is only that ...frustrating. But I have seen my husband, a very strong man be subject to toxic leadership. There is a lot of talk about young troops but he is an example of it happening to someone "in the middle". I am talking abusive here...but you knock him down and he gets right back up. There are wounds but he keeps going. He serves...took care of the troops below him in spite of it. He was told he was "too soft" and his response is: "Don't mistake kindness for weakness." One example of his perceived "softness" was allowing personnel to rest in the shade in a spot in the middle of their work area. They could easily be on the go again in either direction on a moments notice. Why did he allow this? Because it was frickin' 115 degrees out and the Humvees had no air conditioning. So what's better, a troop doing something that will help keep them going or one that ends up in the hospital for heatstroke all because "it looks bad"."

Reservists are in the dark and yet have to fulfill and keep the same standards as Active duty WHILE holding down a regular job as well. I am not even going to go into all of it in this post. But I am seriously considering blogging about it. Not to vent or complain but to do something constructive with the frustration and well...just down right anger I feel at the mistreatment that goes on.

Some of the deep stuff is not mine to tell...yet. But the frustrating admin stuff that they are supposed to telepathically or "osmotically" know...yeah, that needs to be talked about.

Quite frankly I get more results from my searches online than I have from the "powers that be" that are supposed to know what they are doing.

Most of the time they:

a) Don't know what to do for the reservist

b) Don't care-it doesn't affect them so it's not there problem.

c) Both of the above.

Being a reservist on a reserve base can make a big difference...but being a reservist attached to an active duty base is 10 x's worse. Hell, when my husband had pay issues while deployed I went to the base and they couldn't help, the secretary assigned to his team didn't even know what I was talking about. I had to figure it out on my own and convince her to get me to someone else to fix it.

It's hard for the reservist and hard for the families as well. You do not have other families to connect with.

Reservists are looked down upon, made fun of... "weekend warrior" is a common phrase...yet statistically a very large portion of service members deployed are reservists (or at least it was in 2011 when hubby was deployed). I always forget the exact percentage.

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