re: ? Is there any advantage to volunteering to enlist instead of

At the beginning of the year, the complete list was drawn.

If you were smart, having a low number, you went in right away, choosing the branch you wanted. Canon fodder or something else.

Our number, in the final draft, was posted in the Military papers ( we were stationed in Tokyo) on December of the previous year.

We were informed “this is it, end of the draft, numbers for the next two years. My number was 286. I wasn’t going anywhere but Auburn.

Kids that had low numbers went and enlisted in the Air Force and Coast Guard.

I did HPSP. There are certain things they don’t tell you about.

1. U will make a lot less money in the military than u would in private practice depending on your specialty. U have to weigh the cost of med school versus lost work time and salary differential in private practice. I lost a lot more salary by doing military than I gained in them paying for school.

2. U don’t have as much say in your specialty as they would lead u to believe. The military’s s needs come first, remember that. Say you want to go into derm, well they only allow 2 a year to go into it. Good luck getting that when they award points to prior service guys and active duty. You will be pushed into flight medicine instead.

3. Say u get your specialty u want but want into a fellowship. Same rules apply. I had a Neuro radiology fellowship lined up and was told by the military to not waste my time applying that I would never beat out the other 2 applicants because one was an academy grad and the other prior AD with multiple years in.

3. Your skills will atrophy in the military. I along with other physicians I served with were told to work less hard because we were making the others look bad. Think about that for a second. They set a minimum number of studies to read or patients and all u have to do is hit that mark.

4. Endless DEI and other BS PowerPoints to review.

The carrot of paying for med school is nice but there are a lot of trade offs. In fact me accepting the HPSP spot was a mistake.

quote:

---

it's going to be hard to find many who qualify for service.

---

They will hit the numbers no matter how.

The people with connections will be coded in the system to be skipped over or given cushy jobs.

Bingo!

I, in part, joined because I had this patriotic vision of what the US military stood for. I quickly found out it is an adult daycare.

I would die for my children and fellow American. But, I’m not not gonna give up my life for someone to make more money on their MIC stocks or for a foreign country.

I volunteered and served but I’m not too keen on fricking sacrificing my kids for the pieces of shite running our country at the behest of other nations.

If you want your kids to die for them then go right ahead. frick off