I have recently been accepted as a Chaplain Candidate for the Army. What this means is that pending my successful completion of the Master of Divinity, I will be eligible to be a chaplain for a reserve unit. While I'm in school I will go to training every summer, including the chaplain version of basic, and throughout the year I will be assigned to assist a current chaplain in a reserve unit. In order to participate in all of this, I still need to be commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant, which I have orders for, I just need to execute them.
The army was my third choice, really. not that I had a solid reason for holding preference, but it was just the 3rd branch of the armed forces I attempted to join. I've had funny experiences with both the Navy and Air Force, so essentially, horrible people skills of recruiters is what led me to reject them.
The Navy was first, because I like idea of seafaring, and there's a LOT of diversity in naval units, from Marines to CB's to Ship's crews to Pilots and Carrier crews. The Navy is really cool. I tried calling them and leaving messages, and emailing and asking for more information and got no response whatsoever. I forgot all about it. About 8 months later, a man from the navy with shiny shoes and crisp white hat shows up unannounced on my doorstep. I had forgotten about my attempts to get more information from them. The whole thing was weird.
The Air Force was next, and I called them off of an informational brochure I had obtained from a display. I spoke to a nice rep who said he would forward all my info to a recruiter who would contact me shortly. After a month all I had recieved was an envelope from the Air Force containing the same brochure which I had used to contact them in the first place. I talked to a friend of mine who is in the same program I was trying to get into, and he gave me the contact info of his recruiter. I called her every day for two weeks and got no connection and no response. She finally did contact me after a phone tag session and acted like she didn't know the procedure for signing up a person for this program (when she had just done it for my friend). Months go by with no progress. Finally I complete the initial application and await further instruction, and I am contacted by another guy who seems to actually know what he's talking about and that he will be very helpful, except he tells me that I won't be eligible to apply until a certain requirement is fulfilled which I won't be able to do for a month. In that month, my first recruiter leaves me a message that she hasn't heard from me in a while, is wondering if I'm still interested, but she is dropping my file from the system, and I can call her and start over if I want to. I call her to inform her that I was told not to apply right now, and get no response. I call and email her when I am eligible and get no response whatsoever.
I contact the army. They respond immediately. They explain everything to me over the phone and in 2 waves of information, I fill out all the necesarry paperwork and get scheduled for processing. Within 6 weeks, everything I need for my application is completed, a month ahead of the due date.
It's amazing how common sense this is. go army.
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