One warm sunny day about mid-June my dad and I drive to the recruiting office, I sit there nervous and scared of what’s is going to be said. As we pull into the parking lot I look over to my dad  and he turns to me smiles and asks if I was ready, I shake my head yes and we proceed to get out of the truck, and begin to walk to the office each step closer I became more and more nervous. Once we walk into the office we are greeted by three enlisted sailors who are anxious to help me. We sit down for about an hour and a half of the back and fourth game me and my dad talk about it and I decide I’m interested so I begin signing the mountains of paper work and set up a date to officially join. The date is about a week after my original meeting.

The week passes and I become nervous and scared again as we make our way to the office I am to drive to Pittsburgh for a two day trip to officially join. We pull into the parking lot and begin to walk towards the office. With my overnight bag in hand I walk in and the recruiters have me sit down to wait for the others. Once they arrive we all pile into this little car with not space to breath for the 2 hour drive to Pittsburgh, I listen to music to pass the time.  We get to Pittsburgh and pull into a parking garage the recruiter gets out and I and other kid follow him he takes us into a building and signs us in and wishes us good luck and off we go into another room. After do everything we have to do I boarded a shuttle bus to a hotel and walked inside. As I walked into the hotel I was amazed by everything I saw, I was told to go into the “military lounge” and I did. When I walked inside I was greeted by a concierge who exclusively worked for the military personnel. He gave me and all the other kids there who were ready to sign up a quick briefing and thanked us for our service and told us to “enjoy the night role call at 0430”.  My night mostly consisted of talking to my parents seeing as this is the first thing I had really ever had to do without their help, but they were supportive and gave the confidence boost I need to make my night. So 4:30 comes around and I get a wakeup call from the hotel then 4:45 I get another, I get dressed and ready to go and I head downstairs to check out. After that I ate a quick breakfast and headed outside to meet up with the other kids. We waited around in cold morning air for about 15 minutes until a shuttle bus arrived, we all boarded the bus and off we went. We pulled up to this big building and we all got off and lined up in 2 rows waiting to get in, it took a while for everyone to get settle so we sat outside shivering for about a half hour. Once we got in the building and through security all the kid went separate ways. Now I really can’t explain what happens next so we are going to skip ahead a bit. Now it’s about 11 am and it’s been a really long day as you can imagine, I was heading down to the cafeteria for some chow at this point waiting to work out my contract and swear in. I ate my food and headed back upstairs to wait some more. Finally I hear my name called (and now it’s been almost two and a half hours since I came back) I enter the room and a man introduces himself and asks me to sit down. I and he talk for a while and I make a few phone calls home to discuss things over with my dad (who is retired navy since I forgot to mention). After about an hour of arguing and figuring everything out I finally call my dad once last time and told him that I have decided to enlist and what my job and my ship date is. I will always remember that phone call it was the first time I could actually hear my dad be so proud of me and it almost brought me to tears. So after finishing my contract and settle out the little details I was escorted to a room for two other kids taught the proper way to stand and left alone for about 10 minutes. After those 10 minutes a small women walks in calls us to attention and tells us to repeat after her (also can’t discuss) at the end of it all she say “congratulations on joining the united states armed forces allow me to be the first to thank you for your service”. And that’s it, that’s the time my life change I decided what I was going to do with my life.

This is the time I joined the navy.