brabus

I think what uniball is getting at is that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket. Working hard in ROTC and caring about it is great, as you should. The example of 6 hours on the phone is trying to show someone who is not very well-rounded. While you should care about ROTC, you need to do other stuff. Doing ROTC stuff on a Friday night should ALMOST never happen. If you've got something big going on Sat, then I could see it, but if not, then let it go and do something fun for the weekend. You're not well-rounded if 95% of your time is spent doing ROTC stuff (that doesn't include hanging out with friends from ROTC). Let me know if I'm wrong on this interpretation uniball.

I've seen a couple guys go away for a semester and come back to get a nav slot and end up doing engineering (both got what they wanted). So, it's not impossible, but what jetjock says makes a lot of sense. How can you be ranked well for that fall semester when you're not even there? Being that the AF needs engineers, I'd say you probably are ok to do this (assuming your grades and everything are good). Because lets just face it, you don't need to be #1 right now to be an engineer in the AF. Not dogging engineers, but the AF needs them so bad, that they won't really care if you're not in the top 5%. However, having fun abroad is still going to cost you in your ROTC career. If you're not looking to be rated or gunning for DG or something like that, then go for it, have some fun! But if you care about what positions you get in ROTC and your overall class ranking, I'd think seriously about going abroad.

Seen it work for a friend, saw my mom get kind of screwed (not horribly I guess) and my brother get really screwed (as in the car should have had a salvage title). Carfax was done on both of them, what a waste of time. Carfax is pretty worthless sometimes because people can get in a huge crash (i.e. wrap the car around a phone poll) but as long as there's no police report/insurance claim, carfax will never know. So, the person can pay out of pocket just to get the car semi-working and then dump it...the perfect place to dump is ebay. My advice: only buy a car off of ebay if you can personally check it out or have a trusted friend/mechanic check it out. It's always good to have a mechanic check any car out, but especially one for sale on the internet. Some people do ok on ebay, but I think a good number get anywhere from a little screwed to extremely screwed. And to add, my brother's car came from a dealership (or so they called themselves). So just b/c it's from some dealership in TX or whatever, does not make the description legit.

Well, no one knows a f*cking thing about being a fighter pilot until they've gone through the training and then some. So, every single person who goes through IFF and then a RTU doesn't know a thing about being a fighter pilot until they've gone through it all. So yeah, the moral is don't screw up...because anyone could screw up, FAIPs and all.

I had lunch with a guy a few days ago who's oldest son is now an IP at Vance. He (the son) knows a guy who put in his FAIP time, getting about 1000 hours. He then went to Tyndall and failed 15 school. The AF kicked him out. Moral of the story, watch your ass and don't screw up...force shaping sucks.