United States Air Force: Enlistment Process

If you are interested in what has been going on in the recent months, that is what this post is all about.

After I decided to enlist in the United States Air Force I got in touch with a recruiter in Denver to begin the process. This was in August, 2018. My recruiter has been my guide since. He initially had me take the PiCAT, which is essentially the At-Home version of the ASVAB. My first score from my Junior year of High School had expired since they are only valid for 2 years. I managed a score of 97/99 for Mechanical, 97/99 for Electrical, 96/99 for Administrative, and 96/99 for General. Anyone that has taken the ASVAB knows that these scores are pretty good, and would open up every job the Air Force has to offer to me.

I had 30 days to get to the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) to confirm those scores. Unfortunately, you have to get in to take that confirmation test WITHIN 30 days, and I arrived on the 30th day. I ended up having to take the FULL ASVAB once again, as well as the personality test, and a secondary electronics test all in one sitting. Not too bad, and I ended up getting the exact same scores.

After confirming my ASVAB scores were high enough, we started looking at possible jobs that I would be interested in. Two of the jobs stood out to me, or really two versions of the same job. One was a Cryptologic Language Analyst, and the other was the Airborne Cryptologic Language Analyst. Having the opportunity to learn another language and become a translator was exciting to me. As a language analyst you also learn the culture of the people speaking your language, which appealed to me as someone with a degree in Anthropology.

In order to qualify for a linguist job I had to take the Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB), which was also at MEPS. I tried to study for this test, and used the Official DLAB Study Guide from Amazon. I'm not sure if that is the reason, but I did manage to get a 137/140 for this test. For context, everything I saw suggested that the average score for this test is around 87, and I needed at least a 110 to qualify to be a linguist for the Air Force.

137 did it for me, and, after consulting with my wife, decided to shoot for a job as an Airborne Cryptologic Language Analyst.

Throughout the testing process I was also submitting information for my background investigation, and all of my medical info. This is where my frustrations started.

The bulk of my medical information came from an injury I suffered in the Philippines. I broke my right leg in two places and had to have a screw inserted into the rear bottom of my tibia. This screw remains to this day. My documentation of this injury is a 30 page PDF that is mostly irrelevant information that was added by the Filipino Hospital. My medical pre-screen was rejected 5-6 times for various reasons ranging from a request for additional information and post-operative reports, to a page being "too light to read". It wasn't approved until November, 2018, when I finally got to go to MEPS to take my physical.

Everything for the physical went fine. I got to stay in the Sheraton hotel the night before, and took a bus to MEPS at 5:30am the following day. I passed every test they gave me, but because the screw is still in my leg, they informed me that I needed a waiver from the Surgeon General of the Air Force. We submitted that, and waited..

and waited..

After a month, they rejected my paperwork as they also said it was "too light to read". So we submitted the originals.. again.. And waited. Two more months went by before it was finally approved. Of course, by then the original medical pre-screen was over 90 days old and had expired, so I had to resubmit that thinking it would be a quick turnaround.

One month and one day later it was finally approved.

Last Tuesday I was able to go to MEPS once again for what they call an Inspect. Essentially they just check my weight and ask if there is anything else going on with me medically. After that I waited until noon to talk to the Contract Specialist, signed my contract, swore into the Delayed Entry Program of the Air Force, and chose my list of preferred careers.

I was finally in!

I spoke with my recruiter and he said there was one spot left for an Airborne Cryptologic Language Analyst, and he was getting me into it! This Monday I learned that I got the spot and will leave for Basic Military Training (BMT) on May 21st!