Case Study: Revolution

Faith knew, of course, that quitting the Army wasn’t as simple as turning in his resignation. There was an entire process, which included, among other things, face-to-face interviews with a general officer. It normally took about six months for the paperwork to go through, but Faith felt like he could ride that time out in the 116th Trans, at least he had MAJ Everly there.

That night, after his wife Linda returned from work, Faith gave her the news. It wasn’t a complete shock to her, since she of course knew that her husband was deeply dissatisfied with the Army and was looking hard at going to graduate school. But the timing seemed a bit… abrupt. She was a bit worried about the future, with only one income between them, but it was do-able if Scott got a scholarship and a part-time job while he was in school. This also meant that Linda would have to stay in the Army a couple years longer than the two of them expected, which wasn’t really a big deal since, unlike her husband, she was still pretty happy wearing the uniform.

Faith and his wife talked long into the evening. When she finally headed off to bed, Faith said awake, thinking and working. He finished up all of his graduate school applications, stamped the envelopes, and dropped them into the mailbox outside of his house. He also pulled out this latest OER, the one that was the last straw in his decision to quit the Army. He had, for a while, considered taking up the offer to compete for a position in the 16th SAVE. But with this eval, not only had his motivation to stay in the Army evaporated, he would never get accepted anyway.

By the time he finally made it to bed, it was well into the early hours of the morning. Although he tried to sleep, he couldn’t. He thought his mind would be at ease after taking the final step to leave the Army by submitting his letter of resignation, but he wasn’t. He was still in turmoil mentally. He had wanted to be in the Army his whole life, and now that it was finally over (well, almost over), he had a nagging suspicion that he wasn’t doing the right thing.

As time passed and the sun slowly began to creep up above the horizon, he took stock of his life. He decided to quit drinking, and he was going to do his utmost to control his temper. He was going to work hard in grad school, and he was going to do everything he could to make life easy for his wife, who was going to be the sole breadwinner for his family in the very near future. He drifted off shortly before his alarm rang to remind him it was time for PT. Slowly, Faith rose and got dressed, and then drove back in to work.
 
When he arrived at work for PT, Faith’s first stop was to MAJ Everly’ office. Faith knew that the stunt he pulled the night before, with tossing the letter of resignation on Everly’s desk, was pretty much the same thing as tossing a turd in his lap; it was a pretty low-class move. Everyly wasn’t in his office when Faith looked in. This was unusual; Everly normally spent all of the morning PT period in his office, instead of out doing PT. Faith went on to his own office to drop off his uniform, keys, and wallet before heading out on a run. When he pushed open the door to his office, Faith was surprised to see Everly sitting in Faith’s seat. He did not look pleased. “This can’t be good,” Faith said to himself as he entered the office and closed the door behind himself.
 
Oh you did not just revive this thread with 5 lines of information.

Did you used to break up with girlfriends and then text them for a booty call every now and then but refuse to acknowledge them after that, thus breaking their poor hearts!!!!!!??????!!!!!!!

Wait, that was possibly me that did that, but it's still a good comparison!
 
Sir, that was just wrong.... Like showing a bottle of the Glenlivet Signature to somebody and then not inviting them to partake in a dram... oh, yeah, you've done that too... :hmm::hmm::hmm:

eta: actually, you did invite, just never followed through with the whiskey....:thumbsdown:
 
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Dick move, big guy. Dick move.

I have a cat that can pee in shoes with laser guided precision, never dripping once on the surrounding floor. You'll never know it until...

...you post some more crap and not give us anything to work with!!!
 
It didn’t take long for Everly to express his displeasure. Faith knew he deserved it, so he stood there and said nothing. When Everly finally finished, he asked if Faith had anything he wanted to say. “No sir, I think you covered it,” Faith replied. “And… I’m sorry,” he added, meaning it.

“Let me tell you something,” Everly continued, unimpressed by Faith’s apology. “You pull something like this again, and you won’t have to worry about quitting, because I’ll fire your sorry ass! “ Faith nodded his understanding.

Everly sighed and leaned back in his chair. “If you hadn’t stomped off in a huff yesterday, I would have been able to talk to you about this,” he said, tapping a document he had placed on Faith’s desk.

“What’s that?” Faith asked.

“Read it,” Everly said as he rose to leave the room, “and then come talk to me. But the bottom line is, there is a stoploss on. No aviators, special forces, or intelligence officers are being allowed to voluntarily separate.” Faith felt his heart sink.
 
After carefully reading the MILPER message announcing the pending stoploss, Faith noticed that while he and every other MI officer was effectively stoplossed, there was in fact a major loophole. If one was accepted to graduate school before the stoploss date was effective, then he or she would be allowed to ETS. “I guess the Army things grad school is more important than the war,” Faith opined to his wife over dinner that evening. Faith was utterly confident that he would get accepted to a number of different graduate programs, so he wasn’t worried that he’d have to stick it out in the Army. He expected notification letters to start arriving in about two weeks, and the implementing instructions for stoploss took effect in 30 days. So he had plenty of time to get accepted to school, and get the hell out of the Army. Faith ended up applying to about 20 graduate programs in the fields of leadership, management, and international relations. This was a very expensive and time-consuming process, but it was worth it to ensure he would at least get accepted “somewhere.”

The letters started arriving sooner than he expected. Faith decided that instead of opening each letter as it arrived, he would wait until he received all of the notification letters from all of the schools to which he applied, and open them all at once. This decision drove his wife, Linda, nuts. She was desperately curious to know where they would be going to school after Faith got out of the Army, and Faith’s insistence on waiting and opening all of the letters at once was unfathomable to her. One afternoon, Faith caught her holding one of the envelopes up to the light to see if she could read the letter inside, which of course she couldn’t. She was embarrassed, but Faith thought it was cute. Finally, the day came when they had received all of the letters they were expecting. Over dinner that night, Faith and his wife placed all of the letters in a pile on the table.

“Where should we start?” Linda asked eagerly.

“Well, why don’t we each take the letter from the school we like most, and start with there?” Faith suggested. Linda immediately grabbed up the letter from Vanderbilt, while Faith thought a moment before picking up the letter from the University of Alabama.
 
“3…2…” Faith said, counting down. But Linda was already tearing open the letter she held. Faith smiled and did the same with the letter from the University of Alabama. When he opened the letter up, his eyes immediately fell on the following words: “We regret to inform you…” Faith looked up and from the expression on his wife’s face, he knew that the letter from Vandy must have held similar news.

Faith tried to put a brave face on, but he was both disappointed and alarmed by the rejection from Alabama. Not only was it the school he wanted to go to most, it also had the lowest admission requirements; it was his “safe” school, the one he counted on to get into. “Maybe our ‘next favorite’ schools?” he suggested cheerfully.
 
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