@ATG,
First of all, I am not going to attack you for your reasons for wanting to go into the Marine Corps. We all have our personal reasons for joining.
With that said, entering for the purposes of gaining self-confidence is not necessarily a very good reason. I want to give a little background on myself. I enlisted at 17 and had to have my father sign off on it because I was too young. When I went to MEPS, I was 5’6’’ and 114 pounds. I was three pounds too light so my recruiter had me eat bananas and peanut butter until I couldn’t eat anything else in order to make the weight limit. Just to let you know, when I graduated boot camp, I was a whopping 127 pounds and was assigned as a machine gunner.
I’m not sure of how much you have actually looked into boot camp, but none of the obstacle courses are very user friendly for someone that was as small as I was. However, I thrived on them and never held a position lower than being within the top five finishers.
Now, my parents signed for me, but they didn’t really want me joining. My grandparents all told me there was no way that I would make it through boot camp because their oldest son lasted three weeks at MCRD and was sent home. At the time, he was 6’2” and 230 pounds…so they saw that their “big” boy couldn’t make it so there was no way that “little ole me” was going to succeed. Was that a motivator for me to complete boot camp???...no, but, it was a perk once I went home and they saw that I succeeded.
I didn’t go to boot camp in order to gain confidence in myself or in order to gain it in the eyes of others. I already knew what I was capable of. I didn’t need reinforcement from others. Boot camp will not instill confidence in you…you either have it…or you don’t. Some may have different opinions. Many go there believing that you will go there and be “forced to succeed” because you can’t just “quit” and walk out. Well, in today’s environment when there are cutbacks being made due to budgetary restraints and personnel issues, you have to really “want” to be there. I will be the first to admit that once you accomplish certain things while in book camp, you will gain confidence within, but that isn’t generally the reason for going.
You have to truly want to “embrace the suck” or you will be a miserable individual. Look that phrase up and see if that is what you want and are willing to do. Again, going in to gain self-confidence truly isn’t a great reason for wanting to join.
As to being a leader, they can teach you some mechanics of it…give you some tools to make you better, but you need to have some leadership ability before that. A lack of confidence isn’t a good way to start.
Just some thoughts…you can take them or leave them. Good luck.
