Howdy guys. A few (probably very few) may remember a post I made a few months ago titled "My brushes with SOF, a tragic tale". It detailed my previous attempts to join various "cool guy" units and positions in my past 8 years. Starting with an aborted attempt to join a STA platoon at another battalion and finishing up with my second denial from MARSOC, it chronicled basically everything I had done up until the time of the posting. During the time period that I posted it, I had a package in for my third attempt at getting a MARSOC support position. Well, I can tell you now that it bit me in the ass. Hard.
You see, I didnt just post it here. I had originally posted a slightly different version on a comedy website which happened to have a military sub-forum. The tone of the post was somewhat flippant and unprofessional, but at the time I had thought that the forum was not viewable by the public and therefore I was safe. That proved to be incorrect. I cleaned it up and changed the wording around when I posted here because I knew that that sort of decorum was the norm. But really, I was just bitching. In a strange twist, I was contacted not by an official MARSOC representative, but by an officer whom I had previously served under. He told me that that particular post was making the rounds in the echelons of MARSOC command, and the general consensus was that they were not happy about it. One particular Marine put it this way: "This applicant is immature and unprofessional. He will never be invited to MARSOC." To this day I am not sure how they got ahold of it, or how they were able to tie it to me, but the fact of the matter is that they did and I lost my third shot at a position and lifestyle that I had wanted for so long. I was pretty devastated, but I still held out hope that I might make it in since I had not received an official denial notice. Well, this was around July that I found out about this, and despite having never received a denial notice, I highly doubt that they're still interested in me. But I digress....
DO NOT BE LIKE ME
Thats the only lesson I want to impart from this post. No matter how frustrated you get at the selection process, no matter how long its taking you to get there KEEP YOUR COMMENTS AND OPINIONS TO YOURSELF. Keep your head down and drive on despite adversity. You'll have much tougher challenges to face in whatever selection course you go through, so holding off on bitching to the internet should be very easy for you. Thats not just forums. Facebook has resulted in so much administrative action against guys that its not even funny. So just dont it.
As a side note, around the same time I found out that the command had seen my post, I was contacted by the senior editor of the Marine Corps times. Apparently HE had seen the post as well, and thought it was an interesting story and wanted to interview me about it. In this case, I did the wise thing and kept my fat mouth shut!!
There is a bright side to the story, however. About 3 weeks ago I finally landed a gig on an ANSF advisor team, which I've been wanting to do ever since I heard that they existed. I'll be headed over to Afghanistan for my 5th deployment sometime next year.
Once again: DO NOT BE LIKE ME
You see, I didnt just post it here. I had originally posted a slightly different version on a comedy website which happened to have a military sub-forum. The tone of the post was somewhat flippant and unprofessional, but at the time I had thought that the forum was not viewable by the public and therefore I was safe. That proved to be incorrect. I cleaned it up and changed the wording around when I posted here because I knew that that sort of decorum was the norm. But really, I was just bitching. In a strange twist, I was contacted not by an official MARSOC representative, but by an officer whom I had previously served under. He told me that that particular post was making the rounds in the echelons of MARSOC command, and the general consensus was that they were not happy about it. One particular Marine put it this way: "This applicant is immature and unprofessional. He will never be invited to MARSOC." To this day I am not sure how they got ahold of it, or how they were able to tie it to me, but the fact of the matter is that they did and I lost my third shot at a position and lifestyle that I had wanted for so long. I was pretty devastated, but I still held out hope that I might make it in since I had not received an official denial notice. Well, this was around July that I found out about this, and despite having never received a denial notice, I highly doubt that they're still interested in me. But I digress....
DO NOT BE LIKE ME
Thats the only lesson I want to impart from this post. No matter how frustrated you get at the selection process, no matter how long its taking you to get there KEEP YOUR COMMENTS AND OPINIONS TO YOURSELF. Keep your head down and drive on despite adversity. You'll have much tougher challenges to face in whatever selection course you go through, so holding off on bitching to the internet should be very easy for you. Thats not just forums. Facebook has resulted in so much administrative action against guys that its not even funny. So just dont it.
As a side note, around the same time I found out that the command had seen my post, I was contacted by the senior editor of the Marine Corps times. Apparently HE had seen the post as well, and thought it was an interesting story and wanted to interview me about it. In this case, I did the wise thing and kept my fat mouth shut!!
There is a bright side to the story, however. About 3 weeks ago I finally landed a gig on an ANSF advisor team, which I've been wanting to do ever since I heard that they existed. I'll be headed over to Afghanistan for my 5th deployment sometime next year.
Once again: DO NOT BE LIKE ME
