When I was finishing my senior year in college, I was applying for the Air Force OTS route because I wanted to fly fighters or anything I could qualify for. Worked hard. Got in great shape. My aviation instructor wrote a great recommendation letter and another military friend. Drove to Ft Lee in VA to MEPS to do my physical. Had to come back at another time to take the AFOQT. The problem is that every time I was scheduled to take the test, it would abruptly get cancelled and rescheduled. There were a couple instances when I was two hours into my drive and I would get a call from my recruiter to turn around and come back because the testing was pushed back again. I didn't know my ex girlfriend's father was the Test Control Officer there. He knew I was nearing the cut off age for the selection process and he was trying to cause me to miss that window by pushing back my tasting testing dates. She and I dated for 3 years and she is Caucasian. Her parents hated the interracial relationship and wanted nothing to do with me regardless of the fact that she and I were people of faith and lived moral lives. I never had the chance to meet her parents for three years. We broke and I eventually found out she was cheating on me while doing her summer internship. It wasn't until after we broke up that her father decided to try to ruin my life. It was frustrating but it all began to make since as to why my AFOQT testing dates kept geting pushed back and I had to finally open up to my Air Force recruiter and liaison about the situation. I filed a complaint to the station commander but it went no where. I was so stressed out by the whole ordeal, by the time I was able to finally take the AFOQT, I didn't score as well as I needed to. I can only blame myself. I allowed him to get in my head and stress me out. I appealed to Senator Lindsey Graham, my state Senator at the time about everything that had happen and what my goals were. I guess his office reached out to DC to the Pentagon because I got a letter a few weeks later from a high ranking Air Force official apologizing for all the crap I had to go through and that even if I would be allowed to retake the AFOQT and get selected, I would have reached the cut off age before completing flight training. I did have the option to pursue enlistment but I didn't want to settle for enlistment after busting my butt getting a college education. So yeah, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. Much of it I blame myself for not persevering in times of adversity. I would stress out and shut down when things go hard for me. I regret that but it eventually made me a fighter.
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September 2019
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