There have been several members of the community over the years who served or are still serving their country. @Beef__Chizzel, ItzAwezome, @StreakyOrange and I. Some current members are already planning to join; @Aiqw, @Karwa, and maybe more that I don't know of. Do you know any more of these people? Have you ever thought of serving your country? Do you wanna know how it is? You can discuss and ask questions about the topic in this thread!
I want to serve the country, I want to be remembered as somebody who did something good for my country. I don't know what role, like you said I like the general idea.
Imma be honest I have absolutely no interest in serving in the military. I'm a big pacifist; well, no. I'm not against violence, it's just, I don't like hurting people myself physically unless I absolutely need to. Plus, I have mega problems with stress/anxiety and sometimes even depression. Add onto my asthma which limits my breathing fairly quicker than it does for others (like around dust, smoke, etc). overall, the biggest thing for me is the mental health aspect. I know the type of person I am, and that's a person who does not perform well under pressure at all. Like, I'm over here stressing TF about going to college when it's more than a month away. And you're constantly under pressure in a job like being in the military
I get it. I wouldn't want to hurt people either. Militaries are like corporates though. They have many roles and the absolute majority of people in the military aren't actual fighters. There are logistics roles, engineers, mathematicians, transport, cyber, intelligence, media coverage, instructors, managers, desk jobs and hundreds more. Would you ideologically refuse to take any role in a military, or specifically combat related roles?
It's something I've never really thought of actually. I've just dismissed the idea all together, have known for a long time that getting into that type of work really isn't what I want or need to do. It's mostly because of, as I said above, the pressure of it all. I've had a rough time in school, high-school to be specific, simply when I'm having trouble with an assignment, or with a specific amount of work; I stress over things very easily/quickly despite the many years of trying to better my mental health. I can't even imagine how I'd cope with having to work in such a formal environment like that
I'd only join under the condition that I need to or that my country is in dire need of my service. Right now there isn't really a massive need for my service, but I'm considering joining the USAF after going through ROTC to become a pilot.
The military recruitment culture, especially in the States is very interesting to me. The NZDF (New Zealand Defence Force) is a pretty small, specialised, military, and as such doesn't need to recruit quite the same as in other countries. Additionally, New Zealanders tend not to have a culture of 'serving your country', and so the people who want to join the military tend to specifically seek it out based on their particular skills and interests, rather than acting as more of a catch-all. So for me at least, I would approach joining the NZDF the same as how I would approach any other job, and for me at least it doesn't really stack up. The types of roles I would apply for aren't as interesting as other jobs available (not really a huge scope for programmers for example), plus there is a large amount of training attached. Plus the pay (at least early on) isn't great, so I'm better off staying where I am - but if you have a skillset that works well with what roles are available, then it can pay pretty well eventually.
