Welcome back to Airman Vision. My name is McKenna Gaw and today I'm going to be talking about getting started with your Air Force journey and talking to a recruiter. Obviously the first step to joining the Air Force is to find a recruiter Air Force.com. You're going to click on connect. Then you're going to click on find a recruiter. You'll enter your zip code and then your education level and you'll hit search. And then the recruiter for your area will come up with their contact information. And then you're going to give that recruiter a call. I know it now. I like Blink. And hopefully they answer you sooner than later. So the next thing that is going to happen is the recruiter is going to ask you some qualifying questions. We all are going to have a lot of questions but they're going to have these qualifying questions first. So save any of your questions that you have for a one-on-one appointment. Next I'm going to talk about what to bring to your appointment with your recruiter, the documents that you'll need. You are going to need your driver's license, your social security card, first certificate, and high school diploma. That is something that everybody has to take with them. If you're married, you have to take your marriage certificate and your spouse's social security card. If you've gone to college, you're going to want to make sure and have your college transcripts with you. And some additional documents that you may want to bring would be a passport if you have one. Any name change information, if you have kids, their birth certificate, and social security card. The day of your appointment with your recruiter. Thankfully for me, in this case, I called my recruiter on a Monday and I got an appointment that next Wednesday. It is not always this easy. Thankfully, in this situation, I called and he answered on the first call and I got an appointment two days later. When you first go in, they're going to hand you a clipboard and you are going to answer all of those qualifying questions that you were asked on the phone. You're going to have to answer those all over again. I am at the very, very, very beginning of this process and I have already answered the same questions over and over and over again. So be ready for that. Since I have tried talking to recruiters in the past, I didn't have a whole lot of questions and also because my husband was in the Air Force. So there were a lot of things that I was already aware of. But the main question I had, how fast can I join? And this is going to differ for every single person because there are so many factors that go into it. One being if you have all of your documents with you already, another thing is if you have any ongoing medical processes. For me, I actually have in vis-align right now, I'm not wearing my retainers, but I still have the attachments on my teeth. And I have to get those removed. This is something I learned last time I tried talking to a recruiter in joining. I couldn't at the time because I have in vis-align on. So if you guys are out there with braces or in vis-align, those have to be removed before you're able to go to basic training. Next is going to depend on when you can get a MEP state and if you pass MEPs and the ASVAB are both going to go into if you're able to move forward faster. And the recruiters get jobs all at different times. Next question I had was about the ASVAB. We all have to take the ASVAB and they have a few different versions. One is the Pi Cat ASVAB. This is a computerized ASVAB that you take at home. My recruiter actually doesn't like this version at all, so he isn't going to give me the option to do it. But then when you go to MEPs and do the ASVAB stuff there, if you've already taken the Pi Cat at home, they either make you do a validation test or they might even make you retake the whole ASVAB. So he's like, it's better just to do the one and done and have it over all at MEPs. Now the only option I have is to do the Cat ASVAB, which is the computerized version of the ASVAB that you take at MEPs. Now I know this is not the first time you've heard of MEPs because I'm sure this is not the only video you've watched. But MEPs is the military entrance processing station and it is a two-day ordeal. That's the word we're going to use. Most places recruiting offices will have you meet at the recruiting office and then you take a shuttle to MEPs. You go to the hotel and the first day you will take the ASVAB if you haven't taken the ASVAB yet. And then the second day is the longest day. You get up at like four in the morning and then you're there to like four p.m. And that's the day where you go through all of the medical examination stuff. I will tell you guys more about the MEPs experience after I have gone through MEPs myself and then I'll let you guys know how it goes. The next thing that my recruiter and I talked about was jobs. Now I want a medical job. So bad. I feel like that is a common interest of many people. Maybe it's not, but for me, I really want a medical job. I've heard that it's hard to get medical jobs. So that was the first thing I said when I was asking about my jobs, I said, I want a medical job. How likely is it that I'm going to get one? I feel like they're just always high demand, so they're hard to get. I asked, what are the main jobs that they're filling right now or at least looking for the high demand jobs? And he said cyber, intel and security forces are the main jobs right now that they're looking for people to be interested in. Then when it comes to jobs selection after MEPs, after you take the ASVAB and you pass MEPs, you'll get a list of jobs that you qualified for. Then you're going to sit down with your recruiter after MEPs. Don't have to have it selected at MEPs after you sit down with your recruiter and you do a one-on-one kind of counseling session. That way you can see what you qualify for, talk about the jobs with them, see what you're interested in, and then you make a list of eight jobs. And only one job is allowed to be a medical job. So, three regions might have different requirements, you might have to have two aptitude areas or maybe you're allowed to have more medical jobs. But for me, here in Huntsville, Alabama, Ajobs, one medical, one aptitude. After you're done getting all of your questions answered by the recruiter, you're feeling good about it, you're ready to move forward. Then your recruiter might have you go ahead and take a practice ASVAB. So, that is what I did. I had the computer there. It's timed on the computer, but you're supposed to time yourself so he said to take 30 minutes and there were 40 questions, 10 in four different categories. Then the recruiter is going to come in when you're done, answer in all of them, and then your overall scores show up on the screen, you'll go get your recruiter and he's going to come back in and evaluate your scores. So, I got a 50 on my practice ASVAB. The recruiter evaluates your score, they will give you some tips and advice on things to study for. And then my recruiter let me know about four tests.com that way I could take my own practice ASVAB at home and brush up on my skills a little bit. So, hopefully I can get a better score when I go to take the real one. The last thing that you're going to do is go over a bunch of forms. For me, it was digital forms and I would assume that for most people it is going to be, they're going to have you create a 6 to 8 digit pen. My recruiter told me that this is something that I'm going to use at least throughout the whole joining process. It could be after it could be your whole career. So, make sure it's a number that you remember because this pen is going to act as your signature. So, whenever you have to sign something they'll say, type in your pen and then your initials or your signature will pop up showing that you validate that form. But over drug and alcohol form and then of course you got to sign each one of these. Medical, so you go through all your medical history. This is the time as well. If you do have any medical issues it is something that you want to let your recruiter know. Then I had to sign saying that I have not taken the ASVAB yet. So, for those of you who have taken it, I'm sure you'll just need to give your recruiter that paper with your score on it and the date and all of that. And then you wouldn't have to sign this. Dependent information for medical reason because when you join your spouse and kids will become your dependents so you need to fill out that stuff. And then recruiter relations saying that you can't have any personal relationships with your recruiter. And then the very last thing is they're going to send you an email for a background check. And I am going to make a whole separate video about this because there needs to be a whole separate video about it. So, I will make that video for you guys to check out. My appointment took about three hours. It could differ for you of course but definitely take that into account if there's anything that you need to do that day to make time for your recruiter appointment. I was thinking it might be about an hour or so but yeah, it took about three hours. It didn't seem like that long because I was excited to move through this process and to like hear some good news finally after waiting this long. So, that is it. And if you guys have any questions, put them in the comments below. I will continue to make videos of my journey to joining the Air Force.