Ozzieb88,
Not the most inspirational of responses to your thread so far and I shall endeavour to be a little more positive.
At your age, having any idea of a future career is better than 99.9% of your peers and it is a good age to reach a well reasoned conclusion of the matter. It doesn't appear to me that you are making a 'spur of the moment' decision to apply to the armed forces as you say you have been thinking about an RAF career since 13 and have made progress towards that goal by joining the ATC and by working for a PPL. I do not believe that to consider a career in the armed forces means that you must run at it regardless of the drawbacks, and I do believe that it is a large step that must be considered. Weighing up the pros and cons of big decisions is a skill that all armed forces officers must posess. However, that said (and this is where I must support the comments already made) once you have decided on an armed forces career, you must give it everything you have from the day you apply to the day you leave the service. One day your life, and the lives of your friends around you may depend on you doing your job correctly, which means you have had to work damn hard through every minute of training.
Whether you should apply or not I cannot say. Even if we knew all of your personal circumstances, we do not know you personally. There is a certain personality that suits the armed forces (face fits etc). You must be committed and respectable as well as having enough personality and enough of a sense of humour to get along with the people around you. As 'arm out of the window' has said before, only you can decide if a life in the armed forces is for you (and it
is a life!).
Would I recommend it? Well I am only in the beginning of the training system and as BoraBora says there are drawbacks and people less than satisfied, but for every dissatisfied customer I know in IOT, after IOT and in the training system, I could point you to at least ten more who have never looked back. What I will say is that you will never find the opportunity to work with such a great group of people in another career (assuming of course you are that type of person).
I would recommend finding out more about life in the RAF. In my experience, cadets was a terrible indicator of what life in the service is like and at times only made me less enthusiastic (drill twice a week was about all my squadron staff managed for my five years and when I tried to organise stuff myself my CO was the proverbial brick wall). Write to your AFCO (In the queen's english of course
) and ask for a chance to see the service working. Try and visit a UAS or something but this is a decision you have to work out for yourself.
All the best
Caps
