Eric Bishop's Webpage

I’m near the end of my 6 year contract in the NY Army National Guard. I’ve been waiting for this moment for years, maybe since the day I joined, but as I’m approaching the end, I find myself more nostalgic than excited. I’ve met a lot of great people, interesting characters, and some leaders that mentored me in a significant way.

When I joined, I was 17. The military was an impulsive gamble on my part — I had no clue what I wanted to do after high school, but I knew I had to do something with my life. So rationally, I joined the military. Since that fateful day, I went through basic training, went on a few missions stateside, and spent around 1/4 of my precious weekends at drill (training weekends) for several years.

Joining the military is like russian roulette. I’ve seen people have very bad experiences simply due to poor luck. Though by some miracle, my experience has been very lucky and rewarding. It was a poorly calculated risk I took that panned out extremely well for me. I feel like I’ve had a privileged experience overall, and have had good leaders looking out for me when it mattered most.

I do believe that the National Guard has worthwhile benefits for someone fresh out of high school. The experience it gives you is invaluable, along with the college benefits. I’ve befriended people I never would have met outside of the military, seen many examples of good and bad leadership, and have plenty of stories to tell. I’ve made lifelong friends along with good and bad memories. The military is also where I learned how to act professional and focus on a task, and I think that gave me a lot of advantages while I was in college. I wouldn’t have nearly as much life experience without it.

I certainly associate being in uniform with a lot of bad things, like:
dehydration, sleep deprivation, discomfort, overdosing on caffeine, Catch-22 situations, I could probably keep going…

But I also associate it with:
laughter, friendship, camaraderie, unique experiences, and growing up.

I’m more tempted to focus on all the positives as I reflect on the past 6 years. My journey from being a very sedentary, unambitious teenager to being a diligent, somewhat-actualized adult starts and ends with my time in the military. It feels like an era is ending in my life and there is some anxious energy surrounding the future, but at least I get to grow my hair out (stay tuned for that). And now that it is all behind me I have more things to be grateful for than I do to complain about (and I’ve done enough complaining).

The juice was worth the squeeze.