Civilian Life as USMC Reservist

[UrianL]

Hi, thank you for reading this post. I had a few questions about your life outside of the USMC. I understand that everyone varies in their situations, but I would be grateful to read your experiences.

1) Employers: I have read the USERRA coerces indiscrimination toward hiring military reservists, but I'm worried that most discrimination, in this context, is hard to prove.


- Other than USMC setting the example for citizens, do
employers receive any tax breaks or anything else that
makes hiring reservists attractive?

- When boot camp and other training come around, did anyone have to put in their 2 week notice in advance? If so, what was your context?


2) General: Being a full-time student and working part-time is taxing enough on your personal life. Drills are one weekend a month and one month a summer. That seems do-able, but I feel like there probably more to it than that.


- What's it like to balance service, school, work, and
your personal life? If you were able to balance school and work, what's it like to add service into the equation?

- Because of training, deployments, and other things, did/how much longer did you have to go to school to get your bachelors/associate?

Thank you so much for reading this. I'm sorry, if anything I said came out offensive or blunt. I'm not really a smooth talker. Thank you for any input.

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[josephd]

I am not going to answer each of those questions separately, I'll just respond with this...

Being a reservist is not as easy as you think and the active duty guys think. Yes it is only one weekend a month but that is a long weekend usually depending on your unit and MOS. As a reservist we are still required to do all the same annual training that our active duty counterpart do but we do it in less time and on our drill weekends. Rifle range for example is done in one long 4 day drill weekend when active duty takes 2 whole weeks. It can be hard to juggle school, a job, and your Marine Corps obligations. It takes up more time than you think. You need to have some serious personal discipline.

As far as the employer thing goes, an employer cannot discriminate against you for having military obligations. If they do they can get in some serious trouble. That said, does it happen?...yes of course they just don't make it obvious. If for any reason you feel they are jerkin you around you can report them and it usually doesn't turn out pretty for anyone.

Are you planning on quitting your current job?...if not you don't need to give them any sort of 2 week notice, just a heads up that you'll be leaving for boot camp, SOI, MOS school and then any sort of drill weekend/AT once you're at your unit. Your command will give you a letter that you turn in which verifies that you were doing your Marine Corps thing. Your employer has to keep your position/pay open for you while you're gone and you rate any sort of raise that may happen during the time you are gone.

[hussaf]

Balancing reserve and civilian life is tough for many reasons. Your civilian life gets constantly interrupted at the most inconvenient times. The requirements don't sound like much, but its more than you would think. Often drill weekends start on Friday or Thursday, depending on the training that needs accomplished. Its very inconvenient for you, any college you want to attend, and your employer. Sure laws protect your job, but it can be pretty trying and a little unfair for employers who just want to run their business. They have to hold your job, or an equivalent, and that often works out for them...but sometimes they get screwed. And, as mentioned above, they can fire you for various reasons not related to your military service.

Being a reservist is also tough in that is doesn't allow you to reach your potential in your MOS. Unless you are in a support role in which you work an equivalent job in the civilian world (ie mechanic, armorer, heavy equipment operator, etc) you are going to be sorely underperforming when compared to your active duty counterparts. A lot of drill time is spent catching up on annual classes and training requirements, admin maintenance, and visits to medical. MOS training gets squeezed in after all that is accomplished (that is if your command is adamant about checking all the training boxes in his EXCEL spreadsheet).

My advice has always been to do the four years AD and see how you like it. Four years is a drop in the bucket.