Commentary: 30 is the new A1C

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Erin R. Babis
  • 48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England --  I've made a lot of plans for my life, but being a 29-year-old Airman was never one of them.

I didn't join because there were no other options; I joined because it was the best option for me. When I joined I barely squeaked by at the top of what was then the maximum age limit to enlist, but while I was in technical school learning to be a photojournalist, the Air Force policy changed. Now the maximum age limit to join is 39 years old.

It's a crazy notion that you can have people in basic training anywhere from 17 years old - with parental approval - to 39 years old. For any math-averse readers, that's a potential 22-year age range. As far as rank is concerned they will all be peers at the beginning of their careers regardless of previous experience.

I can't predict the future, specifically whether or not a huge onslaught of older people will start joining, but this new age range definitely invites a lot of changes for the demographics of the junior enlisted tier.

Age isn't everything, but it comes up a lot in the military when you're a decade older than anyone expects you to be.

Often, people I talk to who find out my age tell me how they felt going through their first few years in the Air Force feeling older even at 23 or 24 years old, sometimes people are curious and just want to know what it's like. At worst some people don't care and assume my rank is all I am.

I'm writing this for older Airmen who feel like outliers leaving them isolated. If you're curious then enjoy, but for those who only see a person's rank, you're crippling the Air Force by not using all the knowledge and life experiences your Airmen have to offer to your full advantage.

All I can do is tell you my story.

I grew up in Texas where joining the military is never unexpected for high school graduates, but no one who knew me would have expected me to join, and I didn't, at least not for another decade.

Instead, I graduated high school, worked through college and joined the Peace Corps. My life seemed to be on a trajectory going in the opposite direction of the military.

Of course life doesn't often cooperate with whatever plans you might have for yourself.

I was about to be living my dream. Peace Corps volunteers commit at least two years to join and I was going to Kazakhstan. All my research and discussions with former Peace Corps volunteers told me I just needed to make it through that first year and everything would start to make sense. I'd have a better understanding not only of the language and culture, but also of my job as an education volunteer.

That one-year mark was nearly in my sights when suddenly, everything was over. All the volunteers across the country were being called back for an evacuation. Our safety was increasingly at risk, obvious by the increase in attacks on Peace Corps volunteers, and the organization seemed to no longer be welcome.

I came home a little lost because my plan had been to discover what I wanted to do after the Peace Corps while I was in it. I moved around from Texas, to California, to Hawaii, to Connecticut and finally landed back in Texas.

That's when it hit me; I wanted to be a linguist. It felt like a sudden realization, but it had been making its way through my brain ever since learning to speak Kazakh. I had no money for the education though, so it was suggested that I turn to the military. Initially I laughed out loud, but the seed had been planted, and over time I saw that the military didn't just offer me a way to accomplish my goals. I had joined the Peace Corps because I had wanted to do something worthwhile and that was always something I craved. Joining the military would give me a career and direction, but more than that, it would give me what I needed. I would be a part of something greater than myself much like I had been in the Peace Corps.

I didn't join the Air Force and suddenly start to bleed blue; in fact I usually avoid saying why I joined because in my mind it sounds cheesy. It seems more believable when an 18-year-old says they joined for altruistic reasons, but it's usually expected for a 29-year-old to be slightly more pragmatic.

I didn't have a lot of time to get ready to join because I was already 26, and this was when the cutoff age was 28. My recruiter had just told me my tattoo immediately made me ineligible and it was going to take months to remove. I wasn't deterred. Instead, I made an appointment with a dermatologist and spent the next year getting the tattoo removed. I also joined a work-out group, a running team, did yoga at the YMCA and changed my diet, all in an attempt to be the best version of myself possible so I could keep up at basic military training. My paychecks from my current job were going towards what I hoped would be my future career.

It took more than ten very expensive treatments to get my tattoo removed, but almost a year later everything was ready.

My heart stopped when I was told there was no way I could get any job requiring an intelligence clearance, to include linguist. My time in the Peace Corps prohibited me because of one sentence in a regulation that apparently my recruiter had never seen before. I felt nauseated looking at the job list that was available to me. My list ended up with photojournalist on top. I had never even considered it, mainly because I hadn't known it was an option.

As I drove away from the MEPS center, my recruiter called me apologizing for the misinformation. He told me right then that because no one else in the Dallas area had put photojournalist on their list, there was already an opening. On Jan. 7, 2014, I was going to be shipped off to basic.

The reality of joining at a later age started to hit home while I was in the delayed entry program. Everyone waiting to leave for basic met up once a month at the recruiters office where we did a physical training test so we could know where we stood in comparison to Air Force standards. All my working out and eating healthy had paid off. Not only was I able to keep up, but I did very well. The part that I was trying to wrap my brain around was that people my age, or that I naturally related well with, were no longer going to be my peers when I joined. My peers were soon going to be determined by my rank.

There was no real way to prepare myself for how this would play out in reality, I could only prepare myself for the fact that once Jan. 7 came I would just have to work really hard to adapt as quickly as possible to what my new reality would look like.

So far, I'm the oldest person of my rank that I've met, but I've run into a few other Airmen in their late 20s as well, and we've shared a few funny anecdotes about the awkward moments when your supervisor realizes they're younger or how it unfortunately impacts making friends and even dating.

I grew up a lot in the decade leading up to my enlistment, and the experiences I had gave me a unique perspective. Now, it feels as though I've gone through the growing-up process all over again since joining.

Losing my self in BMT

I was my own worst enemy in basic. Physically it was a breeze, all the 5:30 a.m. workouts I did for the past year before I joined along with the yoga and running put me at the head of the class. The hard part wasn't even getting along with the 50 other women in my flight, but that wasn't exactly easy either. The most difficult part came after graduation.

The great thing about basic, that I didn't appreciate till later, was that no matter how old you are or where you come from the experience will allow you to bond with someone. You will find support. It's the great equalizer because BMT happens in a bubble where nothing can matter except what you are going through then and there. Families, relationships, they're all put on hold. At graduation that BMT bubble pops and the rest of the world floods back into your life, and the hard part is about to start.

I remember going off base with my family for the first time. We went to Trader Joe's and I was so excited because I'm a total foodie. It was a bit disastrous because I had wanted so badly to just go to the grocery store and eat some tasty samples and browse for something I've never tried but I wasn't allowed to do it as myself. I was an Airman in uniform. It suddenly felt binding and horribly permanent. I had lived 27 years as my own person picking out my own clothes and being who I decided to be and I had liked who I was. The reality is, people probably didn't think twice about me because thousands of Airmen graduate and walk around that area in uniform on a weekly basis, but I just wanted the freedom to be an unadulterated version of myself in my own clothes and I couldn't. Regardless of age, entering the military and going through basic training will change you. For younger people I imagine the change is a sudden sense of responsibility that maybe hadn't been so profound before, but for me, I felt like I had lost a little of myself.

Before enlisting I had a very solid understanding of myself and who I had become, but after basic, even though I understood that I had changed, I wasn't willing to let go of who I was and embrace the changes.

But basic was over, finally, and I thought things would start to normalize soon, that I would find my footing and a happy medium between being myself and an Airman. 

Tech school: basic isn't over yet

I was horribly wrong; tech school somehow seemed like a continuation of basic. I had looked forward to being a whole person again and having choices. Obviously I knew a little of what to expect in regards to the phases to earn back privileges like wearing civilian clothes and going off base, but I hadn't expected it to be quite as difficult to deal with in regards to the limitations. I did pretty well at first. School had always been my sanctuary growing up and at times I had wished I could be in college forever so, the actual school part was phenomenal. I knew how to be a student. It helps that I had amazing instructors who still help me to this day with my job, but being an Airman was still new and still a challenge.

The rules of tech school were explained to me thoroughly, I can't fault anyone but myself. It wasn't like I ran around with flagrant disregard of the rules, I was just used to living my life within reason.

I had bought some beer... so, you know this won't end well from the start. It was the end of the weekend and we had most of the case leftover still. We were all of age but it wasn't allowed in the dorms so I left it in my car. That makes sense right? Wrong, very wrong. I found this out as I was being threatened with an article 15 for an alcohol violation. What I hadn't realized was that alcohol wasn't even allowed in the parking lot of the dorms.

I was 28 and getting in trouble for things I never would have imagined. This was the worst of it but there were many other small things that I got in trouble for mostly because I just never expected it would be a problem. I had hard time with this. Before the Air Force I was never a troublemaker, but somehow I always felt like a dirt-bag Airman in tech school.

My first duty station: a balancing act

Luck had been on my side when I got my first duty station. After the Peace Corps I knew I still wanted to live abroad, but I also still wanted the safety of being able to understand the people around me, so naturally England was the perfect solution.

I had communicated a little with my sponsor before arriving and he had been nice enough to secure me a dorm room in the best possible building. I was 28, but at least I had my own bathroom and wasn't sleeping on a twin bed. Dorm life is what it is. It's the same when kids go off to college for the first time, except I had done it already and here everyone can legally drink so it can get pretty rowdy. Not all dorm Airmen subscribe to a life of reckless abandon but it was enough to make me feel isolated.

Dorm life and eating at the dining facility gets old really quickly, I can't tell you how often I've heard Airmen talking about how they can't wait to move off base. The funny part for me is that these people are all at least seven or eight years younger. I was sick of dorm life 10 years ago.

I made friends with a lot of people who were younger, my rank made me do it! I felt like I was reliving college, which was great for a hot minute. We would go out to the Liberty Club on base and walk back to our dorms, go to house parties and on occasion even go on trips to explore the country.

As great as the people were that I met, it wasn't how I wanted to spend my time. I wanted to explore more of England and travel to Europe, not to party in a different place, but to see the rich history that these places have to offer and the cultures and food, but as a result of some longer lasting issues I have from living in Kazakhstan I didn't feel comfortable doing any of that on my own.

It got really lonely, and while making friends was difficult, dating was even rougher. The only thing I had going for me was that I really enjoyed my job. I threw myself into work, I dove head first and little too deep. I would find stories I wanted to write and work on getting interviews and pictures taken during the duty day and at night I would go through everything editing the pictures, transcribing interviews, and putting the stories together. Sometimes I would come to work and turn in a story no one knew I had been working on cause it was entirely done outside of work. I would be at the office at all hours, way later than I care to admit even, because it was all self-inflicted. Of course the uptick in products was something my leadership really appreciated but it came at a cost.

I had become so focused on work I let everything else deteriorate. I worked two part-time jobs in college while going to school full time, no problem, but somehow all my time management skills had fallen by the wayside unused and forgotten.

I failed a room inspection.  I'll never forget wearing my service dress and hearing my squadron commander say, "It's a lot better," in reference to how dirty my room was when he came back for the re-inspection.

I probably managed to keep my room clean for about two weeks after that before falling back into my habit of working non-stop. It wasn't until recently that I really took a step back. Honestly I think I had to just let myself get totally burned out to finally start finding my balance again.

I realize now that I used work to compensate for things that I lacked, like friendship, but in doing so I lost my balance and everything kind of tumbled down. The isolation was bad but the worst part was feeling like there wasn't someone I could talk to that would be able to relate. I didn't want to go to a superior and be treated like a child, I just wanted a friend that would understand my lame references to 90s pop culture and feeling like I'm a decade behind my peers.

I recently regained my balance, which I'm sure I'll lose again. We all continue to grow and in that process we often tilt this way and that, but I have a pretty great foundation to just keep putting the pieces back together on. It's something I've spent my life working on and most people admit they have as well.

I get my work done and I always try to do my best and do more than what was asked for, but my step back gave me a better perspective from which I can see reason. No, I don't spend all night at the office if I don't have to, and I've networked far and wide to find a few great friends. Some were there from the beginning, but I needed to reclaim my sense of boundaries so our friendship could be healthier for us both.

The Air Force pushed me outside of my comfort zone. I grew up twice, which in a way is nice, but it wasn't easy. I see, though, how people look at A1Cs. The military often values only military experience from its enlisted members, but people have their whole life experiences to offer, not just the fraction of it they've spent serving their country. Everything I did before joining the Air Force taught me invaluable lessons I have used on a daily basis.

People are joining later in life, and so they are bringing more experience to the table than ever before. I did finally get over myself and learn to accept the way the Air Force has changed me and even continues to, but now I think the Air Force will soon need to change and accept the new diversity coming its way.

Every one in the junior enlisted tier has a story to tell about lessons they've learned throughout their lives. Of course, we have a lot to learn but we have a lot to offer as well.