eSignature Personal Medical History Made Easy

E signature personal medical history

hey guys welcome back to the channel for those who don't know me my name is jake and i'm currently serving on active duty military and in this video i want to talk about the entire process of how to apply to air force officer training school this picture right here is my graduating flight from maxwell air force base that's me handsome handsome guy right there in the center and i was in flight 210 of class 1607 so this was the year 2016 and this was the seventh graduation class for that year if you're not one of my normal subscribers and you're watching this video then potentially you're one of two people you're either currently enlisted in the active duty guard reserves or potentially another branch army or navy and you're thinking about commissioning as an officer in the air force or you're a civilian with a college degree either a bachelor's or a master's for the rest of this video i'm going to use the terminology that they use at ots and they call people either prior ease or non-priors so either you're a prior enlisted who went officer or you're a non-prior enlisted who became an officer and for most of this video i'm going to be focusing on non-priors since that's what i was i was a non-prior who went through ots however if you're currently in the service and you're thinking about going officer the best advice that i have for you is to find somebody who recently did this and then ask them for help ask them to mentor you uh for for prior ease that want to go to ots there really isn't anybody that's going to walk you through the process like with non-priors and recruiters so if you want to become an officer you should go to the education center on base they're going to have you download like a five page pdf explaining the process because you're already in the military the military expects you to be able to fill out this form it's going to be air force form 56 they're expecting you to upload all the necessary documents and get everything in order additionally because you're already in this in the service you've already been medically screened and you've already filled out your sf-86 so there's not as much paperwork but the paperwork and the process that you do have to do as a prior e it's on you additional information i would give you is to go to the air force ots subreddits and join reddit if you're not already on it you can ask your questions here there are lots of great people trying to help you additionally there are always facebook groups forming for whatever rated or non-rated board that's meeting it'll say you know non-rated application board 1607 or whatever google search that on facebook and then uh you might be able to find a facebook group made of other prior ease who are going through the application process and you can reach out to them ask them questions or potentially help them as well okay now if you're a non-prior the most important thing i can tell you is that this application process is going to take between one and two years if you want to commission as an officer in the air force from the civilian world budgets in your life that this process is going to take one to two years why does it take so long you'll kind of get the full picture as we go through it but this is something that i felt like my recruiter did not do a good job explaining to me so i remember being incredibly frustrated how long everything was taking but if i had just been given this reasonable expectation in the beginning of one to two years then i could have planned my life better and here's a brief outline of the process you're going to find the officer recruiter for the air force you're going to fill out a pre-qualification form if the recruiter likes you you're then going to gather all of your necessary documents take the air force officer qualifying tests finish your submission packets you're going to wait for the next board for that packet to be submitted you're then going to wait four to five months for the results of that board you're then going to go to meps and join the delayed entry program and then you're going to wait three to six months for the next available slot and a class at maxwell air force base okay step one is to find the air force recruiter who recruits officers and this actually might be a little difficult i remember going on the air force's website and you know saying that i was interested i i submitted my phone number and email i waited 48 hours i got nothing i then went to the local air force recruiting office in my town and that that recruiter was only for enlisted people he told me to drive to the other side of town to actually find the officer recruiter and there's only about 150 of these in the world so if there's 50 states in the union that's on average three three of these men or women per state and my home state of wisconsin actually only had two it was just an amazing coincidence that i'm from milwaukee and the recruiter for eastern and southern wisconsin was also in milwaukee so if i was a resident of madison or green bay i would have had to drive several hours to meet this recruiter face to face now this is really important that when you talk to this recruiter you have to look confident you have to look 100 percent serious that this is something you want to do if you show up and you're like yeah i'm sort of interested do you have any brochures can i ask a bunch of questions this is something that i'm just on a whim considering they're not going to take you serious these recruiters they're great people but they're very busy they are juggling between 20 50 maybe even 100 different names and faces of people at different points in the process of getting their package together and then going to ots so it took weeks or or months before my recruiter finally remembered you know over the phone could recognize my voice and know who i was so when you talk to these people if you don't sound 100 sure that this is what you want to do they're not going to take you serious they've got way too many other applicants and interests uh to spend their time trying to sell you on something that's that's not their job but when you find the officer recruiter something they're going to do is have you fill out the pre-qualification form they want to know your age height weight and fitness level to see if you qualify they're going to want to know your degree and your gpa if you have a stem degree science technology engineering medicine mathematics that will get preference they will be more interested in you if you have a stem degree what is your work history criminal history medical history drug use history financial history if you if you have too much debt or you've been missing payments or you've ever defaulted on anything that's not going to be a good sign you're also going to have to write a personal narrative like a paragraph of why you want a commission in the air force and and the recruiter based on this information alone will either say i want to work with you or immediately screen you out the recruiter doesn't want to waste any time on somebody that they know later in the process will be excluded from joining but if the recruiter says hey this pre-qualification form is good i want to work with you then you're going to start gathering all of these documents you're going to submit your resume up to five letters of recommendation sealed sent to the recruiter if you have if you know any air force officers currently in or retired that can write you a letter those those would be pretty good i didn't have any so it wasn't a big deal you can just get whoever to write these letters transcripts sealed mailed to the recruiter you're going to have to write a longer personal statement this is this time you're addressing the board not just the recruiter you're going to get copies of your birth certificate marriage certificate social security card passport if you have one you're going to write out explanations for any legal violations they're going to check your criminal history and if you ever got a speeding ticket or a parking ticket they're going to say hey when did this happen why did this happen and you're going to have to explain yourself you're also going to have to fill out an sf-86 security clearance form they're going to have you fill it out now even though the security clearance process doesn't actually start until you join the delayed entry program additionally this is the most frustrating part is you have to accumulate and acquire all of your medical records anything serious going back your whole life but mostly until the age of 18. they don't care about routine dental cleanings or braces but any other time that you've been to a hospital you have to go to that hospital and then ask them to give you a copy and release all of your medical forms so if you just tell them hey i'm joining the military clinics and hospitals they understand why you need these documents it should be free to get all these documents if you're joining the military and yeah everything that you've ever done they want to know additionally on your application you're going to select three to five jobs and you're going to have to decide if you're applying to a rated application board or a non-rated application board if you're cots either you know a doctor nurse jag chaplin you know who you are you probably were recruited by a specific uh a different recruiter that handles doctors nurses jags chaplains but for everybody else you have to decide if you want to go rated and these are people on flight status these are people who fly on airplanes so pilot combat systems officer used to be called navigator air battle manager or rpa remote pilot aircraft and then there are the non-rated jobs this is everything else so finance personnel acquisitions contracting security forces intelligence maintenance missiles some of these jobs require specific degrees so if you want to be a weather officer you'd be applying to non-rated but you need a a degree in meteorology same thing with engineering and for me when i was selecting these jobs for my career field i honestly didn't know anything i didn't know anybody currently serving in the military so i really had no idea what the daily life of any of these jobs were like i ended up selecting i think space intel missiles i honestly don't even remember what i put but because i put missiles as one of my three to five i ended up getting missiles at some point in the process while you're gathering all your documents the recruiter is going to sign you up for a time to take the afoq air force officer qualifying test this is just a generic standardized test to score your academic aptitude the test time is a total three and a half hours but with breaks it's going to take close to five hours so this will be an entire morning at meps one day and the academic portion is only 125 questions so if you're applying to a non-rated board your academic composite score is the only thing that matters the other uh 400 or so questions well i'll just i'll just show you what the sheet looks like here and for the academic portion if you're applying non-rated that's the only thing that matters and you're going to do verbal analogies arithmic reasoning word knowledge math knowledge and reading comprehension then if you're applying to a rated board either pilot sizzo or abm then there's a couple more sections down here that also matter for your composite score and in between these two sections they have you doing uh situational judgment tests self description inventory and uh phys physical science so part of your academic composite score is made up of verbal which is these three sections and quantitative which is these two sections and i'll go ahead and show you my test scores i took the test on august 19 2015 and i got a 92 my verbal was 93 and my quantitative was 82. what do these numbers mean well you're basically being stratified against everybody else who took the test that day i think that's how the lsat does it and the range is between 1 and 99 so you can't get a zero you can't get a hundred to fail this test you you got below a 15 on the verbal and below a 10 on the quantitative however you need to do as well as you can on this test they have everybody who commissions take this test so i think academy grads and rotc grads also take this however they just can't fail it they just have to get above a 15 and a 10. uh but uh but for ots people this score is really important if you get between a 60 and a 69 that's kind of fair if the rest of your package is outstanding you still have a chance of being selected if you're 70 to 79 you're just average then once again if the rest of your package is good you might still be good once you start getting above 80 your score is going to start looking more impressive and this might become a stronger point of your package profile and if you get anywhere in the 90s uh that that's really good i mean something something would have to be wrong in other parts of your package because you got you got in the top 10 of test takers that day there are also scores for pilot and navigator they make everybody including the non-rated people take the pilot portion and the navigator portion but if you're applying to a non-rated board these scores don't matter if you're applying to a rated board take these serious they really matter if you're nervous about taking standardized tests and you want to study you can go on amazon and buy a book i have no idea if these books are good quality the books are you know published and changed every year so check out other amazon reviews to see if they're quality study material something i always recommend to everyone is to sign up with khan academy this is a 100 free website a great resource and you can use it to practice for tests they don't have an afo qt section but they do have lsat sat gre so if you're nervous about the math i highly recommend focusing on math problems at the seventh and eighth grade level so if you've been out of college and you didn't have a degree that required mathematics and you're just really rusty uh you can get some great um pre-algebra pre-geometry you know general word problems that are comparable to what you'll see initially on the afoqt math sections and then if you're nervous about word knowledge word analogies or reading comprehension then just focus on those under the sat test prep section next step in the process is to go to meps this is the military entrance processing station and i'm going to be 100 honest with you guys meps is not a fun place i i think they're really trying to freak you out or intimidate you just a little bit when you go there it's not their job at this station to be nice to you they will be professional of course nobody's going to be mean to you but there are hundreds of people processing through this station every day who are joining the military and their job is to get you through as quickly as they can and it's it's going to be an all-day process they're going to keep you at a hotel the night before and then bus you to the station to make sure you're there on time they're gonna check your eyes you're hearing they're gonna draw blood tests they might give you a breathalyzer if you consumed alcohol that morning or are still drunk from the night before and you you show any alcohol on your breath they're going to send you home they're also going to do a urine test they're probably going to drug test you as well they're going to get your height weight blood pressure they're also going to give you a physical exam and they're going to have you do certain motions with your all your joints they're going to check all your muscles they want to make sure that there's nothing unknown that is wrong with you before obviously you physically join the military and your your body is now their responsibility you're also going to meet with the doctor and the doctor is going to check your tattoos and scars these are things that you already admitted to having tattoos and scars and when you talk to the doctor this is probably going to be a retired colonel a medical colonel and this individual is basically like the goalie you know screening people from finally joining the military officially and his job is to ask you questions and look over your paperwork and if anything seems suspicious if anything isn't congruent or if you didn't admit to anything he's going to immediately send you home he's going to say your day at meps is over we cannot successfully process you today so it's really important with your recruiter ahead of time that you gather all the necessary paperwork you get all the necessary waivers you disclose everything important about your medical history because if at any point maps that something doesn't make sense it's not their job to figure it out they're going to send you back to your recruiter so there are lots of stories of out there of people who went to meps and had to do it three or four times because new information or conflicting paperwork kept coming up but if you make it through all those other portions of the application process then next you have the interview and in my opinion the interview is probably the most important part if you're a prior enlisted you're going to interview with your squadron commander if you're a non-prior going through a recruiter then you're going to talk to most likely the detachment commander for the recruiting unit this should be a lieutenant colonel however the lieutenant colonel if he's unavailable can delegate this down the chain of command so you might be interviewing with a major or a captain if this is your scenario if your recruiter says the detachment commander is not available that day would you like to interview with major so-and-so or captain so-and-so i actually think it would be in your best interest to decline that and say to your recruiter hey i really want to interview with the detachment commander the lieutenant colonel is there a time or date in the future in which he's available and i can i can meet with him on that day i'm saying him of course as a generality of course the detachment commander can also be a woman and he or she what are they going to be interviewing you for i think they're going to schedule it for be 30 to 40 minutes but i ended up talking to my detachment commander for almost two hours and he was really interested in me i'm just older i've done a lot of stuff and this is what the air force form 56 looks like and this is what they're going to be doing they're going to be asking you give me information and and when you do this interview it's like any other kind of general interview but in the military especially they want uh hard numbers they want awards they want to know anything that you did to look exceptional stand out take initiative that's what the military is looking for you know he wanted to know what i did in high school you know i played i was on the high school chess team and i did martial arts in college like that is stuff that he was looking for that me at age 32 did not value i was like this doesn't this shouldn't matter but this is their job to extract much information from you looking like a leader and then basically writing we call them bullets in the military writing these bullets talking about what you've done and i'm going to be honest with you if you're getting any check marks for below average or fail then the recruiter messed up your your application should not have gotten this far nothing should be checked in the below average or fair category so ideally to for your application to have any hope uh you're getting check marks in the average excellent or outstanding average once again still isn't good if you really want to be selected to a competitive board so anything in the excellent or outstanding you're looking pretty solid and if the idea of doing this interview makes you nervous then it it's helpful to practice you can go on youtube and you can watch videos about how to interview well and if you're just worried about your own work history or personal history and you say to yourself hey i haven't done all of this interesting amazing stuff i've never won awards well it's not too late if if you know joining the air force is something you want to do and you've got six months before this interview is going to happen volunteer for stuff go out into the world find things to do and then sell yourself when you get to this interview it's really important that you talk about what recently you it doesn't matter if you've only been doing it a week talk about what initiatives in the real world that you've been taking uh to make yourself stand out more okay and this whole process is kind of a race against time if you want to meet the deadline for submissions for either a rated or non-rated board and with these application boards all positions are based on the needs of the air force so the the main commissioning sources are the academy and rotc ots is the flex source so some years they'll select 300 people for a board some years they'll select 60 some years they'll select none and of course these boards are paper boards nobody on the board is meeting you face to face which is why this interview is so important because the colonels or whoever who's looking at your entire package is really going to rely on this individual uh you know for the in-person interview to see how does this person look how does this person sound is this person sincere about commissioning are they doing it for the right reasons and if your application is not approved once again it's based on the needs of the air force you you might necessarily have done nothing wrong but your app your application can automatically be rolled uh for sure two times but i've heard even three times now you can just roll it into the next application board and try again in the future at this point you're going to be waiting you're going to have to wait four to five months before the results of the board have been announced and they're going to tell you what job you were selected for so i was selected for 13n nuclear missile operations it's at this point that you can walk away from the entire process or you can accept it you have not signed any paperwork officially saying this is something you're going to do this is the point in which you make the final decision this is going to be my job should i commission as an officer is this something that i want to do for the next four to eight years and of course i said yes so they're going to send you back to meps and you're going to officially swear in sign all of your final paperwork you're now in the delayed entry program here's me taking the oath along with all these fine gentlemen here's me and my dad my dad's also an air force veteran and once you're officially in the delayed entry program you're gonna have to wait for availability to join the next class date and this could potentially be three months or it could take up to two years there are people that join the dep program and maybe they have a business that they're handling or family issues that they're handling if you want to voluntarily wait to go in i i think i remember my recruiter telling me you could wait up to 24 months but you can't wait any longer than that so once you officially are told you're going to maxwell air force based ots you're going to go back to maps one more time they're going to gather up all of your documents put it in a sealed envelope and then give it to you to transfer transport down to maxwell you can either drive your own car or you can fly something i'm going to just say real quick is make sure that the person at meps xeroxes both sides of your orders obviously there's a front and a back and when they gave me 10 copies of my document of my orders to take down to maxwell there was no back side to the orders there was only a front side it caused some problems when i got down there but eventually after like six weeks it was resolved and there you go guys you finally made it to maxwell congratulations uh this is my squadron i'm standing somewhere like back here i'm in the back right corner uh and this was a completely different experience i'll talk about this in the next video if you enjoyed this video guys give me a thumbs up so the algorithm knows it's good in addition consider subscribing to my channel i mostly talk about finance and investing topics but occasionally i'll make military videos and if you have any questions or comment comments about the process i'll try to help you if i can and until the next video take care