Being a rising firstie (senior) at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), I get inundated with questions whenever I tell anyone where I go to school. I’ve taken the more common questions and misconceptions and answered them in order to make it easier for everyone to understand what my fellow cadets and I do!
1. We all are going to be pilots.
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Definitely not true. Not all of us even want to be pilots. Some people aren’t medically qualified to be pilots, and some people want to do something else. While it is the Air Force, pilots need so much support in order to fly missions, from intelligence about a foreign country to plane maintenance to public affairs, there are plenty of jobs in order to support our work in air, space and cyberspace. I always tell people that I want to “fly a desk,” because I don’t want to fly a plane. I also joke with people that I would rather be a passenger on my own plane because it means I have become rich and famous!
2. We all want to be career military.
Some people do. I’ve also met many people that have super cool dreams that they want to accomplish when they finish serving their time in the military. My personal dream is to own a bakery and bake happiness. Our time commitment to the military after we graduate depends on our jobs, for some people it is more. Pilots and people who get more schooling through the military are required to serve more in order to “repay” the military. The minimum is five years on active duty and three years on inactive reserve.
3. Female cadets can never be girly.
Totally not true! There are so many ways for women to make themselves stand out. We are allowed to wear tasteful makeup, we can have our nails done in natural skin tone colors (or French manicures), and there are tons of way to customize your hairstyle to make a regular “military bun” look more stylish. Granted we have to wear a uniform every day to school but we are allowed to tailor the uniforms to fit our body so we aren’t wearing something that looks too baggy. If there is a way for us to look girly, we will find it!
4. We showed up for the “free college.”
Parents and cadets will tell you, while we may not have to pay tuition, “free” is a misnomer. People might have come for the “free” education, but most have found other reasons to stay; whether it is friends, sports, academics or a love of the military. One of the first things I learned in basic training is that it’s not the reason you came that matters, but it’s why you stayed. On a different note, we give up our time in exchange for getting an education. At the most, we get six weeks of leave (“vacation”) a year; it is tough on our families and us. On a lighter note, we get a paycheck each month and cadets certainly know how to spend it!
5. We are enlisting in the Air Force and going to college afterwards.
This is probably the most annoying misconception to cadets and their parents because people think this so frequently. We are in the Air Force, but we are not enlisted and we are not officers. We aren’t stationed at a base and we won’t until we graduate! Being a cadet is this odd “limbo” stage before becoming an officer. Our basic training is not Basic Military Training (BMT) at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. We go through our own Basic Cadet Training (BCT) which is run by other older cadets and is held at USAFA in Colorado Springs, Colorado. There is no comparison of BCT to BMT because they are run completely different and have different goals. Big props to prior enlisted cadets, they have to go though both BMT/BCT and put up with totally lost basic cadets (I was one of those lost ones)! And for those of you that are wondering, we do get the perks of a military discount!
6, We have normal college experiences.
If you are looking to go to USAFA and have a normal college experience, you are looking in the wrong place. We only get very small amounts of time at home every year (maximum of three weeks of vacation at a time). We wear a uniform to class, every day no exceptions. We live on “campus” every year and we don’t get a choice of which dorm we want to as our home away from home. Everyone gets a Bachelor of Science degree, even if you major in English. This is because we all take classes like Aeronautical, Electrical and Astronautical Engineering. One upside of this is that I can calculate how much fuel is used in a trip from Colorado to my home in Washington, D.C. Will I use that ever again? Probably not. At least I know how to do it, right?
7. We fly planes to school.
Come on people, let’s learn how to have a filter before asking questions. How could 4,000 people all fly planes into one small airport? Granted, not every school has an airport, which is super cool. There are cadets who fly planes at school. Some people have their private pilot’s license and some people have the opportunity to learn to fly gliders as cadets.
While it is tough going to school at USAFA, once you walk across the stage at graduation you join an elite “alumni” group. USAFA provides a world-class education. Graduates from our school have gone on to be astronauts, CEOs, generals, best-selling authors, American heroes, Olympians, but most of all great Air Force Officers. Every day I thank my lucky stars I made the choice to come to USAFA. I have learned how to be a great leader, a supportive friend and most importantly a Netflix connoisseur.
