positives and negatives of reserves

crazylilkelly · Mar 30, 2008

Hi I am just finishing up my bachelor's degree in nursing. I am considering the reserves in army, navy, or air force. I would love to hear everyone's experiences regarding this. I am interested in hearing positives, but more interested in hearing negatives, since of course the recruiters tell you all positive and no negatives. I need to hear both sides!! Thanks so much for your help!!

I was in the reserves as a job other than RN til about 2 yrs ago. Keep in mind, where I drilled was in central Illinois....we don't have a navy base near us so we pretty much meet in a drill building.

Negatives (from my experience):

-1 w/e a month----which really sounds great & for the most part is but I found that I always seemed to have something going on that w/e so it would create stress for me. Then again, I was still in college at the time & I always had to be studying for a test on monday.

-Boring--everyone just sat around not doing much. I felt like I was wasting the tax-payers money. There's really not much for navy reservist to do since there are no ships in central Illinois! I was a seabee (construction) & we still had nothing to do. From what I saw the nurses sat around as well. They would help the corpsman give shots etc...but that was about it. I feel that if i were a reservist RN I would utilize that weekend to do health promotion/education to the whole command if there was nothing else to do. So, being proactive is a big thing if your bored.

I have heard that other drill sites are much more productive than the one I was at. If I were you, I would ask to do a drill weekend & shadow a nurse to see if it's what you expect. There were people that did that all the time @ my command. Ask the people there what they like & dislike about it & you'll get a much better picture for yourself.

I was active duty before being in the reserves & found that I didn't like being a reservists (loved active, though).But I'm sort of an all or none type of person. I didn't enjoy worrying about my civilian life & military life. However, it was great to get away for that w/e a month & hang out with navy personnel. I really love navy culture & all the amazing friends I made in the navy. Of course, it's also nice to have a little extra change in your pocket from drill.

Something else I would like to address: please understand that if you're in the reserves you can activated at any time & you can't say no to going. & yes, you can easily be sent to the desert. If you get activated, you have drop your civilian life & go where uncle sam sends you. I only point this out (you probably already understand this) b/c RN reservists @ my old drill site were getting really nervous about being activated & getting sent to Iraq. They were thinking of ways to get out of it which is really disheartening. Just make sure you know what your getting into & if you do then I'm sure you'll have a rewarding experience. Plus, it is a great alternative to going active duty if you still want to serve your country! Reservists are just as much heros as active duty as far as I'm concerned.