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During college, I have come across the question of how moving effects the mental health of military members, so I've decided to write an essay that requires the input of military participants. The survey is three questions:
On average, how many times did you move in the military?
Was moving as a whole a more positive or negative experience and why?
Was making friends easy during moves in the military? Yes or No?
Optionally, if you can also include if you're active, dependent, veteran, or none, it would be much appreciated! The answers will be anonymous and used in a graph for my IMRAD essay. Thank you for your time.
... On average, how many times did you move in the military?
Was moving as a whole a more positive or negative experience and why?
Was making friends easy during moves in the military? Yes or No?
Optionally, if you can also include if you're active, dependent, veteran, or none, it would be much appreciated! The answers will be anonymous and used in a graph for my IMRAD essay. Thank you for your time.
1- 11
I bounced around a bit for schools, four different states.
Then I was homeported on boats in seven different states/nations, and I have completed seventeen deterrent deployments.
So I guess you could say that I moved eleven times during my career.
2- positive
To me, moving is a feature of growing up.
People who have never moved anywhere have a different world view.
[I must be careful in how I say this, I do not wish to be arrogant and insulting]
When I returned to my highschool for our 25th reunion about 2/3s of my class have never left our hometown, talking to them was weird. Their entire world was confined to their experiences of within a one-day drive radius from our hometown.
I view moving as a very positive experience.
3- yes
At each duty station, on day one you fit right into a workcenter and you are surrounded by 40 co-workers. In the first week co-workers will generally start offering to go out drinking or to take you siteseeing.
At most places everyone is on three-year orders. So every year you lose one-third of your personnel. One third of the people you work with are in their first year on-site. One third are in their second year, and one third are the short-timers. Everyone goes through this. It makes us more open to friendships.
I served on Active Duty for 20 years, I am a retiree.
I retired while living in Italy. We knew that our visas would soon run out and we would need to go back stateside. We had no roots anywhere, nothing to draw us to any particular state to move to. So we had a long discussion and finally decided to move to a state where neither of us had ever visited [Maine]. I think that because we had become so accustomed to moving to new areas, the idea of moving to a state site-unseen did not intimidate us. Now years later seeing these discussions on City-Data, I see that for most people moving can be very intimidating. We learned to tame that fear a long time ago.
Always a positive experience. Enjoyed seeing different parts of the US and the world. You always had a sponsor, so that made moving easy, and then when new people would come into the unit, you’d take care of them.
Very easy to make new friends. The military is a profession, not a job, and it’s very easy to form strong friendships with the people you work with that last a lifetime. Your teammates are YOUR responsibility. If a guy is deployed, you help his family, no questions asked. My supervisor’s wife had a flat tire, 50 miles from home, middle of the night. He was in Iraq. I drove out there, changed the tire, made sure they were ok, and there was never any discussion that I wouldn’t help. An airman in your unit needs a ride from the club at 2AM because he’s too drunk to drive, you get your butt up and go get him.
If any of your teammates need anything, you should always be there. That’s why I decided to go back and do contract work. I missed being part of the team, and I really enjoy helping these young airmen grow their careers.
Almost always positive. One PCS (permanent change of station) I didn't like at all, turned out to be a very good career move, I advanced faster than my peers in other MDS (mission design series, aka aircraft types). I didn't like the 2 1/2 years at the time, now I look back on it fondly.
As a pilot, it was easy to make new friends, so much common ground. For spouses it's a bit harder (or way harder, or way easier, depending on personality) and sometimes on the climate of the senior officers (my experience; I had at that previously-mentioned PCS two separate Vietnam-era commanders whose wives were very old school... wives were to attend teas and coffees, perform fundraiser, support their husband's career, make babies, etc... and there was at the time a big-time change in that mindset taking place across the Air Force). Lifelong friends, I still keep in contact with many of my pilot training classmates (and sadly have even attended two funerals, one crash and one cancer) and fellow squadron mates since then. We looked out for each other and our families. As a senior commander myself I have driven a young lieutenant and an older NCO (who should have known better) home when they tried to drive and while both got an ass chewing on Monday, they learned a lesson on the cheap, preserved their careers, and saved me a ton of paperwork.
I miss the camaraderie... there was a lot of it in the world of the fighter pilot, maybe not as much nowadays, but I still get to hang out with them occasionally in my civilian job when I venture down to the wing/squadron every few weeks for meetings or training or holiday parties and changes of command.
On average, how many times did you move in the military? 6 moves, 20 years of service
Was moving as a whole a more positive or negative experience and why? All were positive except for the move due to my son being a junior in high school. The reason they were positive is because each move brought new opportunities for my military career and for us as a family to experience life in different places.
Was making friends easy during moves in the military? Yes or No? Yes, especially if living on base.
Retired - 5 years Army and 15 years Air Force.
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