 My name is Ashley and I'm a material manager in the United States Air Force. I'm here to share the female perspective of being a 2SOX1. So I went to college before I joined the Air Force. I had been to college for two years. I had a scholarship, thankfully, but when I didn't want to play sports anymore and my scholarship had ended, I wasn't willing to go into debt to go to school. I had a friend who was in the Air Force who was doing pretty well for themselves. They were doing much better than me at the time, so that led me to look into it, do my research, but then ultimately I decided to join. And I also wanted to travel. This is a pretty good way to travel. So I've been in the Air Force a little under three years. I'll hit my three year mark in November 2019, so I joined in November 2016. I'm currently in E4, so I'm a senior airman. I won BTZ, so I was able to sew on September of 2019. So our AFSC is 2SOX1, which is material management or better known as supply. So against all the warnings around me, everybody was telling me, don't sign an open general contract. You're at the mercy of the Air Force, which is true. You really are at the mercy of the Air Force. They're going to slot you where you want, where they need to. Nobody really told me this. I guess it's a given. But when you go in open general, you don't find out your job until much later in basic. So those around you that do have their jobs already pre-selected and they already know what they're going to be doing for the next four to six years of their life, I know I was pretty envious of them because you're just waiting in basic training, cut off from the outside world, and you're just sitting there with so much suspense. I was pretty envious of those people who already knew what they were doing, because we did have to wait a while to find out our jobs, which I wasn't mentally prepared for. Thankfully, I got a good job that I enjoy doing. I think it matches well with my skillset, so I was very fortunate. So on paper, I don't know that I would have really picked supply just reading through the jobs, but I was willing to accept the open general contract because no matter what job I was slotted in, I was going to make the most of it and do it to the best of my ability. So if you're one of those people that could have a mindset like that, doing an open general is not the worst thing ever. I just really wanted a job that was transferable outside the Air Force, preferably in medical. However, I didn't know that medical was going to be a hard job to get, so my best chance was going to be going in open general. So I was in the debt program for six months. However, if I wanted a medical job, I was going to have to wait about a year extra. And as I mentioned earlier, I was older, I was 21 at the time, so I didn't really want to just put my life on hold for six months, then ship out for a medical job, so I was willing to chance it with the open general contract. And if it went my way, great. And if it didn't, great. So I joined with a four-year contract. I already had enough college credits to get me A1C after I graduated basic. So there was really no benefit of me signing a six-year contract. However, my brother joined after me and he didn't go to college for as long as I did. So it benefited him to sign the six-year because then when he graduated tech school, he would be able to put on A1C, so it was much faster for him. So our tech school is at Lackland, so you don't go very far. It's a 30-day tech school. I don't think it's super strenuous. It's 30 days, so you're in and out, and then you get your duty station and you're off. The longest part for me was waiting for a seat in class. So I was holdover waiting for a seat in class for two months, so they had me on some specialized detail. A lot of people were, so you're either going to be in this little holding area for airmen also waiting to get a seat or you get to get put on a special detail. So I was really, really fortunate and I got to be in a golf detail where I drove a golf car picking up golf balls on a driving range or we would do morning runs on the golf course at Lackland and make sure there was no trash anywhere. So I was really fortunate and I had a really good experience being a holdover. Just know that might happen. So San Antonio is the closest city to Lackland. I really enjoy San Antonio. I think there's a lot to do. If you're older, you can obviously go drink after your holdover stages or you can just roam around longer. You don't get any special curfews or anything for being older. You have more options to you. So as a supply tube, you can almost go anywhere. You can go to army bases. You can go to navy bases. You can obviously go to joint bases. Your really only limiting factor is if you're a joint spouse. So if you're married military to military and your spouse has a limiting job, but let's just say it's supply, marriage to security forces. Your options are pre-opened. But if you're supply, married to somebody with a limiting job, then your options are just limited by them. But you can typically follow them because you can go almost anywhere. Another limiting factor is if you're married or if you have kids and they have a medical code placed on them, then you can only go to places where the hospital supports the illness or ailment that your spouse or dependent has. So those are your really only limiting factors for supply. Such a broad job, we're needed everywhere. It's one of my favorite parts. So the most basic way I can explain what material managers do, the whole overview of it is if you think about like a normal store, you get in your shipment, you in check it, you put it away, then customers come, they want this part. So you give them this part or you give them this asset, they return it or they don't. And if they don't, that's okay too. There are parts that need to be returned and there are parts that do not need to be returned. You place orders for them. Basically you're like a mini store just for aircraft needs. So there's eight different sections that you can possibly go in and supply. So each of them you'll typically begin for two years. So I'll kind of just go over a brief overview of the different eight sections that you can possibly go in. So the first one is equipment. This is one I have personally worked. It's a desk job. So basically like generators and floodlights, things that support the maintenance side of the house gets tracked by the equipment section. And you're basically just doing inventories and maintaining accountability of those assets. The section is very technical and detail oriented. So it's pretty difficult for a new airman coming in to work that section. However, you just gotta give it your best go. So the second one is DMS. So decentralized material support. You're basically the buffer between maintenance and normal supply. You're their supply liaison. So they're relying on you to give them their small bench stocks, their small bench stock parts or you're basically their supply POC working outside of the LRS but still attached to them. You know, that might be a little confusing but they're kind of like, they're detached but attached. So Flight Service Center is where the bad parts will go. So maintenance will turn in the bad parts to Flight Service Center and then they will send the parts where they need to go to be repaired or disposed of properly. MRSP, Mission Readiness Support Packages. But basically they're kits of like parts that break in aircraft, break on an aircraft often. And they're basically just compiled of all those parts and they deploy and go places with the plane where there is no main central warehouse for the plane. Customer Service is another desk job. They're basically doing the listings that come down and they're gonna be your primary POC for orders. APS is the bread and butter of supply. So APS stands for Aircraft Parts Tour. So they're the main warehouse of the base. Typically there'll be one APS per base but there might be two, there might be three. I'm not familiar with the whole Air Force. I don't play out of that but at the base I'm currently stationed that there's one APS. When you work that section you're gonna be doing the inventories and you're gonna be pulling the parts when customers order it. So when maintenance needs a part it's gonna pop out on your screen or on a printer and you're just gonna have to go pull the part and then maintenance will come pick it up and then you'll just give it to them, you'll process your transactions then you just repeat. Inventory and inspection. Those sections are separate sections however they're really always classified as the same. A lot of people get that confused. So with inventory and inspection we'll start with inventory. They'll do the mandatory inventories to maintain compliance of the regulation. So if they say that this warehouse has to be inventoried once a year they're gonna be doing that once a year inventory. And then inspection if there is a discrepancy along the line somewhere. So if you have four parts showing in the system but you only see three parts on the shelf and this is where inspection comes in and they'll try to see what happened where the part is and then do their report. Last but not least is IPE. So IPE stands for individual protective equipment. So this one is people typically say that it's not real supply because you're using a different system but sort of the same but you're not doing normal supply transactions. So it's gonna be your training gear. It's gonna be before you deploy all the gear you need if you need a weapon they'll house that as well and they'll issue it to you before you deploy. So critical like things to have if you wanna be a supply troop if you wanna exceed as a supply troop is a tendon to detail. So the system that we use is pretty unforgiving. So once you process something it's pretty hard to undo the process like you need to go through your chain of command and then they'll back it out in the system but it's better to not even go there in the first place. So just like making sure you double check yourself and that you just pay attention to the little things it's really gonna save you a lot of hassle in the long term. So just attention to detail is so important. Understanding the why behind why you're doing a certain transaction or why you're doing something a certain way. If you don't know, I highly encourage you to ask and understand why you're doing what you're doing. It'll help you understand the general overview of supply. You'll just learn a lot more. Don't be afraid to challenge your supervisor and ask them questions along the way. If you're not understanding something, challenge them, make them explain it to you. Again, kind of hitting back on the understanding the why but don't be afraid to challenge your supervisor. Also, don't go running to your supervisor every time you have a question. I've by far learned more by struggling through problems myself and searching through the regulations and making my own continuity. I've learned far more from doing that than just running to my supervisor for problems. So I encourage you as well to not be afraid to dig in the regulations. It's basically the how to guides and just learn a little bit more. My last piece of advice for anybody getting material management or thinking about getting material management is just don't cut corners. Do it right the first time because it will come to bite you in the end and everything has a name tag to who did what. So you're just saving yourself a lot of heartache in the future if you just do things right the first time. So the general things I can say that might be helpful for new airmen coming in is time flies. Remember why you joined the Air Force and accomplish why you joined. If you joined to travel, travel. If you joined for financial stability, save money. Don't go buy a new Camaro, save your money. If you joined for an education, if you joined to knock out your bachelor's degree, get your associate's degree, knock it out. If you joined to become an officer, become an officer. Like learn what you need to do early on. Set yourself up for success and accomplish why you joined. Do you have any questions about anything I've said in this video? Please drop the comments below I'm more than happy to answer them. I'll do my best to get back to you in a timely manner. But in the meantime, best of luck.