 So I joined the Air Force because my dad was in and I grew up around the Air Force and it's something that I always really wanted to do. I always found it really interesting. And I also got a lot from the Air Force. Like I applied for a scholarship through them and I got a scholarship for college that paid for my books and I was always really thankful for that. So it was a combination of wanting to give back to the Air Force, wanting to serve my country and growing up with it. I'll be in the Air Force. It'll be two years in October. So in about a month now. And I've actually only had my specific job for a year of that. The technical name for my job is Acquisitions Manager but my duty title is Program Manager but go into more detail of what that is in a couple of questions. And the AFSC is 63 Alpha. You heard in the last question, I'm an officer. I didn't go enlisted. So our process is a little bit different. You know your job before you go to your training. So I did know my job before I went to Maxwell. So no, this job wasn't what I wanted to do. I actually had no idea what this job was. I'd never heard of it. I mean, I guess I heard of it because I put it on my sheet but I filled out my job sheet very last minute because I did ROTC and I did it a little different. I did a one year program, an accelerated program. They actually stopped doing it. They only had like 30 to 40 people in the nation that did it and it was only if you were in your senior year of college and for that specific year. So I got really fortunate that I found that but I had to fill out my Form 53 really last minute and that's the form where you put all your jobs on it. So I had no idea what acquisitions was. I put it on there because I was a business major and there wasn't a lot of jobs that I could actually do. So the job that I really wanted to do was public affairs. I do photography and I also have a YouTube. So I do videography and that's kind of what public affairs is. I really thought the job was super interesting and I really wanted to do it but my hopes and dreams got crushed when I found out that there's hardly any people who get selected as public affairs. And if you do, you normally have a broadcast journalism degree. So I didn't think that was gonna happen but I really wanted that. And then I also wanted to do something medical cause my dad told me to work in the hospital because it'll get weekends and holidays off. I get those anyways but yeah, I wanted to work in the hospital. I'm pretty sure that officers don't sign contracts. I'm pretty sure. But you do commit to a base. So I committed to, honestly I don't know if it's three or four years. They move us around a lot, like every three or four years. So you're bouncing around a lot. So if you like moving and you were thinking about going officer or listed and you whatever, go officer because most likely you'll move a lot more depending on what your job is of course and how many bases are available. So I am at my first base, Robin's Air Force Base for either four or three years. I'll move before if I can't remember. I'm pretty sure it's four years but I'll be moving a little bit before that. So I went to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. If you are acquisitions Wright Pat is the biggest base for this job. So my tech school was only three weeks and another little tidbit about officers versus enlisted the differences. If your tech school is less than six months so if you're not like rated so if you're not a pilot, RPA, CISO, whatever you'll most likely, well not most likely you will go to your base and then you'll go to tech school whenever a class opens up for you. So I just went to tech school and I had been at my base for 10 months and I didn't, yeah. So I didn't go to tech school before I started my job which made this job a little bit weird and difficult and I didn't understand a lot but that's being an officer for you, you know. So for my job I do work with a lot of civilians so when I went to tech school it was really refreshing to be around a bunch of other secondary tenants and so to put it in perspective my program office, I guess my unit that I work in is about 300 people and there's three second lieutenants or I guess there's three lieutenants including myself there's two seconds and one first and then the next we don't have any captain's majors the next is a lieutenant colonel who is my supervisor and then a colonel who is our commander and then we have three, four NCOs we actually got two new ones recently who we have master sergeant and senior master sergeants that we work with and they're not actually acquisitions they're actually SMEs which is a subject matter expert. For my specific job acquisitions you cannot go out of the continental US so you cannot go to Alaska or Hawaii. There are big bases for acquisitions so right pat, LA, Hanscom, Robbins, Eglin those are the big ones, Hill, Scott and then there's a couple more that you can go to so I know that we can go to Patrick like there's only a couple of positions at these bases, Patrick if once you get to captain you'll probably head to the Pentagon or well actually no, once you get to like major or maybe senior captain you'll be heading to the Pentagon if your career is going the way it should you'll be heading to the Pentagon there's also Edwards in California and I can't think of the other ones I know that there's a couple more but the ones that I listed at first are the big ones. Okay, so my job is kind of hard to explain and understand it took me a while to even understand what I was doing so you are at a program office and that program office can be aircraft related well everything's I guess aircraft related in some way because we are the Air Force but I specifically work in support equipment and vehicles I specifically work on the MHU 196204 program and I am the program manager so I manage the cost schedule performance those are the three things that you are focused on so everything you do is based around those three things MHU, munitions handling unit this trailer loads bombs onto B1, B2 and B52 bombers which I haven't actually gotten the pleasure to experience yet there's so many different things that go into this job there's a timeline and different milestones so you can get a program that's at the very beginning where they're at milestone A or right before milestone A and this is when the program is I guess think of it as a human so it's like being birthed and then milestone B and then milestone C like you do different things at each milestone to progress and right now we are working on we're doing a SLEP which is a service life extension program we went through the trailer, broke it down built it back up to write the TOs for it the tech orders and we figured out what parts were obsolete and what parts needed to be replaced so that we can ensure that we can keep this trailer serviceable because there are some parts on this trailer that aren't supported by DLA anymore which DLA is Defense Logistics Agency and that is who you buy a lot of your parts from that's as much as I'm gonna get into my job it's a lot and I could go on and on about it but I hit the main things honestly the main thing is cost schedule performance okay so like I said earlier you don't go to your tech school until a slot opens up for it so a lot of the times you're gonna be just like me going into this job not having a single idea what it is anything about it so you're gonna be given a lot of information so be a sponge just absorb as much as you can take notes and you're probably gonna forget 80% of it but just try and keep asking questions and if you don't know an acronym just ask, don't feel stupid there are some acronyms that I use but I don't even know what they mean so then I'll be like what actually, what does that mean? also for my job it's a lot of putting out fires and constantly having to be reactive instead of proactive and it really sucks because you feel like you're always behind and you're always trying to fix things so just be aware that you're always kinda gonna have to be dealing with something new and just know that ahead of time so that it's not such a shock and yeah so be a sponge you're gonna hear the term probably fire hose because they're just like it's so much coming at you but just try and learn as much as you can ask questions and you'll do, you'll do good so if you would like to follow me on Instagram my Instagram handle is kc.melvin and then I also have a YouTube channel where I talk specifically about my experience being in the Air Force as an officer the process that I went through and I try and post on there as often as I can but I've been really busy with my job and with life and everything so I haven't posted as frequently as I should but yeah if you wanna follow me it's just KC Melvin on YouTube so yeah thanks for watching