 So originally I was gonna go to art school in Colorado, but it was really expensive I didn't know that much about the GI bill or like specific branches of the military at the time My wife at one point in her life was gonna join the Air Force reserves And then I also grew up next to Buckley Air Force Base So all three of those things kind of equated out to me joining the Air Force like finding this YouTube channel finding other YouTube Channels, I'm just getting as informed as I can and it just led me down that path of this is probably the best branch for me And like the best thing for me in this season of my life for job security and then focusing on other things outside of the Air Force To set up a good future I've been in the Air Force for two and a half years now. I joined February 2017 and I'm an A1C So my job is cyber systems operations. The AFSC is 3DO X2 I got this job in depth. I waited about maybe a month or two for the contract This was the second job on my like pick 10 list or whatever And this ended up being the job that I wanted to do because after I was already in my number one pick with cyber surety And I actually saw what they did and I liked this job a lot better So I guess you could say that I did get my number one job So cyber surety like I just said was my number one pick But that's because my recruiter wouldn't let me put the actual jobs that I wanted to do on there He said that they just weren't really getting people and getting contracts for those right now But I really wanted to do a graphic design job. I forgot the AFSC actually was but when I went to meps They told me that they just dropped that AFSC And so then my other number one was photo journalism because I love like photography and stuff like that But that didn't end up working out either because he said I couldn't go that route I also had some like medical stuff on there like dental and some other things IT isn't something that I wanted to do but it's something I ended up being kind of used to and so it's kind of the direction that I went I Signed a four-year contract six years was a really big commitment and I wasn't I wasn't ready to do that Tech school for cyber ops is at Keyslight Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi Tech school is basically four months unless it's changed which I don't think that it has But it's basically four months long. So from basic through tech school It's pretty much just a six-month process Tech school was amazing Keyslight Air Force Base has like the best defects in the Air Force So like we talk about it all the time at work. Just just kind of looking back at it And it's not so fun when you're there But since you're all there together with people who are kind of a lot like you It's easy to make a lot of friends and it just kind of you just kind of go through the same things together And so you have pretty much anybody and everybody to talk about it with but all in all it was a really good time It's just kind of something you have to experience alone tech school in Mississippi is super humid because it's like right in the Gulf So once you get past that stuff, it's really not the big of a deal. The ocean is cool. It's like a man-made ocean It's not super bad. There's a lot of fun stuff to do around there, too So it was all in all it was like a it was like an 8 out of 10. I'd give it an 8 out of 10 So it's cyber ops you can pretty much go anywhere in the Air Force And I think you can also go places like to other army bases and stuff like that It's a really versatile job You can pretty much get you can pretty much end up doing in this IT like cyber career field in the Air Force with this job specifically we're system administrators, but Sometimes you get pulled to do other things as well. So the job goes literally anywhere So there's two main things for cyber ops and these are kind of the two main things you learn at tech school I would say you learn a lot about cybersecurity which takes you into sec plus Which is assert by comp tia that you end up getting to graduate tech school So you learn a ton of stuff about vulnerabilities getting hacked viruses and stuff like that And then the other side of things is system administration So if you don't know what that is, it's like server administration keeping websites up and running keeping applications up and running Pretty much anything that you're accessing online is on a server And so we have to keep those alive so that people can continue to access them from other remote locations Our job starts with like it's kind of like a nine to five. So we show up at work at seven o'clock We go home at four o'clock Monday Wednesday and Friday is PT So we show up at seven o'clock do PT for 30 minutes to 45 minutes And then we go home change shower and we come back to work at like nine o'clock And then it's from nine to four our job is really general So you can end up doing pretty much anything like I said before but That's like the the bare minimum of that job. It's a it's a pretty cool job You do a lot with virtual machines, which are computers There's a ton of computers on one computer. You would you'd have to look it up. It's kind of complicated But yeah, that's pretty much what we do So if a new airman showed up in our shop The first thing I would tell them is that they should get their CDC's done as fast as possible That's like a really big thing that leadership wants new airmen to get done So once you get those done, you can kind of move on to on the job training And you can actually get hands-on with servers and with your job that you're doing on your base, whatever it is That's probably the biggest thing because CDC's really take up a lot of time and they're really they'll put you to sleep They'll put you to sleep pretty quick too So the sooner you get them done the sooner you can actually do your job on a day-to-day basis And that's when the Air Force kind of turns into the Air Force And you really break away from that like training tech school BMT mindset Another thing is that there are a lot of negative people in the Air Force So the first thing I would say is don't be one of those negative people and the second thing I'd say is just kind of take it one day at a time Maybe don't go in if you want to do career. That's awesome But go in with the mindset that anything is possible and that there could be new opportunities doors opening and doors closing everywhere So just be as optimistic as possible and then just just don't let people drag you down That's like the best advice that I can give So I make Air Force videos as well. My YouTube channel name is skate gnarly. That's SK 8 G N A R L E Y My title for that channel is Jonathan Sullivan. I don't really go by skate gnarly anymore My Instagram and my Twitter are exactly the same So make sure you go check me out on there and subscribe to my YouTube channel