 Why did you join the Air Force specifically? So both my brothers are in the Air Force, both my older brothers, the oldest one is in the Air Force and the one's in Army, but they both joined together. While they were doing that, I went to college and I got my education degree. And then at the very end, I graduated and I realized, I didn't want to be like a 22 year old teacher with no knowledge of anything. Cause I grew up in small town Maine. So I did a road trip and my other brother had just left from the Air Force and went into the Army. So I visited them both, saw their bases, kind of talked to them, talked to them about like how it was lost in a way. And then I just decided I wanted to go see a recruiter. So I came back, it was a two month road trip and I came back and I think a week later I went and I met with a recruiter. You went to like 40 some states? We just did like a, it was me and a bunch of rock-eyed friends and we just had like a big loop. Dang. Oh yeah. That's awesome. So how long have you been in the Air Force and what's your current rank right now? Some senior Airmen was E4 and I've been in since November 2016. So two and a half years. Did you make BTZ? No. You didn't? No. March 1st. Okay. What is the title of your job and the AFSC? My title is Aerospace Medical Technician. The AFSC is 4-0X1. Aerospace Medical Technician. Yes. It makes it sound like something crazy. Super cool, right? Yeah. Yeah. We're on the outside, we're LPNs. Okay. Yeah. I think that is a way to connect. Because for me, I even hear it even though I served six years, I'm like that still sounds like it's a crazy job. Sounds super cool to know. Did you end up getting this job straight out of depth? Or did you get an open contract and then find out during basic training? I went open general and then I found out in basic training. This was my number one choice. Okay. So you got what you wanted. Yes. You wanted this while you were in depth as well. You just never got it. No, I didn't really know what I wanted in depth. I was just kind of going with it. Do you know what was on your list originally? I think I just put medical general. I think I put aerospace physiology and photojournalism. Okay. So you and me both didn't get photojournalism. And then when you signed your contract, where are you going in for four or six years? I went in four years. Since I went open and there was no bonus to do six and I was going to go in E3 anyway since I had my bachelors. Do you regret joining four years instead of six? No, I'm happy I did. Cause- You have more options though. Exactly. And at four, I'm like, okay, if I want to get out, if I can extend, I can extend up to six without having to re-enlist. And I feel like I know a lot of people that are at four and I go, I wish I was, I wish I could just been done now instead of having to put up with extra two. Yeah. So where was your tech school and how long was tech school? So phase one tech school was at Fort St. Houston in San Antonio. That one was about four to five months or so depending if you passed all the tests. Cause it's split in between EMT and nursing practices. And so we have to pass the NRAT and that washes a lot of people back. And then phase two is about two months or so. And that was, my phase two was actually at Nellis in Las Vegas. Phase two, can that be at a lot of different places? It can be at Lackland, Nellis, Travis, Egland, that's it. So there's multiple places that you can go. It's not like everybody that joins goes to all those places for training. Oh yeah, no, your whole class is split up. You find out. So how do they decide where you go? Is it just random? Yeah, we find out, we had one week left and then they just listed off the names and after everybody's set up, they said, okay, you're going here. Now they're a little bit of the class went to here. And part of that training is you're doing on the job training, but it's still part of your tech school, correct? Yes, phase two is all on the job. Gotcha, because I've been to the doctor before and they're like, oh, he's in tech school still. But then I'm like, how is he helping me at this? I'm like, this isn't tech school, this is, I'm real life. Yep, we have to practice. Cause everything is like a dummies or with each other, which, you know, we're all healthy. So they put us here so we learn bedside manner and can actually talk to patients and experience it. That makes sense. Overall, what was your experience with tech school? Did you like it? Was it enjoyable? Definitely not what I thought it was going to be. But it did remind me a lot of college in terms of you living in the dorms. Fort Sam, it's co-ed dorms. So you obviously live with the same gender, but I had a male roommate or a male neighbor across the hall and next to me. But they were very strict on rules for that as well. And I'm just not used to people being able to come in my room, you know, in the middle of the night and do a, they call it health and wellness checks to see if anyone's an opposite gender's in there. Definitely not used to that. But I made a lot of good friends, which was really cool that I still talk to today. And then phase two was just, it was a breeze, talking with patients. You don't have a set schedule anymore. You feel like you're working. It's more just like you're starting your job. Yeah, cause you, you know, we're reading about it for so long and constantly getting quiz and she saw classroom, death by PowerPoint stuff. And that felt like college and I already did that. And so this one was, it was nice to talk with patients and actually understand the schedule and see how everybody interacts with each other, how other med techs do. And then also just hearing about where they came from. And you talk to a permanent party and get to talk to you about their experiences and what they're doing. It just kind of helped the transition from, you know, okay, I'm a student, I'm a student too. I'm not a full permanent party. You're in that weird in between stage, but it was nice. So you would, you said earlier, you related it similar to college. Yeah. Tech school for you was a lot like what you would imagine with college for nursing or something would be like. Not, not as intense as nursing school, just like a general college. Because for, we, you know, we had a curfew, but if you're 21, you got to go out and you got to go drink. And you could come back. I mean, as bad as it is, you could come back and eat breed it as long as you were still okay. You know, you had to have someone kind of make sure you're escorting you in the MTLs. They treated you like adults. It wasn't like basic where you're kind of, you know, you're the trainee. They always looked down on you. They talked to you like you were a person, which was really nice as long as you showed up. It's a lot different in my tech school too. Yeah, I'm sure. It's a lot different than a lot of people as I've heard. It's, it's a lot more laxadaisical because they know that we're under so much pressure for EMT, because an EMT course on the outside, it could be almost a year long. Ours is seven weeks, so. So they came a lot in in a short amount of time. Yeah. So if you're, for them, it's like if you're going to go and you're going to go out and drink, that's fine, but they expect you, when you're in class, you need to be present and there. And we had all medical there. So we had medical admin, search techs, people that were going to be there for a year and a half, lab, radiology. So you have all these different things in all these different career fields already, which is also kind of nice to mingle with them. And so you have people like, oh yeah, I've been here for about a year already and you're going to leave before they even get to go. Was it easier or harder than you thought that overall? Like going into it, were you expecting it to be like super hard or were you kind of expecting it to be chill? And then how was it? I think I was expecting it to be a little bit easier than what I thought. That's a lot of its common sense stuff of how you talk to a patient, but EMT was a lot harder than what I thought it was going to be. I'm not used to having to study four or five hours a night every night. I think that's why they treated you like adults because architecture was pretty easy, work wise. So then they treated us like children, but you have like a lot more stress, I guess, in your job. So it's like kind of needed to treat you like a human. If they added that stress on it, I think we all would have failed. So a lot of people are concerned about where they can be stationed when they join the Air Force. So where can you be stationed as an aerospace medical technician? Anywhere. That's the one big thing that I liked about it. We can get stationed anywhere. We're deployable to every base because you always need them at tech in a way because we work with nurses and doctors and if a nurse is not available to do just regular patient check-ins and vitals and kind of go through why the patient's there, that's why we're there. We're there to kind of make their job easier. So there's probably one nurse to like four or five of us. Anywhere there's a hospital, anywhere there's a clinic, that's where we are. So I'm sure from joining to being in for two and a half years, you've kind of learned some things from what you may have read on the Air Force website or heard from your recruiter or heard from other people, things that are different in your day-to-day life. So what is your job like in general? What is a typical day like? What do you do in your job? For a month. If you were to sum it up to somebody. So I work in a clinic. So my schedule's really nice. I work seven to four Monday through Fridays. I get all holidays off, all family days off. And I work in specialty clinic particularly. So I see the same patients every about three to four months or so. So we get in there, seven o'clock, we have a team holiday at 7.30, with all the technicians and the clinics talk about the day, what happened maybe yesterday, anything we need to elevate up to leadership, stuff like that. Make sure everyone's covered in the clinics. And then usually we do our own little huddle with our providers, just talking about the schedules for the day and what they can expect if they need anything extra from you. Are you assigned to a specific provider then? Yes. Is that your own doctor that you're kind of working with? Yes. With MedTech, once you learn one job, you can do them all really. So I'm assigned to endocrinology, but I can work in nephrology. I can work in family health. So every two years they do what we call PCA. And so I would move from my clinic to a different clinic or an inpatient ward. In that way, because I have that scope to do it all. Really. My clinic, we don't do as much as, let's say MSU or ICU. We don't do very much. I check in the patient, I do vitals on them. Make sure they're okay. I double check with their medications. And then I go to the provider and I let him know what the patient's feeling, how they're doing. And I input it all on the computer. And then. So to the civilian, you'd be that, the nurse that usually comes and gets you from the waiting room. Yes. Takes you back to the room. Like you said, takes the vitals. Yup. And then you're like, all right, I'll go get the doc. Yup. And then so that's you. Yes. Okay. But not to the equivalent to a nurse. There's still things I can't do as you know, but in a normal, typical setting, that's what I would do. And then answer phone calls and. So after your two and a half years so far, are you planning on doing long term? Or are you kind of on the fence right now? Or are you ready to get out and maybe to pursue this as a civilian? Or realize that it's not the job that you love or want to do long term? So I'm still on the fence about it, but with four and O's, thankfully we have shred outs. So we have a lot of shred outs, which is a lot of options to kind of do something different. And just, so it's four and O X one. And so what I would do is I would get a letter. So I'm going for aerospace evacuation, which is a shred out. And you have to have been on station for two years. You need to be senior airman. You have to be a certain skill level. You know, know everything. So what you're trying to do is be like a med tech on a plane during that mission. So yes, everyone loves it. You travel everywhere. So we would go, they would call up, say we have a mission for you. We need to pick up patients from point A, bring them to point B. Bring the person on, but you'd be going caring for them. Yes, yep. And then when we're done, we just hand them off to the next hospital and then we go home. But that you can only go to four bases for that one. So that's limited. So that's what you're trying to do. If you get that, you would plan on staying in there. Most likely, yes. Okay. But what if you don't get that? What if you're saying what you're doing? Do you enjoy it enough to just stay in the longterm? If I got to go to an inpatient ward, I think I would, but it can get very mundane being in a clinic because we learn so much. We're EMTs and kind of we're about to get our LPN license as well. There's so much we can do. And then when I go to my job and I'm limited to just vitals and the engagement of my job. You're not using all the knowledge that you have. Exactly. So that's why they change this out every two years or so to go to a ward. But it's never a guarantee. And so if that happened, then I would probably get out. So my last question is gonna be, what advice do you have to somebody that is either interested in doing Medtech or somebody that is already got the job, trying to understand what they're about to be doing for the Air Force? So what advice would you have for them? I think a person thinking about joining for a Medtech, I mean, I do love my job. I really do. So I think the opportunities for a Medtech are a lot greater and there's a lot more that you can do than a lot of other career builds. So I think it's great if you wanna keep your options open. You're not really sure, but you like helping people. But I would definitely tell them that it's not a cakewalk, especially tech school. You really do need to kind of hunker down, especially for EMT, because they're not shy about washing you out and you would just go to a different career field. People's lives can depend on you. Exactly, yeah. If you don't take it serious in tech school, you might not take it serious when you get to your job. And that's exactly why. And that's what happens and it does happen. They do see it. And so that's why they'll just wash you out. But that's also why the EMT course is so hard because they need people. They need Medtech so they can't just kind of be lackadaisical about it. They expect you to take it upon yourself as well to do the homework and be kind of proactive and stuff. We're set to the same standards as a civilian EMT with passing the test. We take the same test as them. Our study time is all on our own. We don't do any clinicals or anything like that. That's why it's so stressful because you're framing it into a shorter period of time but you take the exact same test. Exactly, and I failed the test my first time. But I passed skills, which is with a patient, you're with a dummy and you have to go through the scenarios and all these things. I passed that, so I got washed back one week and I retook the NREMT and I got put into a completely different class for a nursing process, which kind of sucked because you're with these people, you're struggling. You knew I should have been able to see it. And then I was just thrown with all these different people. How often do people fail that test then? All the time. Yeah, I would say the pass rate is probably 60%. I think it's extremely difficult because just the questions are so out there and they don't... So like one out of three people will probably fail it the first time. Half my class failed it when I took it, yeah. That's crazy. But at the same time, it's kind of nice because then you have someone else to struggle with and you can kind of both relate on that and then you know, it tells you kind of where you sucked at really. And you can tell what the questions, if you... You know where you go to read back. Exactly, and where to study. And you know all the people that failed because they locked themselves in their room for the next week. And your time for that next week, you don't go to class, it's mandatory studying. So you go to a classroom and then they move you somewhere else and you just study for that entire week because they want you to pass. But you just have to pass the same standards. Because with that, if you fail again, that's when you can either be kicked out or get put into another career field. Yes, you can. But you just spent four or five months in training to then fall short on how to be like, that's why people take it so seriously. Because if you fail, you're like, nope, study like 100%. Yeah, and when you... Because you don't want to risk it. No, and if you watch out, you don't go into another career field right away. And there's a processing time to get you out of the career field and into a new one with open spots. So you're stuck in the dorms with all your classmates watching them graduate and leave and you're still there. But you just don't go to school. You just hang out in the dorms and you clean. You do details the whole time. You do details for months. I've known people that done details for about six months before they got into a different career field. That's brutal. Yeah, it's bad. But I would say for someone who's in it and they're not sure what to do, I think the shred outs, they need to really seriously invest in educating themselves in the shred outs. A lot of people don't really know about it unless they actively go out and say... To start asking questions. Yeah, that's what I did. And the first thing I did when I got here, I said, hey, I heard about this aerospace evacuation. I think I'm really interested. What do I need to do to get to it? What prerequisites do I need to do? And they were telling me all these time restraints that I needed to be here on base for a certain amount of time. So the minute that happens, I went back again. Hey, what do I need to do? But if you don't ask, your leadership's not gonna give you these opportunities and tell you, hey, you need to invest in this and do this, they're gonna think you're okay with where you are. So if you're not okay with where you are, you need to tell somebody and talk to them and say, I wanna know what my options are. And then they'll give you all the resources you need. So be proactive. Yes. In your career field, being proactive could be super beneficial to how your career plays out later on. Absolutely. Joining as a new chairman if you come in and are proactive about where you want to go long term, then your supervision can actually help you. Yeah. And even if you don't know where to go, you can just tell them, I didn't know where I wanted to go at first. I just said, I'd want something beyond what this regular day-to-day is. What options do we have? And then they give you a whole packet. And then they're like, okay, too many options. The snare is down, they're right down. But they're good with helping you once you ask for it. You have to ask for it, they're not gonna ask you. All right guys, I hope you enjoyed the video where Ashley talked about her job, aerospace, medical technician. Again, it sounds way cooler than it might be, but you love your job, so. I do. So that's a good thing. Everybody just make sure that you pay attention to what is best for you, just because Ashley likes the job. Are there some people that don't like the job that you're in? So not everybody's gonna like the job. Just happen to find somebody to interview that really likes their job. But I hope you guys appreciate it. Be sure to leave a comment down below if you have any questions. Or if you want me to interview anyone else with a specific job, let me know in the comment section down below. Also give this video a thumbs up and click subscribe and I'll see you in my next video. Peace out.