So you're a National Guard S.O.

So guys, your S.O. signed their life away for probably 6-8 years or so and you both have no idea what's next, right? Welcome to the Army, where no information is shared and everything inevitably will get lost or forgotten! I'm here to help! **This is all based on my experiences thus far as a National Guard girlfriend, and it may not be true for everyone and the ways things work may have now changed as well.** Just Getting Started One of the first thing your soldier will go through is MEPS( Military  Entrance Processing Station) . Here they will take the ASVAB ( Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). They basically take an SAT or ACT to find out if they can qualify for the MOS (military occupational specialty) they want. They should get their results right away.  If you haven't caught on yet, there's a TON of acronyms you will learn pretty quick. It seems like everything in the army has an acronym. After they return from MEPS, they will work with their rec...

To start this blog off, I want to introduce myself a little bit. I'm a 20 year old National Guard girlfriend going to college while my boyfriend of 4 years works full time and does his National Guard thing. He's infantry and signed in 2014 and went to basic during our junior year of high school and finished up his training after our senior year.  We definitely had our differences when we first started dating and it was a VERY rocky start. When we finally started figuring stuff out, that's when he decided to sign with the guard. He went in with the intention to sign as transportation but, after he finished I got a text saying he was infantry. That was the first surprise I had gotten through the army with him, but it is far from the last.  As we started our journey through his training and everything, none of my friends understood what it was like not to talk to your boyfriend for 9 to 11 weeks at a time. Ok, that's kind of a lie. We did get maybe three phone ...