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Meet Sam Edler. Edler is a 19-year-old junior currently studying Agriculture Systems Technology at Iowa State University. In March of this year, Edler made a choice that would forever change the trajectory of his life. He was tired of listening to the news about events happening in Syria and Iran and the U.S. battle against Isis and not being able to do anything about it. He felt helpless as a college student who typically spent his weekends partying. So, he joined the National Guard as an infantryman.

 After joining the Guard this past summer, Edler was ordered to attend basic training for 14 weeks in Fort Benning, Georgia. 

“Basic is never necessarily a good time,” Edler said. “People are yelling at you … and constantly humiliating you in every way possible. Really, the first couple of weeks were the worst; after that, you learn to live with it.”

Edler said that during basic training he was working 17-hour days and didn’t have time to think about himself or his home. When he got home, there was a sense of shock in adjusting back to his everyday life. 

Edler landed back in Iowa late on a Friday evening and started back to school immediately the following Monday.

 He described feeling out of place and having trouble relating to his peers’ problems, which appeared small to him after spending 14 weeks learning sharpening and shooting skills, land navigation and fire drills that could be essential to his livelihood. 

“(The military) definitely made me impatient,” Edler said. “When people have drama at school, I have very little patience for them. I get it; it’s not like they went through the same thing as me, and I have no right to judge them at all. Just, after going through everything and coming back and hearing that somebody got a sad text and they’re crying about it for three days … it’s hard for me to be sympathetic for them.” 

Feeling unsatisfied and unfulfilled after coming back to school this semester, Edler is now considering enlisting in the active-duty military as an infantryman.  

“As time went on, I started to miss everything about basic, especially the AIT Training part, and started hating school,” Edler said. “I got so used to doing everything I learned. We essentially learned everything we needed for life or death situations … then I came back here, and if I don’t know a certain science term, I get a certain letter grade. I thought, Why is that important?”

Considering his options, Edler is leaning toward making the military his career, but the decision is a difficult one. By going the career route, Edler knows he will be able to satisfy his desire to serve more deeply. He also knows the choice could have profound implications on other areas of his life. 

Like Edler, we are all faced with questions about what career path we want to take and who we want to be as we grow older.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” turns into “What are you going to do when you graduate from high school?” 

For many people, deciding their next step is easy; they choose to go to college like most of their peers. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in October 2018, 69.1% of 2018 high school graduates ages 16 to 24 were enrolled in colleges or universities. 

Other students choose to enter the workforce. Very few consider the military as a career. 

The Poughkeepsie Journal in New York studied its local graduates and reported that, “Of the estimated 3,600 local students who finished at a public high school in 2017, only 2 percent enlisted in the military. Most local students — 85 percent — went to college. Another 6 percent went to the workforce, and 2 percent went to trade, vocational or technical schools. Plans were unknown for 3 percent of graduates.”  

Here’s why choosing the military as a career might be difficult: While taking a job offer in a career field doesn’t dramatically the affect the overall trajectory of your life, the military asks you to pick up your life, change your habits and adjust to a new way of living different from what you may have experienced before. There can be major implications for your family life, harder transitions back into the civilian world and effects on your mental and physical health. 

As of 2015, there were close to 1.4 million people serving in the U.S. armed forces, according to the Defense Manpower Data Center, a unit within the Department of Defense. That means that 0.4% of the American population was active military personnel. 

The active duty force has been decreasing in size over the past 29 years. In 1990, there were 2,065,597 enlisted active-duty troops compared to 1,340,533 in 2015.  

According to the National Center for PTSD, someone who is serving active duty in the military is serving full-time. These people have jobs that are part of the military as their career and often live on a military base. This also means that they can be deployed at any time. People who serve in the National Guard or Federal Reserve serve in the military part-time and are employed in other careers outside of the military. The National Guard is intended for U.S. missions but can be deployed if the need should arise. 

There is a distinct difference between active-duty military and someone who serves in the Guard or Federal Reserve. 

Most in the Guard and Reserves can separate who they are in their uniform from who they are in their everyday lives and allow something else outside of the military to define them. But most career military personnel must be ready to act at any moment.

In pursuing a career in the military as an infantryman, Edler would serve as part of the main land combat force of the Army. According to the U.S. army’s career and jobs page, the infantry is the backbone of the Army and is responsible for defending our country against any threat by land, as well as capturing, destroying and repelling enemy ground forces. 

These men and women are the boots on the ground and are the most likely to be in actual combat situations. 

Infantry is considered by many to be one of the 10 most dangerous jobs in the military.

This is a factor that Edler is considering as he ponders his decision to join the military full-time. 

For many troops, joining the military in an active-duty role means making sacrifices for their family because their jobs often come first. They may miss out on important life events and the ups and downs of their family as it evolves. 

Such was the case with current active-duty Sergeant First-Class Jed Wright. Jed, along with his wife, Jessica, and their two kids live together on a military base in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Jed currently is serving in a teaching position, which allows him to be in the states. He can spend weekends and his time off hiking and swimming with his family, making memories that will last a lifetime. However, this wasn’t always the case. Jed has been deployed three separate times and has served in Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq. He missed the birth of his daughter, Haley, and missed out on most of his son, Hudson’s first year of life. 

Jed left for his first deployment when Jessica was about four months pregnant with Haley. They didn’t know about the deployment when they found out Jessica was pregnant, so it came as a shock to them to learn that he wouldn’t be there for the birth of their first child. Some units allow soldiers to come home for a birth, but Jed’s unit at the time did not. Jessica was only 21 and they were stationed 1,000 miles from home. She was devastated and quickly decided that she was going to move back to Iowa and live with her parents after Jed left for Kuwait. 

“I did not want to do it all alone,” Jessica said. “It helped being with my parents, but I was still very emotional in those last few months of pregnancy. It felt unfair that he had to miss everything, and I had a hard time accepting it. I think that was mostly because I was still in that teenager-ish, self-centered frame of mind. But it was hard.”

When Jessica went into labor, it was the middle of the night our time in Iowa and the middle of the day in Kuwait. 

“We had not been able to successfully video chat the entire deployment because his internet connection was so bad,” Jessica said. “That day, though, every single person in his tent turned off their devices in hopes that he would have better service to ‘be there’ for the birth of his child. It totally worked, and I also believe God had a hand in it. He had a strong connection for hours. He got to be right there by my side through it all. It was not ideal having him on a screen instead of in person, but he was there, and that made it all right.”

Jessica didn’t have much time to think about him being physically present throughout the labor and delivery, but that night after everyone went home, and it was just her and her brand new baby girl, it was hard and emotional being without Jed during a moment that all couples should get to experience together. 

The following months weren’t any easier; Haley had colic and cried all the time. Jessica’s parents tried to help, and she was so thankful for them in that time, but it wasn’t quite the same. 

“I wanted him to be there with me to experience all of the challenges and joys that I was experiencing as a new parent,” Jessica said. “It was hard for him, too. I can’t even imagine what it was like for him seeing pictures and videos of his child but never having seen her in person or held her in his arms. He tells me that he can somewhat ‘turn off’ his emotions and that a lot of soldiers do that while they are gone. If not, the months away would be unbearable. They focus on the mission and the task at hand and try not think about what they are missing back home.”

Haley was almost two months old that first Christmas. Jessica was still in Iowa at the time, as Jed wasn’t scheduled to come home until mid-February. 

“I distinctly remember going to the Christmas Eve service at his parents’ church in Randall,” Jessica said. “They had a few songs at the end where they dimmed the lights, and there were just voices, no instruments, and we were all holding candles. It is supposed to be a beautiful moment. But for me, it was absolutely heart-wrenching. I kept thinking about the Christmas Eve a few years before that when we attended that same service together. He had only been in the Army for a few months and was still in training, but he was able to come home for Christmas. He wore his dress greens, and I was so proud to be there on his arm.” 

Now she was there without him, with his baby that he hadn’t met, exhausted and overwhelmed. 

“I’m not one to make a scene, so I tried to hide my tears as we sang ‘Silent Night’ in the candlelight,” Jessica said. “The Christmas gatherings for my family weren’t so bad. Being surrounded by them during that time was a joy and a blessing. It was the Christmas gatherings for his family that were hard. When I was with his family, the fact that he wasn’t there was so amplified that it was almost physically painful for me. His brother and his wife had a baby just one week before I did, so watching his brother navigate new fatherhood while Jed missed out on all of it was really, really hard.”

“Hard” is the word that Jessica uses to describe her military experience and rightly so. 

Today, the hardest part for Jessica is living so far away from their family in Iowa. The drive from Oklahoma is 9.5 hours, and she feels like they “miss everything.”

“We’re really lucky that he is in this position right now, but it’s only going to last for a short couple of years, and then we will be back to the regular army,” Jessica said.

It’s been seven years since Jed’s first deployment, and Jessica says that she can truthfully say that is has gotten easier. Jed has been deployed two more times after that and has been gone countless nights, days, weeks for other things. The family has gotten through it before, and they know they can do it again. It is much easier for them to focus on the positive side of the military life now. 

One positive that Jessica sees with the military lifestyle is the opportunity to travel. They have been exposed to different ways of living by meeting people from all over the world on their trips as well as through other families that live on the same base. Jessica enjoys that their kids are experiencing a much broader culture, compared to the childhood experiences she and Jed had living in less diverse communities in rural Iowa. Her children both attend an elementary school on base, and Jessica is a Pre-K teacher there. 

“The Army is made up of soldiers from not only around the country but also around the world,” Jessica said. “There are so many different cultures and languages. The children that attend our school all have different backgrounds and beliefs, and I think it is amazing to be exposed to that in early childhood. Our next-door neighbors on one side are from Germany, and our next-door neighbors on the other side are from Korea. My children also have friends from many other countries. As blonde-haired, blue- eyed, Caucasian children, they tend to be the minority in their friend groups. Growing up with diversity and getting to know all these people from different walks of life teaches them that different is good. They want to learn the languages that their friends speak, they want to try the ethnic foods that their parents’ make, and they are curious about the different countries that they call home. Just the other day, one of Haley’s friends was teaching her how to write her name in Korean.”

The Wright family hasn’t been stationed overseas yet, but they are really hoping to make it to Germany, Italy or Korea within the 10 years Jed has left in the Army. 

Now 10 years into their marriage, Jessica is proud her husband serves our country and knows it was the best decision for him. She is enjoying living the military life and would be sad if that had to change for any reason. 

Giving up important family moments isn’t the only sacrifice our men and women who serve in the military make. Depending on the position a military member chooses, the rigorous schedule and physical demand can take a toll on their bodies and minds. 

According to a study done by BMC Public Health, “A substantial burden of mental health problems was identified in Vietnam War veterans, and Persian Gulf War veterans reported a multitude of physical and psychological symptoms and illnesses at rates two to three times higher than nondeployed veterans of the same era. The health-related quality of life reported by these veterans has also been shown to be significantly less favorable.” 

Because of health struggles as well as the stark difference in following a strict regimen compared to daily civilian schedules, for many men and women returning to the civilian world can prove difficult. 

A Pew Research Center study of 1,853 veterans found that, “While more than seven-in-ten veterans (72%) report they had an easy time readjusting to civilian life, 27% say re-entry was difficult for them—a proportion that swells to 44% among veterans who served in the ten years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” 

The study found that those who serve as commissioned officers or have graduated from college discover an easier transition to post-military life. Those who experienced a traumatic event or suffered a serious service-related injury found it harder to readjust.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “In August 2018, 4.7 million veterans, or 25 percent of the total, had a service-connected disability. Veterans with a service-connected disability are assigned a disability rating by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or the U.S. Department of Defense. Ratings range from zero to 100 percent, in increments of 10 percentage points, depending on the severity of the condition. The unemployment rate for veterans with a service-connected disability was 5.2 percent in August 2018, higher than the rate for veterans with no disability (3.5 percent.) Among veterans with a service-connected disability, 29 percent reported a disability rating of less than 30 percent, while another 41 percent had a rating of 60 percent or higher. In August 2018, veterans with a service-connected disability rating of less than 30 percent were much more likely to be in the labor force than those with a rating of 60 percent or higher (56.3 percent and 40.0 percent, respectively.)” 

While the numbers might seem high, the military is making strides in helping veterans in their post-military life. The U.S. Army website states that they are committed to helping soldiers transition back into civilian life.  

The website says, “Every Army post has an Army Career and Alumni center to help Soldiers prepare for futures after the Army. Career counselors are on hand to help Soldiers craft résumés, network with employers and determine post-Army careers that best utilize the skills learned as a soldier.” 

While adjusting back to the civilian world can be difficult for soldiers and active-duty military personnel, the opportunities and benefits they can receive can make the transition smoother. 

Some benefits include a guaranteed paycheck and cash bonuses, education benefits, special home loans and discounts, health and dental care and highly sought-after specialty skills such as grit, servant leadership and communication. While these are all important benefits and reasons to join the military, nothing compares to the sense of patriotism, duty, honor and selfless service one feels when serving their country. 

“A lot of people join for the money, and anyone who joins for the money is not going to have a good time,” Edler said.  

Jessica agreed. 

“It’s all about your attitude,” she said. “If you want to do it and you want to make it a career, it’s a great thing for your life.”