A lot of people may know senior Wyatt Mercer. He is very smart, he is on the robotics team, and the tennis team, and he is always willing to help. What people may not know is that for the past few months, Wyatt has been training with the national guard. While Wyatt has been training with the national guard he has completed his A.I.T. (advanced individual training) and has learned many techniques and manners that will be needed for basic. Wyatt works very hard to balance his school life with his outside life and still have time for tennis and national guard while keeping his grades very high. 

Getting into the national guard, or any military training, is not easy. I asked Wyatt what some of the requirements were for him to be accepted. One requirement was that his ASVAB score had to be higher than 20% of the people that had taken the test. For 25 Bravo (an information technology specialist in the military), the score required was to score above a 20 on the ASVAB and to get a 75% or higher in the technology section, and Wyatt scored over 90% on that portion. 

Going into the National Guard is a big decision, you are basically signing your life away. You could get called away from home at any given time to go spend months risking your life. I asked Wyatt why he chose to make that decision and he said, “I chose to join the national guard after my sergeant told me a story he told about how his friends were eating ramen everyday while he was getting steak because he was making so much being in the national guard.” Wyatt also told me that the national guard would give him an I.T. certificate that he needs for future job and college applications. Wyatt said that by going into the national guard he felt that it would help his mom significantly because she wouldn’t have to worry about paying for college.

After Wyatt had mentioned that the national guard would be paying for lots of his college expenses, I asked him to go more into detail. He said that at the level he is at currently, which is an E-2, he makes $230 every time he goes up to training. Some of that money that he makes gets taken out and put into his life insurance, Wyatt’s life insurance right now is roughly $500,000. Once he graduates and is in college his pay raise will get boosted and he will start making over $1000. The national guard has also offered that any scholarship he earns will not have to go to college and the money will go straight into his pockets. 

Overall, Wyatt says that he would recommend people to try it out, because he has gained lots of knowledge and memories. Wyatt said he would also recommend the national guard because it could help tremendously with college. The national guard would never be an easy thing to join but as Wyatt has shown, it can have many rewards. Wyatt didn’t choose to go into the national guard for the military training and to get ready for battles, he chose to go in to it because it would help him a lot with credits for his college hours, it helps out him and his family with paying for college, and he gets great training with technology which is what he plans to base his future job off of.