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Visiting the World, as a Geek?
Han Onymous asks: "In nine months my contract as a research assistent at my Alma Mater will come to an end. It will not be renewed, I don't want it to be anyway. But outside the economy is too ill to welcome me. I am young. I am healthy. And I want to see the world before I've got the wife and the kids and the double mortgage. I have no money saved, and I don't plan to save some until then. What can a skillful geek (electrical, electronical and software engineer, speaks three languages fluently) like me do to see the world. Volunteer ? Working for a multinational with exchange programs? Something with no connection at all to the tech world? Please share your experience."
Join the peace corps.
You may do well to check out the Peace Corps - especially with your language skills. *NOW* is the time for you to travel about and see the world; if you put it off you probably won't get around to it until retirement.
The Wired Magazine article Mother Earth, Mother board is an article written by a hacker/tourist.
I've always liked reading this article, and it lists neat places to visit
... accept a job where "very little travel is involved".
That did it for me.
aloha,
=brian
Try the Army, Navy or Air Force. I have many friends who are part of the US Armed Services and have traveled the World quite extensively in just a few short years.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
You're looking for "Engineers Without Borders":
here a few of their addresses:
http://ewob.colorado.edu
EWOB USA
http://www.ewb-isf.org
EWB CANADA
http://www.isf-france.org
EWB France = Ingénieurs sans Frontières (ISF)
There are lots of other local and national EWB groups, a google search should find em.
..you could join the Army and visit the Middle East. Sunny skies, high tech environment, and the lucky winner can play a game of "Whack the Laden"!
*hopes that joke wasn't in too bad of taste, midly bad taste is acceptable*
"Derp de derp."
Try geek corps or Engineers without borders or if you're Canadian you can apply to Net Corps.
Get some credit cards and slack. I'm serious. As a highly educated geek, you can probably get 10-20k in unsecured credit by filling out some forms on a web site.
Then, choose some country that's cheap to live in and go. Asian countries give you the nice added bonus of being able to generate an income stream readily by illegally teaching English. For example, in Taiwan you can teach English for $25/hr and meals cost about $3 each.
As an added bonus, you may find in some foreign countries women find you irresistible. Which is not so bad.
Finally, when the economy recovers you will be making gobs of money and not have enough time to spend it efficiently. The memories will last forever.
Is it traveling you wish to do? Seeing the world is great but I get enjoyment out of seeing the immediate world around me.
I've had two friends join the peace corps, one loved it the other hated. like most things it's about perspective. I would love to see Ireland, England and many others but it's come to my attention I have neglected to view my own country, my own city even.
I was going to join the Navy but realized military life wasn't worth it to me. The peace corps are out because I need money. So lately I've been thinking about helping others at youth centers in my area. It seems to be much more rewarding, not just for myself but for the kids.
With your skills you could be a great asset to the children. Rather than travel the world and look at the pretty sites, perhaps consider sticking close to home and getting more involved with local programs. It almost seems safer now too considering the bomb in Bali.
first part second part
Teaching English is always good....... ;)
I would say go back to school. There are programs at various schools, including but not limited to state and private universities, that offer study abroad. Pick your country. I went to Spain this past summer for 2 months on a program to learn Spanish. That was it. Cost was $3600 including room and board and school. After the program was over I spent the next month hooving it around western Europe. With a month railpass, I was able to visit 12 different countries. Stay at hostels which are safe and offer clean, comfortable nightly accomodations for as little as $10 a night. Overall, the trip cost me about $6000. The best part of it was that I was able to get stafford loans to finance almost the entire trip. Nothing like a government gauranteed 3.4% interest loan that you don't have to pay back until you are not taking any more classes.
One of my Grandpa's buddies did an around the world tour by getting a cabin aboard a merchant marine ship.
It was super cheap and he got to spend a week or so in all sorts of different port towns. I have no idea whether it would interest you or not, but I contemplated doing it before I met my fiancee.
BTW, the guy who did this was 83!
So you don't necessarily have to do it while you are young;-)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Money = flexibility. You have nine months. If flexibility and adventure are important to you, save some now. Whether you end up in the Peace Corps or whatever, it will help give you room to breathe.
An aside:
You're going to be old and infirm someday. Don't believe the lies that you'll actually be able to live off of your government pension (since it started as a senior-vote-buying measure, and will end when it runs out of money or leads to huge defecits once the boomers all retire), because you will be screwed. The first thing you should do is go and buy this book, then read it. Follow its advice.
Once you have a secure financial base, go ahead and explore the world, get married, etc. Do whatever your heart desires, but do not get started without some money saved away for your retirement, or you will be screwed when you're older.
Back to the question at hand:
If you really speak a variety of languages, see what it takes to get a work visa there. Often it's a lot of work, but it can be really fun to live somewhere for a year and do whatever it is you're skilled at doing (good non-tech ones are teaching english, cooking, bartending, etc). You can't just go to a country and work there legally unless you have a work visa, so be sure to get that squared away first.
Another thing to do would be to save up money, and backpack across Europe (or somewhere else that's population dense). It's fairly easy to do, there are plenty of youth hostels, and transportation between locales is cheap if you hitch-it. Heck, if you're feeling daring, you could even try to do it while carting along a small appliance.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The worlds largest student organisation. AIESEC is a global network of 50,000 members across more than 83 countries and territories at more than 800 universities world-wide.
AIESEC facilitates international exchange of thousands of students and recent graduates each year. Whether in a paid traineeship or as a volunteer for a non-profit organisation, their experiences abroad will undoubtedly affect them forever.
Behind everything we do is our mission: to contribute to the development of our countries and their people with an overriding commitment to international understanding and co-operation.
Over the years AIESEC has evolved into something that is spirited with endless energy. We, the young people who run this organisation have a hope for something better in the world, and this is a hope that AIESEC tempers with a practical approach.
http://www.aiesec.org
1) learn to speak three lanuages fluently
2) become a tech god
3) leave school
4) set up your own international smut business
5) PROFIT!
If you are looking for technical work which will further your career, things may be a little harder. I know that the big investment banks have operations around the world, and use lots of expensive IT, and lend people between countries at least occasionally. This is a bad time to be looking for that kind of job, though, and if you want to have a life, and see your surroundings, you don't want to work there.
[1] You don't have to BE a native English speaker, just look like one. If you look Chinese, you will have a hard time convincing the locals that you speak proper English, even if you grew up here and speak no Chinese!
[2]If you want to learn about the place, rather than simply see the sights and move on.
See what I've been reading.
Join the Army. I'm sure you'll get an opportunity to visit the Middle East.
Soon.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
If you want to see the world, earning your keep as you go, then you'll have to rely on your three fluent languages.
I hope they aren't too modern, for much of the world has yet to catch up. For instance, you might be fluent in Java 1.4, but that won't help you when you are in Perl territory.
I suppose you could travel a ways on COBOL--particularly through Europe--but I'd have to say it is C that will take you around the globe in good fashion.
Robert
- Hey, it's simple. Really. Book a flight overseas. Pick a return date. Figure out what to do once you get there and just DO stuff. There has GOT to be somet things you'd like to see- Eiffel Tower, Louver, Rome, etc- you know what you WANT to do, so go do it!
I did the same thing, disappeared for a month. Hooked up with total strangers for a couple of days. Drifted apart. Took pictures
No one can make a trip but you- and if it doesn't work out you'll have only your geeky self to blame rather than that 'stupid slashdot crowd'. Figure out what you want out of life and do it, or do you have absolutely no iniative?
All in all, it's not unlike college: do it because it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not the beginning of the rest of your life.
--sdem
I'll be blunt. My friend, you should consider joining the CIA. You fit their profile perfectly. As you can imagine, they are currently hiring with a vengance.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/employment/ciaeindex.htm
The experience is literally second to none in the world, and in a variety of private industries, CIA is solid gold on a resume.
-David
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
A friend of mine works as a Service Engineer(mostly software) in Kongsberg Offshore. He travels more than 100 days a year to places all over the world. Malaysia, Germany, Britain, etc, etc. You name it.
Of course you might not have that much time to do any sightseeing. However may places doesn't allow too much overtime abroad and that could be handy.
Even when the economy is bad, if you're good you're going to find a job. So, spin a globe, pick a place, and send a bunch of resumes in that direction. Make sure you "live cheap" so that you will be able to fall into a "work 6 months, travel 2 months" schedule, or something like that. Travel a bit around the "work" place as well. Then you should have enough saved to be able to say goodbye, and travel for two months straight. Then find a job again, preferably somewhere else. Repeat 2 or 3 times......
Roger.
I served in the Peace Corps in the mid-90s. Although I do admit these are extraordinarily dangerous times, there were plenty of dangers in the world during that time as well. In addition, I recently spent two years traveling all over kingdom come. There were lots of dangers, but what I gained by traveling far outweighed the risks involved.
Upon returning home to the US after Peace Corps, I never felt more unsafe in my entire life. In Cameroon, my host country, my neighbors looked out for me. If something bad was going to happen it would most likely be someone pointing a gun at me and taking my money. If you did what was asked, then you were OK. They weren't doing it for kicks.
In the US, my chances of dying in a car crash were much higher compared to the chances of that happening in Cameroon. Or someone might break into my house and shoot me just for the hell of it... etc. etc. Have you been reading the papers lately???
These times *are* dangerous. But you shouldn't let fear prevent you from experiencing everything the world has to offer. A little common sense during travel goes A LONG LONG WAY in increasing your safety.
Go live and stop hiding in your house.
Working as a bartender? A merchant marine? A volunteer? The Peace Corps? Bah. Forget it.
Just go.
Bartender/ski lift operator/au pair/whatever: Go to a fabulous country, have no time to do anything, and get paid next to nothing doing crap work!
Merchant Marines: Little known fact - today's modern container ships only take a few hours to offload - this means that ships spend as little time as possible in port. If you like taking weeks to get somehwere, and spending literally a few hours there, this is they way to go!
Peace Corps: Heh.
Volunteering: Well, you're VOLUNTEERING!
Bottom line is that many of these things are over-romanticized.
IMHO, the best thing to do is to get a backpack, put a change of clothes, a sleeping bag, a tent,
and a towel in it, buy a plane ticket to somewhere, and go.
I was in Turkey at a youth hostel once, and encountered a Dutch guy who was in the middle of a backpacking trip. He started of hitching in the netherlands, had gone through russia, mongolia, china, vietnam, thailand, india, pakistan, and iran, and had just gotten off of the train in eastern Turkey. He was washing washing his spare clothes - a change of underwear.
It doesn't take much money, and you can make a game of trying to find work to supplement your trip. A few thousand will keep you going for months if you're frugal, and you don't have anyone telling you what to do! If you don't like walking, and want to go fast, bring a bike.
Most of all, just have fun and enjoy the experience.
My hat is off to you sir.
I was going to say go for something unrelated, but there's plenty of volunteers working on normal average stuff that anyone can do. If you want to do good, volunteer in something that allows you to use your specialty.
For example, if I were a linux guy, I would find one of the groups that collects old hardware, reconditions it and deploys it with Linux at places (wherever) that cannot afford new computers and/or Windows. If you can do that and train a few locals too you will be making greater impact than volunteering for the Peace corps and handing out leaflets on birth control, vaccines, etc.
The reason I recommend you to pick something that allows you to use your experience is because you don't want to be left out of touch with your field for over a year (this would literally mean professional suicide for an IT person). If you are in IT and you spend a year making old and tired hardware work, you will hone your skills while you do something good, and it will even make good resume fodder later down the road.
Me? If I was single and felt like doing so, I would find a Spanish-speaking country and volunteer to teach programming and "Nerd English" to junior high kids (those of you that, like me, are not native English speakers know what I am talking about). To me teaching is the most challenging and rewarding occupation I could think of when salary is not an issue.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
I lived and worked in London for four years, 3 years in various levels of IT for various IT departments all around the city. For those that had the experience, contracting rates could go as high as 1000 Pounds/day (mainframe programmer). Americans can get a 1-year work visa, countries in the Commonwealth get 2 years or more if your parents or grandparents were British citizens.
For up to date details go to or write to your nearest British consulate or embassy.
The are lots of other countries that offer work visas as well, look in the travel section of your bookstore for ideas on working overseas, they'll have names and addresses to contact.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
AIESEC is the world's largest student run organization, setting up work exchanges in 87 countries. They usually have a real demand for people with a background like yours. You won't be paid a lot of money, but you will get an amazing cultural experience.
Fact of life. There are always some parts of the world at any given time you want to avoid. So avoid them. The world is a big place with lots of interesting opportunities. What you hear on the evening news are just all the "man bites dog" stories. They make it sound worse than it really is. Yes, someone was injured in some part of the world recently. Not very likely it was or will be you.
Get out. See the world. Enjoy yourself. Have some stories to tell your kids. (and maybe a few you keep for yourself...)
Become a consultant. As a consultant I have traveled about 75% of the time over the last five years. Now in my case the travel has been strictly domestic, but my company has had international clients. There are many companies that specialize in technology consulting where the job is 50-100% travel. Data warehousing in particular is very mature in the US, but less so overseas. There may be opportunities for placement overseas, particularly if your language skills are good.
Admittedly, the job market is kind of sketchy right now, though many companies (including mine) are still hiring. The company I work for has actually still managed to grow our revenues and become profitable throughout the recession.
As an added bonus, you typically do not have any material living expenses, as your meals, transportation, and hotel are covered by the client. On top of that, consulting salaries are much higher than corporate IT.
If you make the cut, you will also get to work with very high caliber individuals who are experts in their fields. There are exceptions, but typically this type of exposure is difficult to get in a normal IT shop.
There is a downside, however. The work is stressful, you don't have the luxury of making as many mistakes, the hours are long, you are living out of a hotel, and it is nearly impossible to sustain meaningful relationships.
Good Luck!!!
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
If travelling the world and having problems, just remember this one important phrase:
"Don't shoot, I'm Candian!"
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
My brother, who is in med school, decided that he wanted to do something completely different for a semester.
He contacted a freight company and got a simple job onboard a ship. The job was pretty simple (e.g., removing rust) but not that demanding (only 8 hrs a day). Being the only one educated among the sailors, he was often invited to have dinner and discussions with the captain, who had a lot of stories to tell. And of course, it was always plenty of fun when he and the other sailors were 'let loose' in some port for a couple of days.
Sounds like something for you?
Tor
Visit India. You can even get a job replacing Americans there.
Every civilized country in the world has Working Holiday Visas that allow young people to visit their country and work. The "young" bit is a subset of the range between 16 and 35 and the time they allow you to work is somewhere between one and three months with some odd requirements. For example in Australia, you can visit for up to a year, but can only work in any location for up to 3 months and only 6 months out of the year. The idea of these is to allow visitors to earn enough money so they enjoy their travels but to be restrictive enoungh not to displace local workers. The work that people on these visas get tends to be the kinds of jobs no one else wants but with computer skills, you should be able to find something.
The US of course only has these visas if your a Saudi even though they would be a major help to the depressed travel business. If your in this age group, maybe its something you should write your congresscritter about because they are making lots of changes to the immigration rules.
Most places also have Youth Hostels. These are cheap places to stay and they can range from small private rooms to a more typical dorm with several bunk beds in a room. In a big city downunder, it will cost you about US$10 a night. Other places can be three times more (London) or $2 nite (Bali last month). Its a great way to meet people. Some of my geek friends even meet their girlfriends while staying at yough hostels. The typical traveler will pack up all their stuff in a backpack and just go from place to place and find work when they can, see the differnt places, meet lots of people and then keep on going. Its a great way to spend a year or so.
My parents are born and bred in North America. They are high school teachers. My dad just retired and my mom just took a job with a college. In Qatar.
Sure, it's right on the Persian Gulf and all their friends are worried, but they feel guilty because they have it so good over there. Good pay, good work environment, and a quick weekend trip takes you to India or to the pyramids.
I'm saving my money to visit them next year.
Mozilla
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Rather than modding this down, I'll reply.
What you propose will either (a) not work, or (b) get you into deep legal trouble, at least in the US, Canada, and as far as I know, all of the UK.
If you have $20k in cash and $20k in debt, you have a net worth of $0, which won't get you approved for a mortgage on that apartment. Business or residential, you'll still need that mortgage, and the banks WILL find your debt.
Unless, of course, you're planning on hiding it from them. Then you'll be committing fraud, and you still won't get away with it.
Forget this advice. Just go travelling!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I hear Saddam Hussein is hiring electrical engineers that know a lot about high-speed centrifuges. Apparently they use them for making baby formula, go figure.
But if you drive a car, you're much more likely to die from *that* than you are from terrorism. Not to mention the fact that September 11 demonstrates that terrorists can just as easily kill you at home as abroad.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
if you put it off you probably won't get around to it until retirement.
WHY? Why does everybody have this mindset that there's no choice after college except to get a boring job in a cubicle, get married, pop out kids, buy a big house, and hopefully, have enough time and money at the end to sit on your ass for a few years? That's so fucking depressing. You've only got one shot at life, and it may not be long. You never know. If you think that the rest of your life will be so bad that you won't get to do what you want to do (or at least, not for another 40 years), then you need to rethink things. Hell, just watch Fight Club a few times and *think* about it.
- From a person living a very unusual, fun, and rewarding life (ie: not a lemming)
Open source projects don't generally provide many travel opportunities.
If you're concerned about general less friendly reception rather than just your security, you might find that going in with a sense of humor, a bit of respect for the local way of doing things, and refrain from regularly proclaiming to anyone who asks and plenty who don't that the US is the greatest country on earth and we do things better at home (even if you think it's true) tends to help ameliorate that problem.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Right. Latin America truly rocks. Great people, great sights, good food, inexpensive. And it's reasonably safe if you don't do anything stupid. Not to mention the fact that you just need to know Spanish to get around most of it.
I recommend Guatemala or Ecuador to start. They're really easy to travel in and have much to recommend them.
I did the peace corps thing after college. And I'd recommend it highly. If you have the chance, jump at it. You'll see and do things you'd probably never encounter otherwise and you'll learn a lot. Some employers will discount it as will some grad schools - but others will look on it as a big plus.
I think you're being paranoid ('Latent IT'). Tell us the places you've visited and when you found them the most dangerous.
At the grand old age of 35 years old, last year, I packed in my job and bought a round the world ticket. UK- India (near the Pakistan border) - Singapore - Thailand - Cambodia - Australia - New Zealand - USA - back to UK. Best thing I've ever done. Forget your alma mater, travel is the university of life. Wish I'd been able to work in one of those countries, the other posters are right about trying to pick up a job and stay for a while.I only ever got into a scary situation once -yup, you guessed it, in the USA (three cop cars pulled me over on a desert road in Texas and pulled their guns out and accused me of smuggling drugs). Only time anybody pulled a gun on me.
Ok so bad things happen sometimes everywhere in the world but hey I can laugh about the scary bits now and I had some damn fine times that I'll be able to bore the grandkids with.For pictures of my experiences, see my site. You'll notice that I brought my laptop with me and was able to apply my geek skills by teaching computer classes on the side. You can find more stories about my geeky life in the Peace Corps here.
When I left Ghana for good in August 2001, I still wasn't yet ready to return to the life of a software developer, so I immediately applied for a job as an English teacher with Nova, the largest private school in Japan. As some here have suggested, this is another great way for geeks see the world and learn skills that don't require electricity. For anyone thinking of that route, I've written some tips on deciding whether to join Nova.
Trevor
Like AIESEC mentioned above, IAESTE is a great exchange organization: International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience. Find the US site at http://www.aipt.org/subpages/iaeste_us/index.php
I got a summer exchange internship in Norway over 20 years ago with IAESTE, and met many current friends that were there with both IAESTE and AIESEC from around the world - that summer in Bergen alone there were exchange students from these organizations from France, Denmark, Scotland, USA, Canada, Nigeria, Yugoslavia (that was then), Greece, Turkey, Indonesia, England, Ireland, Italy, and probably more that I can't remember.
Enjoy!
Check 'em out
Engineers without borders
u ga nda.shtml
http://www.ewb-isf.org/
Here's an internship for a hardware/software project leader in Uganda:
http://www.ewb-isf.org/content/internships/f02/
Hells yeah...
Even in high school I see these kids who spend all their fucking time playing an instrument, joining the debate team, being in the school play, playing three varsity sports, etc ad infinitum et ad nauseam... There's no way in hell they can actually *ENJOY* doing all that stuff and having no free time whatsoever, but they want to have a big shitload to put down on their college apps, becuase their worth as a person and future happiness in the world is decided by whether or not they get into one of the Ivies.
If I ever worked for a college admissions office, I'd take all these applicants who are defined as a person by their impressive list of Extracurricular Activities, and shitlist them.
Do stuff you *ENJOY* with your life. Fuck all else.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Get in touch with the Athens Olympic Committee or the company doing the IT for the next few games, SchlumbergerSema. The pay may not be great and you'll probably work your ass off while you're there, but you'll meet more people from all over the world than you could ever imagine. If you do it right, it's easy to set yourself up to work for future Olympics as well. After Athens, the next games are in Turin, Italy (2006) and Beijing, China (2008). I worked in IT for the Salt Lake games and I wouldn't trade that experience for the world. In fact, had I not decided to stay in the states to finish my CS degree, I would have moved on myself.
I volunteered on the lady washington for a month and loved it.
on their site is a list of links to other tall ships
I did pretty much everything in high school except music and drama, and I loved it. I got to do some really cool stuff, event went to DC for a week and met a buncha real politicians. (They look like real people up close!)
Now, don't get me wrong, I spent my fair share of time in front of the computer too, but if oyu'er not doing sports, or part of student council, or on the debate team - what are you doing with your free time? Drinking?
Frankly, I had a lot more fun in high school than my friends who spent most of their time high.
Oh, and there's one other very good reason to get into college:
I got to go to Europe for a YEAR because I got into college and knew some German.
paintball
If you simply want to travel and do good in a tangibly fruitful way, join the US Peace Corps. My cousin did this and actually speaks well of it *after* getting so sick she had to leave early. You get a really solid lifeline in case you suddenly require medical attention or quick evacuation. Almost everyone will respect what you did, regardless of their national, political, and/or philosophical background. And the experience lasts a lifetime, usually in a positive way.
If you want to do good and (also) find out lots about who/what you are, join the US Army. I guarantee this experience too will last a lifetime; but it might not be so sweet. You'll find out things about yourself, and about people in general, that don't surface during the medi[c]ated experience most of us accept as everyday life.
Now that I've exposed some of my own biases, let's explore a bit of reasoned counterpoint to some of Ian Bicking's writings:
----------------
Surprising this assertion is. I've reviewed a fair number of the primary documents without coming across anything to support this observation. I'm aware of at least two US Navy fliers who got courtmartialed for not following orders whilst in the aeroplane; but their crime was deviation from course and an unauthorized weapons release, not a mission refusal. Can you recall which historian made this claim/when/where/to whom/citing what? The question of what makes a target 'military' is the subject of numerous thick books. A restrictive definition would have precluded, for instance, turning out the lights in Ho Chi Minh City. But Operation LINEBACKER doing that, and things like that, brought the North to the negotiating table at a time when they were already correctly confident that they would win the war. Whether or not you accept that US intervention was morally right, it's hard to argue that bloodshed is presumptively preferable to negotiation. (The same argument applies, more recently, to Kosovo/Belgrade/Yugoslavia.) Orange was used *as* a defoliant. There were technicians who knew how toxic it was, but it's not clear that the decisionmakers in Vietnam did. MAC-V also dropped Orange on its own troops -- difficult to reconcile with a desire for victory, if the release authority meant to employ it as a chemical weapon. Really? Where? Are you referring to the human shields whom Saddam voluntold they'd go stand next to the air defence systems that were about to start shooting at US and British pilots? US soldiers do die in battle. The US Army has had some success in reducing the numbers, but a dispassionate review of US military history over the last, say, twenty years reveals that US soldiers died in battle in Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan. The US Army's deployment to Albania in 'support' of the Kosovo Air Campaign killed US soldiers only in accidents. It also killed zero persons of any other nation, since it never executed a combat mission. No, they're betting *their* lives on their Army's ability to protect them. And they know an uncomfortable lot about how finite that ability is. Soldiers in battle generally do not fight for causes. They fight for survival, frequently for the survival of their buddies, occasionally for a charismatic leader. Citizens who enlist might do so for a specific cause, but more often than not they do so for a complex combination of reasons. Patriotism is usually one of these. Yeah. True. If you aren't comfortable with the fact that you'll remember the nameless people you killed for the rest of your life, stay away from the US Army. There are nations that win wars, but no soldier ever won a war. All the soldiers in a war lose something. But until a universal substitute for war comes along, the US will need something that can fight one and win. Leave that job to those who have reflected on their willingness to do that specific thing. If you want to die for a cause, just write a lucid note and cut your throat. The US Army is a lot harder and more effective than suicide. Oh yeah, the guy who beat the temple moneychangers with a stick hard enough to drive them all away? Yeah, that was definitely a guy who would shrink from employing force in a righteous cause. The teachings of Christ emphasize personal responsibility and explicitly de-emphasize the manner of one's death. Do you really mean to claim that an 'ethnic cleanser' killed whilst shelling civilians would be preferentially blessed by Christ *because* he died from a US munition? Although Christ's blessings are denied to no repentant sinner, there's no basis in scripture for such an exceptional claim.----------
Please take to heart bugnuts' advice to get IN WRITING the recruiter's promise about where you'll be assigned and what you'll do.
Finally, regarding kasparov's comment in this thread:
He's right. The entire US DoD reflexively punishes defiance. Paradoxically, those US citizens who pledge themselves to defend the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution are less free than those they defend.Orders are fundamentally about trust. The soldier issuing them believes they'll get done. The soldier receiving them believes they're right. When this breaks down, so does the US Army. If trust is at issue, then *before* it breaks down, the issuer and the receiver owe a frank discussion to each other and to the Constitution they pledged they'd defend. If you're not ready to have that discussion, face to face, with a guy who can put you in jail, don't join the US Army. Sometimes it really *can* feel like an Army of One.
There are easy answers in the US Army, just as there are in 'everyday' US life. You can keep your head down, learn exactly what is required, do it as well as you can, and ignore/forget the inconvenient remainder. But if you are a geek, your predilections will force you along a harder, more rigorous, and ultimately more illuminating path. This is no more a fact of the US Army than of US 'everyday' life; but in the US Army both the situations and the outcomes will matter more to you. The answers you find might not be comfortable, or even unambiguous; but they will be true.
Also you'll have lots less bandwidth :-)
I am the original poster. Thanks for the many answers. Too bad I could not participate more actively due to hours incompatibility between US and EU. At first glance it will take ages to read everything. One thing I noticed is the frequent mention of the Peace Corps. I should have told that IANAUSC. I am not an US citizen. No peace corps for me.
Don't think those things are required elements in life. They're not. Be your own individual. Do what's best for you. After all, it's your life. If a wife and kids and a house with a white picket fence is what you really want, then by all means go for it. But don't do it just because one society (or even all societies) expect you to.
This world is very big with all kinds of people, places and ideas. Don't lock yourself into one way of doing things or one place of doing things. See the world, talk to people, take the knowledge and understanding from their experiences and add it to your own. Then make up your own mind. Otherwise, you're doomed to live someone else's life.
The only thing to add to the Let's go advice is to use the web to find people willing to walk you around where you are going. Hello to "Damian Veen" who was so nice as to show my wife and I Paris. My brother in law knew him from, of all things, music chat.
By the way, you can still see most of the nicer places in the world with a job, a wife and even an infant. If you can't live in Paris, a week there is nice.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A few years back, I worked for Royal Caribbean as "systems specialist." Sort of an on board systems admin.
Didn't really see the "world" and what I did see was sort of "touristy." But the pay was good, and it was a decent experience.
BUNAC has work programs for young people in all sorts of countries. http://www.bunac.org/
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.