This is ‘the moment of truth’ everyone faces in basic training

Blake Stilwell
Apr 29, 2020 3:57 PM PDT
1 minute read
Basic Training photo

SUMMARY

How long can you go in the enlistment process before it’s too late to back out? What exactly constitutes lying on your enlistment paperwork? How much weed can you actually admit to smoking before the military won’t accept you anymore? These are qu…

How long can you go in the enlistment process before it's too late to back out? What exactly constitutes lying on your enlistment paperwork? How much weed can you actually admit to smoking before the military won't accept you anymore? These are questions many recruits ask themselves as they go through the enlistment process. The problem with asking yourself is that you don't know and the answer will still elude you.

If you lied to your recruiter to get to the Military Entrance Processing Station, and you lied there too, there's one place in the enlistment process where you should probably come clean.


MEPS: Where memories of your first-ever awkward military moments are born.

The Military Entrance Procession Station is where potential military recruits are sent to test their suitability to join the military. It's at MEPS you'll get your first taste of forming acronyms, sharing a hotel room with a stranger, and having the elderly gawk at your naked body while measuring you like you're a Saint Bernard at the Westminster Dog Show. More than that, it's usually where you'll be drug tested with someone watching you for the first time, take the ASVAB test, and where most of us lie about how much pot we smoked (for the record, you never tried it more than twice).

After your second visit to MEPS, you won't be going home, you'll be off to basic training, wherever that may be. Once you're inprocessing at your basic training unit, you'll likely be grilled about any personal information you might have neglected to tell your recruiter back home. This is where the truth makes or breaks your career – and integrity matters.

Just ask these guys.

Basic Training is where you'll do a ton of paperwork, and most important among that paperwork is your actual, real military contract. When you go to sign this paper, the person working with you is going to ask if there's anything you haven't divulged that could affect your ability to enlist. Once you sign this paper, they own you, and it's too late to back out. The government will move next to check out its new investment. That is to say, they're actually going to check up on you. So when the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard asks you if there's anything else, this is the "Moment of Truth."

If you lie at this point, it will be held against you. Convictions, drug busts, massive debt, debilitating diseases, anything with a paper trail, (and remember you only ever smoked pot twice and you disliked it, so you never tried it again), all need to be laid out. If you come clean at the "Moment of Truth," there's a good chance you'll be able to stay and enter the military. If you don't and it comes up later, there's a good chance you won't.

Remember when you were going to be an Airborne Crytological Linguist but you lied about all your parking tickets? You will.

What you lied about may not be something that would require you getting kicked out of the military. Of course, there's a reason you lied about it, so it likely would be serious enough for the military to think about kicking you out. Even if it isn't that serious, it was a test of integrity in which you failed. In short, this is coming back to haunt you for the rest of your military career.

Or, you could just own up to it.

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