Today is my 20th year in the military. Here’s what I’ve learned. ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌

Friends,

Everyone in the military draws different lessons from their experience.

This week marks the start of my 20th year in the military (I’m currently serving in the Army National Guard), so here are some things my experience has taught me:

1. Riding in helicopters becomes less fun the more you do it.

2. Airports are incredibly patriotic places. Every time I’ve had to go through an airport while in uniform the smiles and handshakes have been great. One of the best experiences of my life was getting off the plane coming back from Afghanistan in the Atlanta airport. As we came out of the plane and into the terminal, the intercom announced that we were returning home from a year-long deployment to Afghanistan. The place went nuts. I’ll never forget it.

3. After a little training, firing a rifle and hitting targets at the range is actually really easy — but for some reason every year during annual qualification there’s always one guy who just can’t do it and the whole platoon has to sit on the bleachers and watch him try over and over for hours. It’s the strangest thing. Happens every year. Some things take a little longer for some people.

4. Most of the stress in a soldier’s life comes from things happening outside the military. Often these are young people with very little financial cushion and things like credit card debt or car trouble can really derail them and become an issue for the unit. The best leaders are the ones who know their soldiers well enough to address these problems before they become a crisis.

5. Speaking of leaders, one of the best parts of serving in the military is you get lots of examples of leadership. You constantly have leaders rotating into and out of your chain of command and giving you real-world models of what works and what doesn’t. To this day I still remember how one of my sergeants reacted when I accidentally walked into the chow hall still wearing my hat. He walked over to me, took my hat off my head, handed it to me and said, “If that’s the biggest mistake you make then we’re gonna get along just fine.” How well we remember the mercy of others.

6. Our suicide training is still painfully ineffective. PowerPoint and abstractions and acronyms just don’t solve a problem like this. It’s a constant source of frustration that the DOD talks a big game here but is still operating in a state of failure. I’ve never had suicide prevention training that seemed even remotely effective.

7. When you take a small group of people, train them to respect hierarchy, isolate them on the other side of the world, and give them a mission, what you get is a highly motivated force that is ready to charge up a hill. But you also get a group with a pretty tight set of blinders. Certain things are neglected; certain things are ignored. Those blind spots can lead to disasters. Groupthink is real and guarding against it in those situations can be a serious challenge.

8. Soldiers buy trucks they can’t afford on a constant basis — especially the young ones. It’s a real problem. We don’t do nearly the level of financial literacy training we should.

9. Military training is about learning something specific in a short amount of time while under pressure. From that standpoint, the ability to be trained is just as important as anything you learn from your training. It builds confidence in your ability to adopt new skills because you know that if you give yourself some time and some focus, you can master something that seems totally foreign. That’s powerful.

10. In my military career, I’ve been a private, a cadet, and a second lieutenant. That means I’ve held all the lowest ranks in the army. I’m used to being on the lowest rung of the ladder. Spending lots of time with no clout and no authority is a valuable experience, especially for someone running for office.

Having served is a part of who I am, and if elected it will be a part of what I bring. But I’m also a husband, a father, and an attorney, and those are big pieces, too.

As always, your support for our campaign is sincerely appreciated and I hope you’ll contribute here [[link removed]] to help us close strong.

Best,
Jeff

[link removed]
Paid for by Jeff Jackson for Congress
Jeff Jackson for Congress
P.O. Box 470882
Charlotte, NC 28226
United States
www.jeffjacksonnc.com [[link removed]] | [email protected] [[email protected]]
This email was sent to [email protected] . If you'd like to receive fewer messages or wish to no longer receive these messages, please unsubscribe. [[link removed]] If you are a registered lobbyist with the state of North Carolina and have received this email in error, please unsubscribe. [[link removed]]