OK so I joined because of a combination of things. Main reason because I wasn't happy in school my freshman year of college. I've always done well without trying in school, high b low a student, but I never liked school. Another being that my father flew out of JFK the morning of 9/11 and I could see the smoke from the towers from my high school. So I said fuck it after I got in some trouble and went to join the air force but they were out playing golf so I walked into the Marines office. They talked with me and then took me up to Massachusetts a few days later to take the ADVAB (it measures ur clerical skills, problem solving skills, mechanical etc etc etc) and I scored like a high 80's w my GT score over 125, so I could literally do anything I wanted. I initially wanted to be an mp for some reason but found out I was color blind so that was out. So I said fuck it, I want to be a grunt. The recruiter tried talking me out of it over and over and over again but I was set. So I got a space for boot camp in January. I figured I'd take some classes at community college for the fall semester to stay busy, a few weeks of being surrounded by retards I decided I wanted to leave asap. Unfortunately it was the end of the fiscal year and there were no more infantry spaces, so I choose combat support and left for boot camp 2 weeks later and graduated Dec 23rd 2004 after 13 weeks on Parris Island. I found out I was going to be an 0811, a field artillery cannon crewman.
After boot camp I went on leave for a month and did recruiters assistance because there were no classes for MCT (marine combat training), all Marines not infantry go through this before going to their MOS schools. After that I went to Ft Sill, OK to learn to shoot m198 howitzers and was also to first class in the armed forces to learn the m777. After that I got assigned to my unit in California and deployed to Iraq 6 months later. During those 6 months I was in the field for over 3 of them, not consecutively.
All the training I did prior to getting to my unit was the hardest stuff I had ever done in my life, but ended up being some of the easiest throughout my 4 years in.