Grandpa
Thank you for allowing me to postpone payments until I can reach a more stable time. Since I’ve come off active orders it has been rather hard to find decent employment and I took a job valeting cars. The pay is low but it’s enough for bills and food. I’ve been applying for office type jobs and looking for more stable work. However, with me being activated by the Marines again this coming September it has made finding decent work more difficult. Employers don’t really want to hire me for a month or two and then have me leave for two months.

The reserve station that I am stationed at no longer has a need for tanks. So with that, all Marines who deal with tanks are being forced to move to locations that do have openings for tank-oriented Marines or to retrain in a new field that a nearby base has openings for. In September I will be leaving for North Carolina to retrain as an Administration & Operation Specialist. Undoubtedly, the training in this field will be more favorable to civilian employers than my previous role as a tank gunner/mechanic.

As of May I now have two bachelor degrees. Due to some of the training I had received in the Marines and being able to pass a couple of tests administered by some university programs I was able to turn my minor in English to a major. So with two B.A.’s in History and English I hope that will give me a little more luck in finding a career. Alas, I’ve come to realize that a bachelor’s degree holds no real weight anymore. It seems that just about everyone has one now. That being said, I have enrolled in graduate school. The graduate school I’m enrolled in is the American Military University. It’s a program offered to service members to earn college credit. Whether I will transfer those graduate courses to a different institution or receive the Master’s degree from the American Military University is still undecided. The American Military University’s classes are all online. I’m hesitant to receive a graduate degree from an online university as I do not believe that employers take online degrees seriously; however, the American Military University is an accredited college with good credentials. I’m currently enrolled in the Masters of Public Administration program but after doing some research I am giving a lot of consideration to transferring those credits to the Masters of Human Resources program. Public Administration appeals more to me but there is more money to be made in the Human Resources field. From my research top earners in Public Administration earn an average yearly salary of $120k, whereas top earners in Human Resources earn a yearly average of $180k. I’ve come to a point in my life that I realized it’s better to chase the money, personal interests are second.

I was sad to hear about your fall in the living room and I hope that the recovery process comes quickly and painlessly. I hope that the pending operation is unnecessary.

Aaron is doing well, he’s currently using his GI Bill for school and he’s even taking summer classes. He has matured quite a bit. He’s still hot tempered as always and he has a new passion for gun ownership. I think he owns four or five guns now and he got a gun carry license several months ago. He doesn’t like to go anywhere without carrying a gun. I have a pistol but it sits under my nightstand and I’m in no hurry to take it anywhere with me or carry it around everywhere I go. Besides that, Aaron is doing well in school and he is set to transfer from his two-year university program to a four-year university. Aaron is currently taking all his prerequisite classes for a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering. He seems to really enjoy the classes and I