I Joined the Military at 31

People have always asked me, “Why did you join the Navy?” It’s a fair question. I wasn’t exactly the poster child for military service.

Sure, I was athletic as a kid and teen, but by adulthood, I’d settled into a pretty sedentary rhythm. I never expressed interest in the Armed Forces. When the Army called me at 18 to invite me to enlist, I laughed and said, “I’m not Army material.” When they asked why, I replied, “I don’t do that whole ‘running’ thing.” Yes, I ran track in high school—for one year. And I hated every second of it.

I wasn’t into lifting weights. I didn’t enjoy war movies. I had family members in every branch, but I never gave it much thought. I was in college when the towers fell. It affected me, but it didn’t ignite a burning desire to join the war effort. I’d traveled some, but tourism bored me. So why would I suddenly decide to join the Navy—seemingly on a whim?

I needed to pay my bills.

That’s the truth. I’d earned my undergrad degree without student loans, but grad school was a different story, and the grace period was ending. I’d recently gone through a divorce. My house was in foreclosure. I’d resigned from my teaching job and had been living with my parents for nearly two years. The only work I could find was minimum wage or commission-based. I sold supplemental insurance, went door-to-door with air filtration systems, worked as a dietary aide, then as a mental health tech—and still needed help from my dad to cover my car note, insurance, and phone bill.

I was approaching 30, and now I had to start paying off my master’s degree. I was damned if I was going to put that on Daddy, too.

Joining the military was Plan E.

At my age, options were limited. I was too old for the Air Force and the Marines. I felt like the Coast Guard was half-assing it (no offense, Coasties), and Space Force wasn’t a thing yet. The Reserves felt like part-time work, and I’m a “if you’re going to do it, do it right” kind of gal. That left the Army and the Navy. I did some research and found that the Navy offered more occupational specialties that translated well to civilian life—and, more importantly, they had a loan repayment program.

So I walked into the recruitment office in the fall of 2010. The recruiter looked me up and down and said, “Lose 10 pounds and come back.”

So I did.

I went on a diet. A local scuba shop with an indoor pool offered senior fitness programs and let me train there for the Navy swim test. I started working on the mile-and-a-half run, push-ups, and sit-ups. I took weight loss supplements. I washed the siding on my parents’ house with a bucket and sponge. I got a job on the cargo team at Kohl’s. I lost the weight—and then some. By Thanksgiving, I was in the Delayed Entry Program and shipped to Boot Camp in March of 2012.

When the recruiter asked what I wanted to do as a Sailor, I said, “That’s why I’m here. Clearly I make poor career decisions—why don’t you tell me? Isn’t that what they do in the military?”

I took the ASVAB and scored a 97. With a BS in Education and an MBA, they were suddenly very interested in the Nuclear Engineering Officer program, but my reply was, "that’s too much math."

It was the only open Officer program at the time, and the wait for another was longer than I was willing to stick around. I looked through the literature, picked my top three rates, passed my clearance screening, and that’s how I became Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Aren Everett, a 31-year-old E-3 in the United States Navy.

This wasn’t the beginning of my story, and it’s definitely not the end—but with everything swirling in the headlines, this chapter rose to the surface. So this is where I started.

Stay tuned for the prequel, the sequel(s), and the occasional plot twist.