Michael Giordano: Army ROTC

00:00:00 Carlos Ramos: Welcome to Tomorrow Makers, where we explore how we learn live, work, and play now and in the future. I'm Carlos Ramos. 00:00:11 Sumer Beatty: And I'm Sumer Beatty. 00:00:12 Carlos Ramos: Sumer. We need to join the Army. 00:00:15 Sumer Beatty: Oh my goodness. I know. I'm convinced after this conversation we just had. 00:00:19 Carlos Ramos: Actually, not Army, but Army ROTC. 00:00:21 Sumer Beatty: Right. 00:00:22 Carlos Ramos: And then eventually the army. 00:00:23 Sumer Beatty: But I do believe we're too old, sadly. 00:00:26 Carlos Ramos: Aw. 00:00:26 Sumer Beatty: I think that we should have talked to Mike, a number of years ago. We won't say how many. But yeah, I just, I wish I would've had that information when making a decision, you know, for college and career paths, and there's so much they have to offer. 00:00:42 Carlos Ramos: Well, your son's at that age, starting to think about making decision. 00:00:45 Sumer Beatty: We're not ready to admit that he is at that age yet, but yeah. 00:00:48 Carlos Ramos: Getting close. 00:00:49 Sumer Beatty: Right, right. So he's in ninth grade. So yeah, I mean, soon. Soon there will be a time where he'll be making a decision where to go to college, how to pay for college, and all that fun stuff. 00:00:59 Carlos Ramos: So before this recording, how comfortable would you have been in the idea of, my son's going into the Army. 00:01:06 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. Honestly, not too much. As a young boy, he was playing with Army figurines and looking at Army books and I'm like, oh, I don't, I don't know about this. Let's just keep it at arm's length. But after hearing this conversation or having this conversation with Mike, I feel like, I think it's a fantastic path, and I'd honestly be okay with it for my child. Not just okay with it. I'm very like, it's, it makes, it makes a lot of sense every, all of the perks. And I think that Mike said how much fun he was having at least a half dozen times, and he doesn't come from a military family, so he found the right path for him. 00:01:48 Carlos Ramos: And so Mike being Mike Giordano, who's a Construction Management major in his final year with us, I don't know how many years he did Army ROTC, but it seems like he did it for all of them because he transferred here. 00:02:01 Sumer Beatty: Mm-hmm. 00:02:02 Carlos Ramos: And I think he started with his first year at West Virginia University. 00:02:06 Sumer Beatty: He's been, yeah, with ROTC since he came to campus. 00:02:09 Carlos Ramos: And my gosh, what a great young man. 00:02:11 Sumer Beatty: Oh yeah. 00:02:12 Carlos Ramos: Getting all the officer training. He's got himself elevated, and he's got all the Penn College knowledge that came with it. 00:02:19 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, he has a plan, and he's gonna share it with us. So we hope you enjoy this one. All right, so let's kick this off. We are here with Mike Giordano. Did I pronounce that correctly? 00:02:37 Michael Giordano: Yeah, you did. Okay. Giordano, Giordano. 00:02:39 Sumer Beatty: Giordano? Giodano? 00:02:40 Michael Giordano: There's Italian pronunciation. There's the American. That works. 00:02:43 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:02:44 Michael Giordano: It's good. 00:02:44 Sumer Beatty: Okay. All right. Wonderful. Well, thanks for being with us today. 00:02:47 Michael Giordano: Yeah, thank you for having me. 00:02:48 Sumer Beatty: Absolutely. So I think we got word that you spoke at a board of directors meeting and somebody told me you were fantastic and we needed to chat with you on the podcast. 00:02:57 Michael Giordano: I mean, I don't know about fantastic, but I mean, I, I did, I did do that. It was a good time. It, it was actually a really cool experience to like see like the insides of the College. So I actually enjoyed it a lot. But yeah, it was, it was cool. 00:03:13 Sumer Beatty: You're curious. 00:03:14 Michael Giordano: Yeah, yeah. 00:03:15 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. That's great. 00:03:16 Michael Giordano: Yeah. 00:03:16 Sumer Beatty: Wonderful. So construction management student, and last semester you were the commander of the ROTC... 00:03:25 Michael Giordano: Yeah, so... 00:03:26 Sumer Beatty: ...battalion. 00:03:27 Michael Giordano: I was the battalion commander last semester, which basically like. I told him it's, it's, it's like the equivalent of being the president of like a club. For anybody that doesn't understand what that means, that's, that's essentially what it is. This semester I'm the CSM, which is basically the other half of that. 00:03:46 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:03:46 Michael Giordano: So. But construction management. Yeah, that's, that's, that's what I'm here for. But I love it. 00:03:52 Sumer Beatty: So we talked a little bit before we pressed record, and I'd like to get into how you found Penn College. What drew you here? And at what point did you find out about ROTC? 00:04:04 Michael Giordano: Oh, yeah. Okay. So I started my college career at West Virginia University. I didn't really know what the heck I wanted to do. I didn't have a major, I went there undecided. Eventually got into the mechanical engineering portion of that, and I hit the math classes and was like, nope, really quick. So after that happened, I was kind of like scrambling. I was like, oh, I need to figure out what the heck I want to do here. One of my buddies went to Lycoming and he kind of had a similar situation. He was like, oh, we can go to Penn College, blah, blah, blah. And I, I was like, oh, Penn College. Like, yeah, that sounds interesting. And so I started looking at majors, found the Construction Management major, and I was like, ah. This sounds kind of cool. I mean, don't tell anybody, but I might not have read the actual description, but. 00:04:51 Sumer Beatty: Wow. And you're a senior, so that worked out well for you. 00:04:54 Michael Giordano: Yes. Yeah. 00:04:55 Sumer Beatty: We don't advise. Please come. 00:04:56 Michael Giordano: No, I don't, I don't advise. 00:04:57 Sumer Beatty: Learn about the major. 00:04:58 Michael Giordano: I don't advise. No, it's a great major, don't get me wrong. But I did that and then obviously I was, I was already doing ROTC there. So I was like looking into the program here and what they offer and the different things. And they offered free room and board for anyone that is in the program, just like that. So that like at any other school is, that's a full scholarship. Like you can choose between your tuition or, or your room and board. And that's just something that Penn College waves, which is crazy. That's like extremely, extremely financially smart. And then on top of that, it's a smaller program here. So I, I saw that and I was like, oh, this is, this means it's a better opportunity for me to be able to show that I deserve like a scholarship. And I came here and both happened. So. 00:05:47 Sumer Beatty: When you say smaller program, do you mean the ROTC or your academic program or both? 00:05:53 Michael Giordano: Both. Both. I actually didn't mind like the large class sizes of West Virginia, but now that I'm here, like I don't think I could do a, do a class size that big. But the, the ROTC program's a lot smaller here. It's, it's not small by any means, but it definitely allows you to kind of like shine a little bit more. You know what I mean? 00:06:15 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. How many people, approximately? 00:06:18 Michael Giordano: A little bit more than 40. I think we have like 42 right now is, is what it is. But it's, it's hard for me to like describe to people, but the atmosphere of penn College's, ROTC program, it's such a different atmosphere from those big schools there. Everything is kinda like a competition. Like how, how can I make myself look like I'm really good? How can I make myself like shine. Here, it's kind of like if somebody's not shining, like everybody's trying to help them. Like nobody's trying to push anybody down to look better. It's always like a super helpful atmosphere. And that's totally different from, from a lot of ROTC programs. 00:06:53 Sumer Beatty: What do you think causes that? Leadership or just the community here, period? Because it's kind of sounds a lot of what I've heard from other people say about our culture here on campus more generally too. 00:07:07 Michael Giordano: Yeah, I think it totally does have part to do with the, the culture on campus. But I think a lot of it is just we're all friends and we all live together, 'cause the free room and board. We all spend a lot of time together, and it's, it's just such a smaller program that we get to have more interactions with each other. But obviously the school does push that and like they push for that and we push for that. So it's just kind of like a chain chain reaction, if you know what I mean. 00:07:33 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. I guess we should take a step back and talk about what is ROTC because we know what it is, but just, sorry. Thanks for hanging on. If you're hanging on and you're like, what is ROTC? Can you give us a little description of, of what... I think you said in a press release, we're not all about just rolling in the mud. 00:07:50 Michael Giordano: Yeah. 00:07:50 Sumer Beatty: Like what does it entail? 00:07:51 Michael Giordano: Yeah, so it stands for Reserves Officer Training Corps. So, if you are going into the Army, they have it for Air Force, they have it for the Marines as well. But we're gonna talk about the Army 'cause that's what I'm in. It essentially is a path that you can take to go through college and then commission as an officer. There are different ways to do it, but this is the way that you would go college first, and then once you finish college, you commission. 00:08:20 Sumer Beatty: Okay. And then talk about what commission means. Is that a one year commitment? 00:08:25 Michael Giordano: Commissioning is essentially like getting a degree through the Army. That's when they, they give you your rank and you are fully, like, you're in the military, you're in the Army. I. But that, that commitment varies depending on the person. So like, I signed personally a four plus four contract. So it's four years active duty, four years ready reserves. But that, that totally can change. It just depends on if they give you scholarship money, if you get different benefits. 00:08:52 Sumer Beatty: Gotcha. 00:08:53 Carlos Ramos: And so going ROTC, instead of saying directly enlisting in the army, what's the difference there? 00:09:00 Michael Giordano: Oh, yeah, so that was, that was a big one that I was thinking about when I was in high school. When you do ROTC, you're obviously gonna go through college, you'll have that degree, which is huge. And getting a degree from Penn College is just perfect. So, but you'll have that degree, and then you'll also commission as an officer versus being an enlisted person. So that means higher pay. Most of the jobs that you'll be doing is more on the managerial side. You're just kind of like a, I don't wanna say like higher person in the military, but that's, that's kind of like what it is. 00:09:34 Carlos Ramos: I'm assuming there's a lot of skills that are built into the ROTC program. What are some of those skills that you've gained going through ROTC? 00:09:41 Michael Giordano: I'd say like the teamwork side of stuff is huge. Everything is relying on other people, whether you're doing like STX Lanes, which is the, the rolling in the mud part. That's the, that's when we go outside and we're like doing simulations of like battle tactics or just stuff in the classroom. But I think I probably teamwork is the biggest portion of that and trusting other people. 00:10:05 Carlos Ramos: If anyone has been on campus at like daybreak and you know, you get in, get a little bit into spring here, I don't know, you guys might even be out there now. Around daybreak, you guys are doing exercises. There's usually some type of inter battalion or, or in inner battalion competition between the schools that are there. 00:10:25 Michael Giordano: Oh, yeah. 00:10:26 Carlos Ramos: And I see you guys running around campus with logs on your shoulders. Is that the STX Lanes? 'Cause I'm figuring you guys are just... 00:10:36 Michael Giordano: Carrying sticks. No. 00:10:37 Sumer Beatty: Really big sticks. 00:10:39 Michael Giordano: No. So that's, that's, that's our morning pt. We do that three days a week. I mean, we have fun with it because it's, we're forced to do it. So it's like, it's just an exercise. Like we exercise, we'll, like run around the campus. We'll do we go over to Lycoming gym? Like their gym on their campus. 'cause they're in our program as well. But the STX Lanes themselves will do those most of the time over at like the Earth Science Center. Or there's a place over in Lock Haven called Teets Run that we go to. 00:11:05 Carlos Ramos: And so what is a STX Lane? 00:11:07 Michael Giordano: STX Lane. So like, say like an ambush, right? You're gonna ambush somebody. So the, the Army has its own like versions of how you do that and the different tactics that you can use. And so we eventually, our junior year, have to go to a thing called, CST, which is like our version of basic training, and they grade you on them there. So we practice 'em here. But they are like, basically your platoon size. So like 40 people, 50 people, and you lead them through the motions of what you're gonna do like in the situation, so we'll like all be in uniform obviously. Sometimes we'll have like blanks. Sometimes we'll have like rubber ducks we call 'em, which is like a simulated military equipment. We'll use that. We'll go and we'll like set up. We will, we'll lay down in the woods. We will have like simulated bad guys. And then just go through like the leadership qualities and leadership things that you have to do in order to make this stuff happen. 00:12:08 Sumer Beatty: So were you already running and lifting and doing some of those athletic things before you joined? Is that, I'm just thinking if somebody's hearing this, do they need to have, how many miles are you running? What's the sort of physical conditioning that is required to be involved and have you seen fellow, cadets? 00:12:28 Michael Giordano: Cadets, yeah. Yes. 00:12:28 Sumer Beatty: Okay. So I don't say the wrong thing. There's a proper name for fellow cadets come that maybe weren't as prepared. And then you can kind of see that transformation. 00:12:36 Michael Giordano: Yeah. So it's, it's totally kind of what you said. So if you're doing sports in high school, that's, that's totally gonna help you. That's gonna help you a lot. I did personally, I, I played soccer, I played lacrosse, and I played hockey. I wouldn't say the muscle aspect matters quite as much. It's definitely important. But it doesn't matter quite as much. If you are in shape and you can run, that's half the battle. 'Cause we do our PT, obviously, and that'll, that'll help like kids that need a little bit of help. But I would say it definitely would benefit you to show up more in shape than less. 00:13:08 Sumer Beatty: All right. There you have it. So what's it like to balance your regular coursework with the requirements of ROTC? Have you found you're able to achieve that balance or has it been difficult at times? 00:13:22 Michael Giordano: So it's, it's definitely difficult. It's like playing a sport. That's what I tell people. So you have your, your commitment to your school and your academics, and those always come first, even if we're doing like, training stuff. And then you obviously have your commitment to the Army and the ROTC and your contract. But I would say there was a couple nights where, I mean, I'm a procrastinator, so this, it doesn't help. But I've had a couple of nights where I've had to, I had to stay up pretty, pretty late. In the aspect of making sure that you do your work though, like our program's really good with it. Like our cadre, they'll, they'll help you. They'll, they'll make sure, like if you're like falling behind in something, they will, they'll let you like miss stuff so you can go and work on it. We have like different cadets that will help people out, like almost like a tutoring system within, so. 00:14:12 Sumer Beatty: Talk a little bit about the cadre, like mentor role and what that's like. It's an, it sounds like an awesome relationship to have. That's, you know, if you're not in the ROTC, you might... 00:14:24 Michael Giordano: Yeah. 00:14:24 Sumer Beatty: ...otherwise, you know, have to seek that out elsewhere. 00:14:26 Michael Giordano: Yes. So our cadre, what they, what they are is, is our professors essentially. But obviously we have the, we have like a class portion where we have one class per semester. And then also they're with us the whole time that we're doing all of our training exercises. So it's, it's like a professor that you're like, you, you actually know them like more on a personal level, so you're able to like, have more of a real interaction and they, they actually care about you. They, it's not like a CMA semester, then you're gone. Like they're, they're watching you go your whole way through college and you're doing it with them, so you get to know each other. But obviously it stays professional, so. 00:15:05 Carlos Ramos: So you're gonna commission as a second lieutenant? 00:15:08 Michael Giordano: Correct. 00:15:09 Carlos Ramos: What role will you take on in that first four years, or at least that initial part of that first four years, and what were the options that you had to choose from? 00:15:16 Michael Giordano: So, I am gonna be a transportation officer. As far as like what I'm gonna be doing, I don't quite know. I gotta do a little more research on it, but the options are pretty much endless. So career paths in the Army range from being a, you could be a teacher. Like, like I said, like the cadre, like you could be a teacher, you could be medical stuff, like working in a hospital. You could be an accountant all the way to driving a tank, flying a helicopter, like all of these different stuff. There's, I, I tell people pretty much anything you can do in like a civilian world, you can do within the military. Which is totally cool. As far as me though, I didn't necessarily want to branch transportation. The needs of the army kind of said, hey, we need some transportation officers. I looked at it and I was, I was like, well, logistics, that's, that's not too bad that that kind of lines up with my degree. And I was like, this is probably the best option for me for once I'm out of the military and going into my career. So that's how I ended up there. But there's a lot of opportunity, a lot of different stuff that people can do. It's not just like, like I said in that, that, when I talked to the school, it's not just rolling in the mud. Like there's a ton of different stuff. You don't have to roll in the mud. Of course you can. You totally can. If you wanna go infantry. That's rolling in the mud, but there's a lot of different things you can do. 00:16:34 Sumer Beatty: So you had mentioned earlier that Penn College provides free room and board to contracted cadets and you also get priority scheduling. Yeah. And then there's also the ROTC House. Oh yeah. So how have all of these offerings or benefits helped you as a student? 00:16:52 Michael Giordano: A lot. For me personally, it was the financial burden that just like off of my shoulders. Extremely, extremely nice. I look at all these other kids and they all have 40, 50, however much debt that they're in. And just the, the sheer fact of knowing I'm gonna graduate here and not have that, like hanging over my head is incredible. And it's not, not just the, the tuition fees, but the, that room and board is that watching $500 go outta your bank account for an apartment monthly. Like, that's, that's hard to do. That's especially as a student. But like that's, that's huge for, for me, that was the biggest portion. 00:17:32 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. So you might have a couple nights where you're pulling an all-nighter. 00:17:35 Michael Giordano: Yeah. 00:17:35 Sumer Beatty: Trying to cram. 00:17:35 Michael Giordano: It's worth it. 00:17:36 Sumer Beatty: But it's, yeah, in the large scheme of things, not too bad considering all the benefits. 00:17:41 Michael Giordano: Yeah. 00:17:41 Carlos Ramos: Sumer mentioned ROTC House. Can you talk about what ROTC House is? 00:17:46 Michael Giordano: Yeah, so the ROTC house, we have like our own, I wanna say like our own office, like kind of thing on campus. It's just a, a building that we have that's like, kind of like a central location for us. We do like a lot of our planning there. We have like computers in there, we can do schoolwork on. We do our PT over there during the Sumer when it's warm if we're not in the gym. But it's really just like, kind of like our headquarters type of thing. There's a, a storage place in there. We have like a bunch of equipment. I don't know if you saw the shed behind it. That's like a, it's a big equipment thing. They're trying to get us like a simulated range in there, which would be pretty neat. But we're working on that one. 00:18:25 Carlos Ramos: It doesn't look big enough. 00:18:27 Michael Giordano: Yeah, right, right. They're, they actually get pretty small. I didn't, I didn't know that. But they, there's that, we have a sand table, so we can do like different planning stuff. We'll, like set up in the sand table and walk people through it. So they have like visual representations. There's stuff like that. Printers, like different, different stuff we can just utilize. It's nice. 00:18:47 Sumer Beatty: Did West Virginia have that? 00:18:48 Michael Giordano: So... 00:18:49 Sumer Beatty: Is that a common thing? 00:18:51 Michael Giordano: It is common to have that. Whether they utilize it for the students though is the difference. So theirs wasn't really, they had like a courtyard that you could go and like study in, but they didn't have like computers and stuff for like students to use like we have here. So. 00:19:05 Sumer Beatty: Can you talk a little bit about the three day field training exercises that you all do? 00:19:09 Michael Giordano: Yeah, so that is the, the FTX or the CFTX. So we do two, two per year. We do one in the spring semester and one in the fall semester. The spring semester is just us. We, we kind of just go like this, this past one we did a, we did at the Earth Science Center. So just over the mountain there's kind of woods back there if you like go a little bit down past the building. We went up there, did a, it's essentially like, it's almost like a a three day long lab, which is those things where I was talking about where we go through the STX Lanes and battle tactics. But we spend like two nights, three nights there every day. We do like different stuff. It's planned out. We'll do like land nav, which is finding different points, using a map, using a compass. We do the Lanes, like I said, we'll do different classes for like different things that you need to know and all this different stuff. That one is the kind of smaller one. The one that is coming up that is in the spring semester is a much bigger one. So that one we actually combine with Penn State and Bucknell and Bloomsburg and Susquehanna, and we all do one gigantic one. That is a lot of fun. What we do is we go out to Fort Indiantown Gap, which is a military base, probably I wanna say an hour or two away from here. And we have basically like a gigantic operation type thing. We do repelling there. We do an obstacle course there. We do the land nav. We run the Lanes. But you gotta consider, we have a lot more people, so it's a lot, lot bigger. They like film the whole thing and we'll have like all this stuff where it, it's, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun and it's super beneficial. You learn a lot 00:20:51 Carlos Ramos: Now and then we have military choppers landing on campus. 00:20:55 Michael Giordano: Yeah. 00:20:55 Carlos Ramos: Are are they transporting you to that in by chopper? 00:20:59 Michael Giordano: I am trying. I'm trying. So it's been in the talks about doing that for a really long time and we've been trying to get 'em to give us a ride. That is not necessarily from us, but we definitely like when that goes on, we go over there and like we have like a table set up and whatnot, and we're talking to people. I wish that we were getting rides in them. For anybody listening that's coming here maybe in the future. Maybe I'm working on it. 00:21:26 Carlos Ramos: And it has happened in the past. 00:21:27 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:21:28 Michael Giordano: It has, it has happened before. It has, yes. 00:21:31 Sumer Beatty: Have you ridden in a? No? 00:21:34 Michael Giordano: No, I have not. I'm I. I'm trying it. 00:21:37 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:21:37 Michael Giordano: I'm trying. 00:21:38 Sumer Beatty: Let our audience hear. There might be somebody out here that can help. 00:21:41 Michael Giordano: Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, if anybody wants to gimme a ride, lemme know. 00:21:47 Carlos Ramos: How do you believe that your ROTC experience will benefit you in your future career in Construction Management? You, you talked about making a, a specific choice for transportation officer. 00:21:57 Michael Giordano: Mm-hmm. 00:21:58 Carlos Ramos: So can you elaborate on that? 00:22:00 Michael Giordano: Oh, yeah. So. I mean, having that military background for any career path is like, it's, that's a super beneficial thing to have. A lot of companies will see that, and especially if you are an officer in the military that screams like leadership qualities. That screams like that you can work well with others. So it, it's, it's a huge resume booster. Now, I'm not doing it just for the resume booster. There's a lot of other reasons. But in that aspect, getting a job if you're going in the military and then outta the military is, is it's gonna aid you a ton, just shearly for resume purposes, but also in the aspect of like, you can get the career experience that you're going into through the military. 00:22:46 Carlos Ramos: Are you coming from a military family or, or...? 00:22:48 Michael Giordano: Yeah, so my family's not military. The closest to me I believe would be my grandparents. My grandpa was in the Navy. So, but that, that like was never really like a thing that was like. Like they never really talked about it or anything. My parents aren't in the military, so it was kind of just like something that I, in high school, like we had people come and they were like, hey, you want free college? And I was like, Hey mom, guess what I'm gonna get? And she was like, oh sure, sure, sure. And then obviously like it got to college, did it. And then I gave, gave her the, the best. hey, I told you so ever. So, but I didn't have anybody really, I have an uncle who is a gen, he was a two star general, but he wa, he's not related to me by blood and I only see him once every once in a while. So I just knew about it and took the steps to look a little bit further into it, and it was just something that seemed really interesting to me. So. 00:23:48 Sumer Beatty: I am glad you asked that. I was thinking the same thing, like, how does one decide if you're not in the military? Like you're not already exposed to it to dec decide, you know, decide to do that. But you must have been a very convincing recruiter that came to your high school. 00:24:03 Michael Giordano: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just always didn't really want to be stuck doing something like, like I didn't wanna be in an office as a job. Now that I'm older, I'm like, an office wouldn't be that bad, but, but. But that's initially like why I was like, oh, I'll just go into the Army. I think the Army, like for the most part, for a lot of people, it, they take it like it's a backup option. I don't think it should be a backup option. It is a extremely good career starter. It'll, it'll network you. It'll give you the, the skills. It'll give you the opportunity afterwards. It's, it's such a good thing to do prior to doing anything else in like, as far as career wise, I think it just gets overlooked in that aspect because a lot of people are like, oh, I, I wouldn't do that. But there's a lot of options. It's not just, it's not just rolling in the mud. Like I said, it's not just, it's not just infantry. There's tons of different stuff. So, but I mean, yeah, I, I got, I got into it through high school. 00:25:04 Carlos Ramos: All right. So put yourself four years, eight years in the future. 00:25:08 Michael Giordano: Mm-hmm. 00:25:09 Carlos Ramos: You're that recruiter that's going back and visiting Palmyra High School. Yeah. What are you going to tell someone considering Army ROTC, what are some of the benefits that you believe would be most attractive to a potential cadet? 00:25:23 Michael Giordano: Personally, I would probably tell 'em just like, like I said, like the career, the career opportunity. You can do anything in the Army and it's so, so beneficial to so many different things, like your personal qualities to your, your career path, to your, your resume, to like just a ton of different stuff. I would tell 'em that. Obviously there's the financial side, so you can, you can go to school for free. You can find a school that's as awesome as Penn College, hopefully Penn College. And you can get free room and board. I, you can get like all this different stuff. And then on top of that, once you're out, you keep benefits for life. So you've, you've veteran benefits then, and say you only did eight years in the military. You're, you're set up with veteran benefits, you're set up with resume, you have your career, everything on top of that. Oh, no, I just lost my train of thought. 00:26:18 Sumer Beatty: No, I was just like, I'm sold. You added the, you mentioned the ski, discount earlier for Vail Resorts. I mean, I think that... 00:26:27 Michael Giordano: That's what I was gonna say. Sorry. I just remembered on top of that, you can retire super early. So that's another thing that people just don't, don't consider too much, is through the military. You can retire like 35, 40 years old and then start an entire other career with a retirement. So people, people totally don't, I don't think my generation understands that too much. And it's bad because I don't wanna work till I'm 70. Hopefully everybody listening doesn't wanna work till they're 70, and that's totally a cool option to be able to make your money retire and have a good quality of life. So. 00:27:02 Carlos Ramos: That's something to talk, think about time, because I, I remember being a 16, 17-year-old and you know, everyone's thinking about college and you're like, oh my gosh, four more years of school. It's like you've already just done the, you know, 12, 13 years of school if you're a senior. 00:27:15 Michael Giordano: Yeah. 00:27:16 Carlos Ramos: And now you're talking about four years of school, plus eight years of military. 00:27:23 Michael Giordano: Correct. 00:27:23 Carlos Ramos: Okay. Going back to that 17-year-old. Oh my gosh. How do you even make that something that they can wrap their minds around? 00:27:33 Michael Giordano: It goes quick. It goes really quick. Four years of college, that's gonna be gone like super duper fast. I mean, I've been in for five and it feels like it's been going super duper fast. In the grand scheme, I would tell 'em like. Look at your life from a perspective of like start to finish. Don't look at it as in right now to five years from now. I mean, obviously there's definitely times where you need to do that, so don't just never look at short term. But looking at it on a long, long-term scale, that's a substantially small period of time and the amount that you'll gain from even just those eight years is substantially outweighing the cost of it. Maybe I'm a little biased, but I would personally argue like having that experience, having that, that career builder of eight years, even if it's 10 years, I think that's, that's worth it for once you're out for your family, for honestly, serving your country, for everything, for your career, everything. I think it's, it's. It's, it's not that long. 00:28:36 Sumer Beatty: That was amazing. 00:28:37 Carlos Ramos: That was. 00:28:38 Sumer Beatty: Thank you so much. 00:28:39 Michael Giordano: Yeah. Yeah. 00:28:39 Carlos Ramos: Thank you, Mike. We're gonna have to follow up with you in four, eight years. 00:28:42 Michael Giordano: Yeah. Yeah. That'd be awesome. 00:28:48 Sumer Beatty: Thanks for hanging out with us today. 00:28:49 Carlos Ramos: Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you'd listen to your podcasts. 00:28:54 Sumer Beatty: Check out our show notes for bookmarks to your favorite sections and links to resources that we mention in today's episode. 00:29:00 Carlos Ramos: You can also find past episodes and see what's on deck for upcoming ones at pct.edu/podcast 00:29:07 Sumer Beatty: and of course, we are open to your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. So send those over at podcast@pct.edu. 00:29:15 Carlos Ramos: It's been real. 00:29:17 Sumer Beatty: Catch you next time. You didn't give him the warning about the, are you, do you get very passionate? 00:29:24 Michael Giordano: No. 00:29:24 Sumer Beatty: You're not gonna be doing... 00:29:25 Michael Giordano: No, I won't do that. I won't do 00:29:26 Carlos Ramos: that. I haven't seen one arm move. 00:29:27 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:29:27 Carlos Ramos: He's very, very controlled. 00:29:30 Michael Giordano: Yeah. 00:29:30 Sumer Beatty: You don't know what's gonna come out though, when it's, when we're official, 00:29:33 Michael Giordano: I guess. Yeah. You know. 00:29:34 Sumer Beatty: You could get really excited and... 00:29:36 Michael Giordano: Maybe 00:29:36 Sumer Beatty: Just trying to make Carlos's job a little easier. 00:29:38 Carlos Ramos: All I know if there's a threat, Mike's got us. 00:29:41 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:29:43 Michael Giordano: Maybe not yet, but maybe one day.