College before Pararescue?

Paul spent 7 years racing mountain bikes professionally on the World Cup circuit. Now he's walking away to become a Combat Rescue Officer. In this episode we tackle the decision every PJ and CRO candidate faces: finish your degree first, or enlist now and let the Air Force pay for it.

I break down the key route no one typically knows about.  That you can knock out your bachelor's (and even your master's) while you're on the teams, how programs like IPAP paid for me to become a PA, and why front-loading your life in your 20s pays off for decades.

We also cover:
- The PJ to CRO transition and how it works
- What deployment life really looks like (mission tempo, downtime, training)
- The degree programs the military will fund — IPAP, nursing, medical school
- Why the enlistment age went up and what that means if you think you're "too old"
- The mindset shift from competing against others to competing against yourself

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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed on this show belong solely to Brian Silva and his guests and do not represent the views, thoughts, or opinions of the DoD. The content here is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not substitute for professional medical advice. The use of information or materials linked from this show or website is at the user’s own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychologist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment. 

Transcript

Career Path to Combat Rescue Officer

Brian 0:00

So it's never too late and, like I said, that desire to do something badass or you know where you're risking your life and you're doing things that are, you know, most old people don't get to do and most people in general never have the chance to do. It's literally the opportunity of a lifetime and it costs you $0. All it costs you is the amount of time that you put in to prepare, and I mean there's a fair amount of time that you put in to prepare and I mean there's a fair amount of physical pain that's involved in that. But at the end of the day, we all know that that pain is how you grow and how you learn, and it'll instill the values and make those stronger, that you already have. What's up everyone? Welcome to another episode of Prepare for the Drop podcast. Today I have Paul here and he is considering a career field in SW. Paul, I'll let you take it from here. What do you want to do and why do you want to do it?

Paul 0:51

Yeah, so super simple, very quickly. I want to become a combat rescue officer. The end of the day is just I want to go in there and get people out, save them right. So I was always super interested in terms of the civilian world and that's wilderness medicine or doing search and rescue and all that, and I wanted to. I was looking at taking it the next step and doing that in a combat environment and getting people out in a situation where they need help. So that's the biggest reason Nice.

Brian 1:22

What is your background? Right now? I know you're going to college and you mentioned wilderness medicine, um. Are you currently an emt? What kind of things are you doing in college?

Paul 1:32

yeah, so, um, I actually, funny enough just got my wemt and emt certification through through knolls. Uh, since we're national outdoor leadership school, they do a bunch of expeditions, but then they also have a wilderness medicine campus, so right now I'm just getting my undergrad. I didn't get that done after high school. I actually used to race on the World Cup scene for mountain bikes specifically, so I did that for a while, then stopped racing in 2021, started a consulting business helping other riders with their technique both amateurs and professionals. So that's what I'm doing today, and then I'm going to school as well, and then just in getting my foot into the whole medicine side of it. So then I can have some experience both in an urban environment and a wilderness environment, just trying to build it as best as I can so that when I go ahead and start doing the job, I've had some previous experience and I can bring stuff to the team.

Brian 2:30

Okay, Just real quick, because I think it's really interesting being on the World Cup for mountain biking specifically, or any of those kinds of things. Was this an intentional thing that you did? That was your dream when you started mountain biking. You're like I'm going to go to the world cup and I'm going to take it to the next level, or was it just? It's kind of how you evolved, or and uh, what do you think it took to get you to that point?

Paul 2:55

Um, yeah, I think it's kind of both. Um, I come from a family of racers, so my uncle, um, was a super cross racer so he was on, he raced the MA, so he was racing with James Stewart and Ricky Carmichael, travis Pastrana all of them back in the day. My dad also used to race, not at the elite level, but more the national level, and then so then when we moved to the United States, dirt biking kind of wasn't really accessible where we lived. So, um, I just picked up mountain bikes, started racing.

Paul 3:32

Um, never really thought like this would be a career and so I started doing pretty well in high school. And then, sophomore year of high school, I had a team approach me and say like, hey, if you win that was actually that simple, they just went if you win the overall, you're on the team next year. Um, so, uh, did well, won the overall and then got a contract. Like a month later I was like all right, I guess I'm doing this. And then no, literally yeah, I guess I'm doing this. Uh, then absolutely loved it yeah, race, race, pro. So I was 16 at the time race pro, pro up until 2021. It's about like seven years.

Brian 4:07

I just think it's interesting because people that compete at higher levels. Obviously you have some kind of initiative drive and that obviously is going to transfer over to the other things that you're going to do, especially training for combat rescue officer. It's going to take a high level of you know, mental, physical abilities to accomplish that. So whenever people mention things like that, it's something that you can pull back to. Obviously, it was hard at some points when you were doing mountain biking and you had to reach deep, so we'll talk about that probably a little bit later. Um, so tell me a little bit about what your planned path is to get into combat rescue officer and what you're planning on doing with that.

Paul 4:52

Yeah. So, um, there's a couple different options, right, I think they're pretty, they're pretty closely related. But at the moment what I'm most likely going to do, um is finish my undergrad as quickly as possible, um, so probably the next year and a half. Um, just, I had a good amount of credits back when I was in high school, so like stuff is, you know, it's college, so it's kind of confusing all the credits, but hopefully get it relatively quickly, um, and then probably actually go and try and do PJs first.

Paul 5:23

So go enlisted um, do maybe that contract first, whether it's a four-year or six-year contract. Then when I get out reassess from there, hey, I already have my undergrad. I can go directly to OTS school or officer training school and then become an officer and then go ahead and do a full career. The main thing that I want to do is be on the ground right and do that at work and be directly with the patients and people that you're working with, and I think gaining that experience and then moving up to an officer position where you're more in charge of logistics not just logistics right, but more of the overall picture I think is a good progression. But if I find that in two years when I finished my undergrad, I want to go directly to Crow. Um, I'll just get that first part, go to OTS and then go ahead and do that combat rescue officer position. So little bit of leeway, a little bit of opportunity to change. Um, but definitely headed that direction.

Brian 6:20

Okay, yeah.

Brian 6:21

So a couple of things on that, just so you're aware of the ins and outs of everything.

Brian 6:27

If you go in to be a PJ first, you can go and be a combat rescue officer. You would have to go through the crow selection while you're a PJ and then you know, go from there, you don't have to get out and then come back in. There will be a period where it's just like a paper thing, where you get out and then you come back in, cause I had to do that when I went through uh, became an officer from being enlisted, but that's just an on paper type thing. I was out for a day and then he'd come back in weird, but um, so you wouldn't have to fully get out, but you would just kind of go into that crow position and then get orders to whatever duty station. And the other part that we were kind of talking about before we started recording was just the thought about doing college first and finishing that out, versus if you came into the military right now and then you can do the rest of your degree while you are in the military and having them pay for you to do that.

Paul 7:28

So what's kind of the motive behind finishing it first versus doing that other stuff yeah, I think, like that question is kind of tough, because I was, I'm from the position of you don't know what, you don't know um, right, like you said, before we started recording, you were talking about kind of what you did and how that worked, and um, your journey through through school, um, so that's something that, for example, I wasn't aware of. Um, uh, in a way for the undergrad, like I knew masters, obviously, if you're in the military and then you want to get your master's, there's um, the air force is going to go ahead and pay for certain masters and kind of help you out or you can then use gi bills, but um, yeah, so the reasoning was more of um get it done now, right, I'm still close-ish in age with everybody that's in um, like on campus, there's not too big of a gap um, get it done at that moment, and, and so that way when I do, I just have it in my back pocket and it can change not change, but it can make things a little bit more easily, easy down the line If I want to pivot or go ahead and do different things. An example, for example sorry, one of the examples that I had that we were talking about is just, let's say, I get out of that first um contract and I realized like, hey, I don't want to do a full career in this Um, but I want to stay in the medical world, having my bachelor's degree already done. I can just, uh, go, like university of Colorado and Boulder has this great program where you can get your bachelor's in nursing um in a year instead of those four years. But in order to qualify you need to already have um a bachelor's.

Paul 9:08

So you know, having that in my back pocket, given that I could just kind of get it done in the next year and a half if I, if I really double down, does open some more opportunities of just, do I want to stay and do a career? Go to Crow Um? Do I just want to stay PJs, like that's cool, right, I wouldn't need it at that point, but I have it. Or do I want to go in nursing? Or maybe I actually want to go to med school and then become more of a doctor. So that's kind of what the reasoning was, but um, so options.

Brian 9:37

Yeah, it sounds like you have a lot of different um ideas of things that you might want to do still, I mean, they're all medical related. But, um, one of the things that I think would be valuable and I don't know if you have this available but being able to shadow. Obviously you can always talk to me about.

Military Career Field Education Options

Brian 10:00

You know what being a PJ is like and whoever else you've been in contact with to help you out with, because you went to those wilderness courses that were run by PJs but ultimately, figuring out which kind of career field that you want to go into whether it's nursing, pa, md, np, all those things and kind of nailing that down a little bit more things, and kind of nailing that down a little bit more. And I think you know one of the the factors for me that really comes into play now that I'm, you know, getting a little bit older or whatever um, it's just how much time you spend on different things. And if I mean you're 23, you said right, yep, to do these courses, I would probably look at if you can just go in the military now and I don't know what shape you're in. If you're ready to do that, go into the military, be a PJ, finish out your degree while you're in here. You'll still have that and you can work on it. You'll be on deployments, you'll be in between courses, online type of degree. If the specific type of degree and all you're kind of going for is a bachelor's, it sounds like not necessarily like law school or anything specific. So if it's just a bachelor's that you're going for, you know, I mean, it sounds like you know it's, it's a paper and everyone. That's kind of the new standard of you know, having a diploma 20 years ago. It's kind of the same thing. Now everyone's kind of expected to just have a bachelor's degree. But if you knock that out, um, while you're in, and you know, if you wanted to, you can even get your master's while you're in.

Brian 11:58

And then there's also um a lot of funding that the military puts into putting people through school. Like I went through the inter-service physician assistant program and they paid for me to go to school with 29 months. You get your bachelor's and your master's degree in that amount of time. And they also have the NECP program. I don't know what that stands for, but it's a nurse program where they make you a nurse, where they make you a nurse or the um, what is it, the uses or uh HPSP program that puts you into, makes you an MD or DO, whatever you want to be?

Brian 12:38

Of course there are commitments that the military requires of those things. After they pay for your school, of course, but for PA school it was five years. After you're done with graduating from PA school, then you owe them that amount of time. To be a doctor I think it's a little bit more. But either way, there's still those programs that are available and obviously wouldn't incur any debt.

Brian 13:02

But I always recommend, if you have the opportunity to go into the military and use their funds to pay for everything, then there's no reason to go in debt on your own if they're going to pay for your degree rather than having all those loans, because when you come in as a you'll probably come in as an A1C or senior airman. If you have a degree already, then you're not going to be getting paid a whole lot. The the military pay hasn't really adjusted for the amount of inflation. That's happened um over the past couple of years. So it, you know, would be tough and I mean I know you have your business also, so that I'm sure you have some money saved up from that stuff, but just something to think about. And uh, you know you can obviously bounce questions.

Paul 13:52

I was just going to say could you kind of go more in depth on um. Let's say this case scenario, right? Um, I go in and get like signed a contract tomorrow, right, and I go into for PJ so enlisted contract for pair rescue. And then I go in and get like signed a contract tomorrow, right, and I go into for PJ, so enlisted contract for pararescue. And then I go through the pipeline so a year and a half to your pipeline. Um, how does it look in terms of deployment day to day? And then getting your batches at the same time? Like, what are the specifics? How does that work? Um, do you, are you do more years, even just just for the bachelors, not for PA or anything like that?

Brian 14:29

Yeah. So if you were to come to the military, you're not allowed to do schooling outside of what they're putting you through when you're in the pipeline. Unless you have a huge gap in time frame, for whatever reason, the schools don't line up and you have three months to do nothing, then they'll say, yeah, sure, if you're doing nothing, go ahead, knock it out, but most of the time you're going to be, they're going to be trying to put you back to back schools. So you know you want to focus on graduating the pipeline at that point. Once you're done with the pipeline and you get to your first unit um, you'll be in upgrade training and once you're mission qualified, then you're able to do pretty much whatever you want, or maybe even before if you're super squared away and they know that you are Um. So it just kind of depends on the unit and the person and their policies. But when you get to your unit, your mission qualified, it depends on the ops tempo of the unit. But there are, there will be TDYs and there will be a frequent amount of TDYs and there will also be deployments. Usually people don't deploy until they're donements. Usually people don't deploy until they're done with. They won't deploy until they're done with mission qualification training, which is a couple months, so you know you'll have time at home station.

Brian 15:50

Obviously they want you to get settled and get your stuff together so they can put you to work for all that, but most of the time it's just like I wouldn't say it's not a nine to five, but you will know the hours and you will not be working 12 hours every single day constantly. Like you know it's, it's a job, so they need you to be able to rest and they need you to be able to do other things that you want to do. Um, and you know you kind of settle into that after a while because at first, when you get to, you're like, oh crap, I need to perform, I need to. What am I doing? I don't know how to put my gear together and you know you're trying to look and smell like everyone else, basically. But, um, you will definitely have time during TDYs If you take that time. There's, you know's, time for team bonding and that kind of thing, and then there's time for you to improve yourself and I really wish that I would have done a lot more schooling while I was on those deployments, because most of the time.

Brian 16:50

It's just my first couple of deployments it was playing Halo and just watching. They had a hard drive for us full of movies, so we just watched movies all the time, you know. So there's plenty of downtime to do that when you're not working, cause even when you're deployed, usually there's like two different teams, you take shifts and you're not always on the go. I mean, you're still in a somewhat ready state because you're deployed. Anything can happen, but there's still downtime. You got to go get your two or three workouts in per day and, um, you know there's not much else to do.

Brian 17:29

So there's plenty of time for you to get those done, especially on deployments and I think you know I wish that I would have had somebody to mentor me in that aspect and like, all right, just what classes are you doing right now? Okay, you're wasting your time playing freaking cards and whatever else you're doing playing Halo, like there's something after this. There's always going to be something after this para rescue. You know it can be a career, but each career has to end at some point. So what are you setting yourself up for at the end of the day? And you know that's just something that you got to take into account, because there's going to be a lot of people that are just screwing around and not pushing themselves towards whatever that next step is. But yeah, so you have time.

Paul 18:15

And I think that's been, uh, you know the two things. And first one is you don't know. You don't know again, right, I think I've said that before, but it's as a civilian right. I don't know what deployment looks like, right, and, and so it's good to. It's always interesting to hear from you at least. Well, like, well, no, there is time, right, like, you can do both. You can go ahead and be on deployment and be doing online school. You know, it made more sense to me, obviously, when you're back home that that can happen, but it's yeah, I didn't expect you would have enough time to do it, even on deployment, but it makes sense.

Paul 18:49

And then the whole reason of, like, trying to figure out when to put that school in, at least for me, it's kind of exactly the last point you you touched on right Is I understand that you know I want to do pararescue and I want to go and do that job, but it's not forever and it's a job that I can do now, when I'm younger. And then all the other things like flight, nursing, whether that be military or civilian, or search, rescue, like all these that are md or physicals or physician's assistant, all those things you can do when you're older, right, there's not really an age cap on them, or even flight nursing there is, but I think it's like late 40s, yeah, um. So definitely been trying to think of, like, even even though I'm I'm 23, like it's young, but it's still six years older than 18. Right, so I'm adding that years of like two years of pipeline and a four year contract and then, like it adds up in terms of why might not have that time to get school done and then go back in for a different career or do these different things? So, yeah, I think it's definitely changed my perspective knowing that I could actually go through um and get an undergrad while doing the job. I think that's.

Brian 20:07

That's the biggest thing I'm taking away for as of right now. I didn't know that. Yeah, I mean, if it saves you two years of your life, that you're not going to get back. I mean, my whole thing is that I wish I would have had somebody to tell me to front load my life. I mean I still, you know, I feel like I have been able and I've been lucky to be able to, you know, do pararescue and, you know, be a PA. But the more that you can front load while you have a lot of time right now, because I told you before we started that I have four kids and a wife and two dogs and a couple of different jobs. This is one of them. But having time right now like it's you, and do you have a girlfriend or?

Paul 20:47

No, just me and my apartment, yeah.

Seize Opportunities for Personal Growth

Brian 20:49

Okay, so yeah, I mean you got all the time in the world to get done what you need to get done and focus on you and grow yourself and be better.

Brian 20:57

Get done what you need to get done and focus on you and grow yourself and be better. So use that time to the best of your ability to do the things that you want to do and, you know, move yourself forward. There's no reason to stay at a stalling point in your life. If you could do both of them at the same time and you definitely can you know you're working, you're working a job, and then you go do your biking, you're doing all these courses, which is awesome, I think, and the perspective you have is good too. It's just, you know, do these things while I have the ability to do it, rather than waiting till you get older, because that desire is always going to be there to want to do this kind of stuff, and it's not going to go away. It's just where you transfer it to and what you are capable of doing at a certain point. You know some of that goes away.

Paul 21:44

And on that point, like you know, I definitely settled like this is what I want to do, and I was. And then, on the WEMT course, which is the Wilderness EMT certification we did with Knowles, I met, and he's now like one of my really good friends. Um, we met a guy who it was his dream his whole life to become a pj right and for reasons x, y and z, like didn't do it, kind of pushed it back, pushed it back, pushed it back, um, and then you know, today he's 36 and like no, this is where I want to go, but too old to do PJs, so, or to start at least. So now he's working towards becoming a paramedic and a flight nurse, which is why he was a WMT course. But it was definitely a good reminder, chatting with him and spending you know, we spent 30 days 24-7 together. But he was like no, just get it done, go do it, cause for me I waited too long and now it's kind of facing the consequences, like I genuinely, uh, 36, 37, like can't start.

Brian 22:51

So well, he actually just raised the age to 42.

Brian 22:55

So he can start if he wanted to but you know, I don't know if there's a medical issue or anything else that is stopping him from starting it up.

Brian 23:04

Um, he's welcome to come on and talk to me as well about what it's like.

Brian 23:09

Actually, I just talked to another person just on a private call today who is 37, and we'll probably have him on the podcast too, but so it's never too late and, like I said, that desire to do something bad-ass or you know where you're risking your life and you're doing things that are, you know, most old people don't get to do and most people in general never have the chance to do. It's literally the opportunity of a lifetime and it costs you $0. All it costs you zero dollars. All it costs you is the amount of time that you put in to prepare, and I mean there's a fair amount of physical pain that's involved in that. But at the end of the day, we all know that, um, that pain is how you grow and how you learn, and it'll instill the values and make those stronger that you already have. You know, obviously a pretty strong core set of values and initiative in general. Starting a business when you're that young, not anything that I would have even thought of.

Brian 24:05

I never thought I was going to be, you know, an entrepreneur or anything like that. But you know it's awesome that you're starting off and I really like it. A lot of people in the your generation are starting to do that, so it's awesome.

Paul 24:18

Good on you I think it's like we've just been shown, I think, through um, maybe it's the internet or different things. It's like all these different options, um, if just you want to do something, then just go, do it, right. I think there's less um, there might be less consequences because there's more choice, um, and so I think for me, like when I got out of racing, I had to take, you know, like six months away from the whole industry, to just kind of change my relationship with racing is not an athlete anymore, but now coming

Commitment to Personal and Professional Growth

Paul 24:47

in different, different side. But the second, I decided to kind of go back in as an instructor and more of a, more of a mentor, like it was kind of a no brainer, right, I needed a platform to work with amateurs and professionals and a platform to take care of middle schoolers, high schoolers as well, and I was like, yeah, I mean, it's the best way to do it. So, yeah, we just started like that and kept going and then, and then now it's it's been amazing because I work with um, the largest uh professional development team in North America Uh, so we have 15 year olds all the way through 23 year olds.

Paul 25:23

Obviously, as you go up in age, your contracts change and responsibilities go up Cause, then you actually you know we're sending you to world cups and world champs for uh u23, which then carries points over to elite um, and then I might be working a lot more with team usa, right, so I had a couple world cups representing them, um, so it's been really fun to kind of do both, kept kind of that ground of instructing that I that I really enjoyed helping um riders, but it's definitely a side thing.

Paul 25:50

Like where I'm going is pararescue or, you know, combat rescue. That encapsulates both um, and I know I want to be in the medical world saving people and now's the time to do pararescue and combat rescue. So that's where we're headed and if I can keep kind of both, maybe the biking from like a further standpoint, more of just like virtually right, which is what we'll have to find out like, oh, I'll have some new videos or gopros or world champs stuff like that. But, um, ideally keep both from afar and if I can't, I can't, we'll, we're going that way, right yeah, and that is definitely a important thing to highlight is, you know, I always say, burn the boats.

Brian 26:31

And you're focusing on this one goal, and this is you're putting your time and energy into that one thing and you know, if you focus on it enough, then that's what's going to become your reality and it sounds like I would recommend for you um, because you do have another option. You know a fail safe and something to fall back on that you seem like the kind of person where, if you tell all of your friends and everybody else that you're going to do this thing, then you'll follow it. You'll be more likely to follow it through rather than, you know, ending up back in the same place and doing the same kind of thing. So for me, when I told everybody that, hey, I want to go do this thing and I'm going to be a pararescue man in a couple of years, and everyone's like, ah, yeah, okay, whatever.

Brian 27:17

And then you know I remember sitting on the gunwale doing 10 ups and underwaters Like I don't want to go back with my head, you know, hanging low in shame that I told everybody that I was going to do this and nobody believed me that I would get it done, that I was going to do this and nobody believed me that I would get it done. And so, you know, have that, because I mean, you know, there's a certain element of pride, but also, I mean it's just being the person that fulfills everything that you say. If you say it, then that's what it's going to be, and being that kind of person is, you know, obviously the kind of person that we want on the teams, but that is the kind of person that's going to be successful overall. At the end of the day, in life, you tell somebody you're going to do something and you do it. So try and say that out loud to, uh, as many people as you can, yeah, and um, the other thing, too that I found interesting.

Paul 28:09

It found interesting it's a little bit more on a on the sideline, but it's more talking about, um, personally, how you change.

Personal Growth and Career Planning

Paul 28:17

I remember when I was racing, like my competitiveness definitely came. Competitiveness definitely came from more of like an insecurity standpoint, right of like always comparing yourself with each other's and I mean that's what it is right. You're racing and, uh, if you're faster, you're better, and he's doing this or she's doing that and um.

Paul 28:36

I think what's interesting is, like, since I've stopped racing and having to build a business and doing more instructing and seeing the racing from like a bird's eye almost, I've noticed that the, the drive for my competitiveness kind of shifted of more of like kind of what you're saying, I set these goals, um, and whether or not people are doing it quicker than I am or better, I'm like cool, they're doing it better. I'm gonna look and be like I wonder what you're doing, um, but it's because I set those goals and I want to do them for me. So I think it's a very interesting shift that I've noticed after instructing, um, um, where, yeah, I think that that competitiveness is more self-driven. Yeah, like I I see them. I rock climb a bunch. I'll see it on the wall If I don't do a move the way I like I want to do it. Oh, I that? That pisses me off.

Brian 29:38

But if somebody climbs a grade above, like I'm not there yet, so I'm gonna watch you, but I'm not gonna get all um fresh in it, which I totally would have a couple years ago. Yeah, that's. That's a pretty mature perspective too is realizing that I mean, life is all about you. Versus you, there's always going to be somebody better, stronger, richer, smarter, whatever else. But at the end of the day, I mean it's literally how much have you improved from when you were a kid and you know your parents were raising you. Obviously they did the best they could with what they had, but how are you going to get that next level up for yourself, for your kids? And comparing yourself to last year, like what was I doing wrong? What was I doing, what could I do better? And if you just keep on making those little incremental improvements throughout the rest of your life and actually focusing on those things, you're going to crush it in life and you'll be happy with everything that you've done. I mean, yeah, you're doing good so far, and not that you need my validation or anything like that, but it's, it's cool to see, like I said. So I think, like I said in the beginning, is trying to focus on the immediate goal, obviously, and then second tier of whatever you're going to end up doing Some higher level of medical care, it sounds like, is what you're going to be aiming for and talk to people that do those jobs, like a nurse.

Brian 30:53

Uh, you know, you can ask me about being a PA, ask me, ask about, you know, ask a doctor how they like their life and what they want to do, because you have a lot of opportunity to to move back and forth.

Brian 31:06

And that's what I like about being a PA is that you can just bounce from whatever thing to another thing when you're a doctor. You can just bounce from whatever thing to another thing. When you're a doctor, you can be more in charge of some things, but also you're kind of stuck in whatever you end up going into. So I mean, it is what it is, but look at those things and see which one you know. Which path do you want to go down? And that's not something that you have to answer right now. Of course it's because right now your goal is already set and hopefully you can save yourself time by going into the military and then knocking out your bachelors while you're in, and then that'll buy you more time on the back end to still be younger and pursue the other goals that you have, if you don't want to make PJ a career.

Paul 31:51

No, I think that's definitely the big takeaway for me, at least was I, just I didn't know that right, uh, for me it was more of either you get it before or after, and there's just, no, not the time in between. So, um, yeah, definitely gonna let you know did a lot of really need a lot of thinking, right, trying to figure out and see what's going to be best, and that's a little bit of uh, it's a good curveball, right, like Like, oh, I didn't know that Cool, added information to the pile of making decisions.

Brian 32:17

Yeah, and do you lessen debt in general?

Paul 32:19

So I mean that's that one's a big one for sure, yeah.

Brian 32:23

Yeah, uh, anything else.

Paul 32:27

No, just the only thing that's been. It's been awesome to meet you. Um, I think you guys, at least the Ones Ready podcast has totally guided me in the last couple of years, I mean ever since I stopped racing and even my last season. I knew this is kind of the path I wanted to go on, but I just didn't even know where to start. So I've been listening to podcasts for the last couple of years and it gave me a lot of information, um, and and how to set things up.

Paul 32:55

You know, put some correlations between training and and racing and kind of like what to expect, I think because of the podcast, if I were to go to in doc or, you know, assessment and selection tomorrow, um, I think overall, and I may be, but I wouldn't be surprised. I think I have an idea of what to expect. I'm like this is obviously always surprises, but the podcast has helped playing like, okay, I'm not going in blind. It's like what am I going to? What is it going to look like? Yeah, and then the overall thing. So yeah, and that's, it's been awesome to meet you, yeah.

Brian 33:29

Yeah, I mean Me too. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's the whole reason that I created the ones ready podcast is just because, you know, when I came in and a lot of other guys when I was an instructor, I saw them and they, like you said, came in blind. They didn't know what to prepare for, what to get ready for, and it was it sucked to see guys that I would have wanted on my team because they had the right personality and the right traits, but there was just, you know, uh, they were a pushup or two off or they got injured or whatever it was, and they weren't, uh, adequately prepared for those things. So, hopefully, um, you know the internet's out there and you guys have all the information, um, you have me to bounce anything off of. Um, so I just enjoy seeing, you know, the next generation of guys that are going to come through and take the place of me and crush it.

Brian 34:18

So it's going to be cool to see, especially with all the new technology that's coming out for pararescue and all these, um, new types of infiltration and everything that we're we're starting to do. So it's cool. And if you ever have any questions or anything, you know you, you have my uh email and we can always do this again because I always want to. Eventually I'm just getting started on this podcast but eventually have guys that are finished with the pipeline and I'm also going to be having a guy that just finished the pipeline. Obviously he started years ago but he just finished and we're gonna have just a recap of what the pipeline was like and talk about all those things that he went through. So it'll be interesting to see, because he went through my in doc uh, or actually the test program, the in-person stuff, when he first started.

Paul 35:08

So, yeah, it'll be cool. Well, be sure to listen to that one. Yeah, right, so whenever that that one comes out, I'll be. I'll be cool. Well, be sure to listen to that one. Yeah, right, so whenever that that one comes out, I'll be. I'll be paying attention, like all right. Yeah, what's the latest on ANS?

Brian 35:19

Yeah, All right, cool. Do you have any other like personal questions about me in general, from in doc to whatever anything else?

Paul 35:31

Yeah, I think we touched based on on on a couple of things uh, together and then the day-to-day for pararescue. I think it's like very different, right Cause you I feel like it depends kind of where you're deployed to you got a lot of different different missions, um, and what you see overall. Um. So if we have time to be just like that, like what does deployment actually look like? But if we don't, like that's totally fine.

Brian 35:54

Yeah, so every deployment is different, for sure, um, just from the place that you go to to the type of mission that you're going to do, most of the time you'll have a fixed and rotary, rotary wing aircraft with you, so helicopter and a plane and whatever assets are available also changes a lot. For example, I've been to a place where we only had C-17s and then 60s and then I've been to places where it was just like any platform you wanted for anything was immediately available within that vicinity, like A-10s or little birds or anything. So it really is different every time and you do a whole uh prep before you deploy, typically, unless it's, you know, an emergent deployment, but usually you get some kind of uh info to prep, uh, at least for training purposes, and your whole cycle before you deploy is based on training for those type of missions and, of course, also getting guys qualified for their upgrade training and you know you want everyone to continue to level up because you have different skill levels that you go up. And as far as deployment, what it's like to go on deployment, like my first deployment, um, to go on deployment, or like my first deployment, I was deployed to balad and everywhere was hot zone. They had, uh, anti-air all over the place. So I remember just like a super steep infill all the way down, just dive bombing onto the airstrip and then you land and you're like welcome to iraq. You know, they announce it over like, oh crap, I'm actually in no war zone right now, like okay, that's kind of weird.

Brian 37:38

Um, but you know, on that deployment, you, we worked with all the different rangers, green beret, everyone else, because we're all on the same complex and we had our own range that we went just had unlimited, unlimited ammo to shoot and you had shifts, so A team, b team and you are on for a week, and the secondary some people are on days, some people are on nights, so you pick whatever time you have to work and then you have your time to do whatever else you want to do. And then there were other deployments where it was just my second deployment to iraq. It was bare base we're living in tents, eating mres, sleeping on cots, next to your weapon, constantly. Um, and it was just a lot different of a a feel, because we were in mulzul at the time, very close to where isis was when isis was the thing, very close to where their stronghold was and it was, you know, a totally different type of feel. But, that being said, we always figure out how to get internet, so we have. At that time there were little hockey puck things that had internet on them and we ended up getting some of those. So you still have opportunity to on some deployments. You know, with technology, the way it is now to use the internet. Obviously you got to be careful of what you're sending out and everything like that, but you have the opportunity to do those things when you're not on shift.

Brian 39:10

Typically there's some kind of a training iteration that you're doing because you know we don't want to just sit around all the time and do nothing. There's at least a couple hours a day that we're going over tactics, we're going over our gear, we're going over making sure all the bundles and things that we drop out of aircraft are rigged, ready to go, setting up your equipment and just training in general. Setting up your equipment and just training in general. So the training never stops and it's really a good time to focus on making yourself better and school. A lot of guys did that. I didn't when I was on my first couple of deployments until I got a little bit older and someone's like hey, what are you in? Are you going to get a degree? Like, oh, I don't know, do I have to? I was like no, I just want to do the job. But, like I said, I wish I would have had somebody to teach me those things and mentor me a little bit so you'll have plenty of time.

Brian 40:00

And then, like I said, every deployment is different as far as the amount of mission you're going to go on. The first, where every night um. Second deployment, not so much, uh like once a week or something like that, and then the other ones they kind of just uh mix up. Um, my last one we only had a couple of times where we had to go pick up guys. It wasn't super busy. So it just depends on where you go and what the deployment's like. Now people are going on more deployments where they're teaching guys from other countries to, you know, do the things that we do and kind of force multiply that way.

Paul 40:41

Yeah. So, yeah, I got to meet a crow up at Cardiff State University. He used to, he graduated from there and he's I think he's on his fifth year as a combat rescue officer and it's kind of. One thing he was saying is what he's doing? Uh, they're doing a lot of training, um with with other other people. So that was interesting. It's cool. It's cool to hear you echo it Right, kind of where the, where combat rescue is going. Yeah.

Brian 41:05

And I mean the instructing is a lot of fun too. We we did that, um, not necessarily deployed, but a couple times to like turkey and poland and a couple different places. But yeah, it's, it's fun to just do that and, like you know, instructing, I think, is one of the one of the things that makes you realize the things that you know and don't know for real, like when you can actually instruct things, then you know that. You know it because you can explain it to somebody else and that's really the way that you can get a hold of the knowledge that you can reiterate. So that's kind of what a deployment's like, any other questions or anything else.

Paul 41:43

No, that was the main one. Yeah, and it totally answers my question. So yeah, I appreciate it, no problem.

Brian 41:49

So, yeah, me and Paul talked about a lot of different things.

Potential PJ Candidates Connect on Podcast

Brian 41:52

If you guys out there are listening, I appreciate you, um, listening to the podcast, and if you ever want to come on, just email me, brian, how to be a PJ, and we can get you on here, talk about your questions, get some answers and hopefully, save you a little bit of time. Maybe we'll save Paul a little bit of time.

Brian 42:10

Um, but yeah so we'll see you back on the podcast in a couple years, once you're all graduated and you got that beret on, tell me what your experience was like and hopefully help other dudes. I appreciate you coming on and hopefully, to all you out there that are listening, it was beneficial for you and, of course, I hope it was beneficial for you, paul. Like I said, if you need anything, just reach out and I'll be here awesome.

Paul 42:31

It was super beneficial.

Brian 42:32

I appreciate it, we'll talk to you later.