#144 Military Service Academy Majors & Career Paths with Phil Black Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker Robbins 00:48

exploring the right college path for your team can be overwhelming, especially when considering unique options like military service academies. These institutions offer a wealth of academic majors and career opportunities that extend far beyond military service. Understanding what these academies provide could open doors to fulfilling futures you might not have considered. I’m thrilled to have Phil Black join us to shed light on this topic. Over the past 30 years, Phil has built a remarkable record of accomplishments, Division One, college athlete, Navy SEAL officer, Goldman, Sachs, investment banker, bootstrap entrepreneur, two time Shark Tank contestant, firefighter, husband and father of four sons with degrees from Yale and Harvard Business School, he brings unparalleled insight into both military and civilian career pathways. Bill has also helped hundreds of students navigate their futures through service academies, ROTC programs and highly selective colleges. Many mistakenly think military service academies are just for STEM focused students. In our conversation, we’ll delve into the diverse majors offered at military service academies and the exciting career paths they can lead to, both within the military and in the civilian world. These academies provide a solid foundation for success in various fields. We’ll also touch on how early preparation can set your teen up for these opportunities. If you’re worried about missing out on unique educational options, or want to ensure your teen has every opportunity to thrive, this episode will provide the clarity and confidence you need to support them. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity, a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right in to a great conversation.

Lisa Marker Robbins 02:51

Phil Black, welcome to the show. It’s an honor to have you.

Phil Black 02:56

Nice to be here. Lisa, thanks again.

Lisa Marker Robbins 02:58

Well, you have a special niche, a special way that you serve those who actually want to serve, and a focus on our military academies. Can you just for a listener who’s like, I think I might be interested in this, and I know I’m not even really sure what it is, because I find in my work that a lot of families don’t even think about this as an option, and it’s really a fantastic option. So when we say that you are serving those who might want to serve and attend a military service academy, just give us that top line description of what that entails.

Phil Black 03:38

Sure. Let me even back up a little bit more. Some people don’t even know what it’s like to be a military officer. Some people don’t even know what the difference between an officer and enlisted in the military is. So when you go to a service academy, and we’ll talk about that, there’s five of those, or you do ROTC Reserve Officer Training Corps, you are training to become a commissioned officer in the military. So what does that mean? It means you’re going to be in charge of enlisted personnel on a ship and some airbase, some army installation somewhere. I think the number is about 15% of the military, writ large, are officers. It’s basically the managerial layer of the GOV of the military as as an organization. So the goal, if you go to a service academy or to ROTC, is to go through four years of undergraduate and then become an officer in the military, in the army, in the Navy, in the Air Force and the Marines in the Coast Guard and the Merchant Marine. So just to back that up, that that’s the goal here. That’s why the surface academies exist. They want to create, build and develop military officers to go out into the fleet, to go out into an installation and manage people to affect their military mission, wherever that is. So, as I said, one of those sources to become a. Commissioned officer is through the service academies. There are five of them, the Naval Academy, West Point, the Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy and the Merchant Marine Academy. These are total immersion, front to back. You’re wearing a uniform every day. Yes. Ma’am, no. Ma’am, yes or no, sir. It’s what you’ve probably seen in the movies, an officer, not an officer in general, that’s actually Officer Candidate School. But you know, there are taps and some other traditional classic movies where you see the students walking around in uniform. So that’s what we’re talking about in terms of service academies. You’re on your way. You go to West Point, you go to Annapolis, where the Naval Academy is. You serve. You go to an undergraduate degree. You major in something which we can talk about, and then off you go. You finish in four years, you wind up on a ship somewhere, and for five years, it’s a five year commitment. Post undergraduate could be longer for specific communities, but for five years, you are then leading other troops, other sailors, other Marines, other airmen, and that’s your job for five years now. You can choose to extend that, if you like. You have that option. You can choose to get out and go to business school or law school or get a job in the private sector. That’s up to you.

Lisa Marker Robbins 06:16

Okay, I love that overview, and I love that you teased up my favorite topic, which is college majors and careers, as I work to support really all students, whether they’re college bound or not, and getting clear on what comes after graduation. That could be high school graduation or college graduation. And so what I want to get a deeper understanding of and we have talked about this on the side a little bit. But like, if it’s confusing to me, I know it’s confusing to my listeners. And so if a family says, okay, though, this is very curious, and by the way, we didn’t even mention the like paying for college part benefit of like, so just real quick. So we keep people on one of the benefits of, if you’re accepted at a service academy, and you get in and decide in you’re going, is what financially

Phil Black 07:11

well, financially and other things as well. Financially, I have a son who’s at the Naval Academy. I have two other sons who are at ROTC, at Yale. So let’s talk about the Naval Academy person for for example, so he has no college expenses. So as parents, that’s a pretty good deal, because you don’t have to pay for anything. They literally show up on day one with a backpack and everything’s provided to them. They also get paid a stipend every month, starting when they first step foot on that plebe summer. So I think my son, who’s only his second year at the Naval Academy, I think he gets $400 a month, something like that. I think it eventually goes up to seven or $800 a month. So you’re actually getting, not only are you not paying for school, but you’re getting a small stipend for miscellaneous expenses, food, books, other things. So the finances thing is obviously very attractive. You also have that quote, unquote guaranteed job. Some people call it what’s the commitment like once you graduate those four years? I like to refer to it as what’s the guaranteed job like? Because you, once you graduate, as I mentioned earlier, you are then sent to the fleet, to, in the Navy’s case, or somewhere else, to work for five years, getting paid 80 or $90,000 a year for five years. So many of the students that I work with, including my own son, they have basically a nine year window to really solidify their financial future so they have no college debt. And if they’re really, if they’re careful about what they’re doing with their money and they don’t spend it on crazy things. I have a lot of students who have $125,000 in the bank by the time they’re done with their quote, unquote, five year commitment or their guaranteed job. So if you were going to then leave the military, that’s a lot of money to have in cash, in the bank, to open a business, to buy a franchise, to go to business school, to go to law school, to buy a multi unit family housing, something like that. Travel the world for a year. That’s far different from going to school and taking on 100,000 $200,000 worth of debt and not having any work experience. Of course, you’re just getting out of under getting out of undergrad, so the the Delta on, if you play your cards, right, that nine year commitment coming out as a 27 year old with 120 530, $140,000 in the bank can be pretty compelling.

Lisa Marker Robbins 09:35

Oh, it’s amazing. And so even though we’re not going to do, you know, a deep dive on financial aid and finances and paying for college and all those things. And here I wanted that at the top, because that might be the thing that keeps someone listening as like, Okay, right now, I didn’t even think about this, but wow, this is a huge financial strategy. Some of our most popular podcast episodes are around this idea of paying. For college and financial aid and merit aid and all of those things. So I dropped that in to say whether you have a freshman, a sophomore or a junior, keep listening, even if that’s the only part right now that’s appealing, because we’re going to talk more about this, and that’s just one of the unique benefits. So you brought up this idea of, okay, we go through the service academy four years, we get our undergraduate degree. Now we’re gonna go serve for five years, and we’ve got a guaranteed job. And so my approach that I work with and launch Career Clarity with the families that we support is this idea of reverse engineering the college bound journey. So I love and believe in and I’ve seen positive outcomes for the 4000 students that we’ve supported going ahead and being first focused on what careers Am I wired to do, and then once we support them and building self awareness and career awareness through through different strategies, so then they can know their path well. Once you’ve identified that, then you can say, Okay, here’s the major, the one major, or the multiple majors that could lead to that career. Now, where can I go so I can get a really good education and I’m ready to go out into the workforce, like you just said, it’s so important to come out and be able to offer something to potential employers. So for a student that hasn’t been military service academy bound that I work with, that’s this reverse engineering and beginning with the end in mind, what job, what work do I want to do? And it’s just that first step into career. It’s not the Forever step, as you and I know at our ages. So with that in mind, does that same strategy of reverse engineering career to major to service academy? Because they all have, they’re all have a little bit of a different flavor to them. Does that work with someone who is interested in this option.

Phil Black 12:04

It does work, and it has just a couple more layers to it, because it’s a little bit more difficult, a little bit more challenging to get into the service academy. So there are some hoops to jump through to get there, and there’s obviously that five year commitment that you wouldn’t be beholden to if you were an undergraduate. So to some extent, you have a little bit more time to figure this out, but it’s also five years is a long time. It’s it’s nice to get that right, if possible. So the way I like to think about it, and I do it the exact same way that that you do is I like to project into the future. And usually there’s three different scenarios that students come up with. And between you and me, we love it when there is clarity, because it makes our job a little bit easier. That’s not always the case. As a 17 year old, and we try to bring that clarity to them and bring that refined thinking to them. Doesn’t always work out, but it’s nice to at least give it a try. So the three scenarios are, I ask them, What do you think you want to do post your guaranteed job for five years? Are you using this as a tactical move? Meaning you’re not, you’re not, you’re pretty sure you don’t want to be in the military long term, but you like the idea of going to a prestigious, quote, unquote, hardcore, total, immersive, high camaraderie, great reputation STEM related school for free, and then getting that job for five years. But you’re inclined to think that you’re going to get out of the military and do something else. So that’s, that’s what I call a tactical use, or a tactical vision of, I want to use this as a stepping stone. So then we think, Well, what do you think you might want to do after you get out? So I’ll give you an example. They might want to be a a mechanical engineer. They might want to go into the go to law school. They might want to be a CEO of a company sometime outside of the military. So their tactic is, let’s use the military as a stepping stone to help me further my career as a let’s call it a a an engineer for Boeing just to make it really practical. Yeah. So they say, I want to be an engineer for Boeing someday. I don’t need to do it when I’m 22 I can do it when I’m 27 and I want to, I want to, I want to use the service academy and then that job as a stepping stone. We call that a tactical use. So if that was the case, then I’d say, Okay, that’s pretty specific. You want to be an engineer at Boeing. So what I would probably suggest is, why don’t you go to the Naval Academy, which is very stem focused, and major in nuclear propulsion engineering, do really well in that in that major, then go to nuke Power School. Once you graduate, as part of your five year commitment, you actually get trained for up to 18 months. Then at the end of those five years, you become a nuclear submarine officer. That’s what you do as your, quote, unquote, your job for five years. Then you graduate. You you’re done with that five year job. You have that $120,000 in the bank now you’re a nuclear submarine officer with five. Years of real world experience, and you have that money in the bank, maybe you go get a masters, maybe you go get a PhD. You also have the GI Bill, which will pay for a lot, maybe not 100% of it, but a lot. Call it $30,000 worth of your graduate degree. So then you’re really cooking with gas. If you come up to me and say, I want to you, I’m a tactical person. I want to use this as a means to an end. I ultimately want to be an engineer for Boeing. That would be the path that I might lay out.

Lisa Marker Robbins 15:26

So that’s the student who’s like I put in the work in high school, which I built the self awareness, I built the career awareness. And I can be very targeted in my focus. I know you’re going to tell us about the next two groups, but I have a quick question for you Sure. So you mentioned, as you were speaking about, you know, if you have a STEM focus, that the academies are good for that. And you said, particularly, the Naval Academy is very stem focused. Do you have to be stem focused. Is there a place in service academies for other majors? Are there particular pathways that are known the different academies are known for, or particular focuses? Can you give us a little bit of that before we do these other two groups, sure,

Phil Black 16:19

typically from a from a 30,000 foot level. The Navy, Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy are typically more stem and tech focused. The Army a little bit less so. And then the Merchant Marine Academy and the Coast Guard Academy are stem focused, but they’re more certification, very specific certification based. They’re much smaller schools. So that’s a very broad so if you’re very stem focused, Air Force and Navy would probably be the ones. They have a lot of these STEM focused majors. Army cares a little bit less about the stem focused however. You know, in preparing for this, I did go through all of the majors and all the different academies.

Lisa Marker Robbins 16:57

Oh my gosh. Thank you, Phil. You’re like the guest superhero. Go ahead Well,

Phil Black 17:03

and what I’ve discovered, and I’ve been doing this for a long time, is that there’s a lot of overlap. You can be a philosophy major in the army. You can be a history major, like my son is at the Naval Academy. You can be a legal studies major. You can be a finance major in all the different academies. Now the emphasis is different. So if you look at if you look at all the majors strung out, it’s like 70% of them are STEM related, and then there’ll be some humanities related ones, and there’s usually seven, eight or nine of them. So there’s certainly a place for you. My older sons, who are Navy ROTC, one’s a history major, one’s a religious studies major. So that that’s unusual, because, again, there’s a smaller number of opportunities to major in those types of majors when you’re in navy or Air Force, but they are available. Okay?

Lisa Marker Robbins 17:50

So, I mean, I like that. I don’t that helps somebody who maybe is thinking about this idea go, Okay, I’ve got, I’m not tied into being an engineering or computer science certainly, there’s going to be more of those students coming out of the academies than other majors, but it doesn’t cut off that pathway right now, one of my former students who I worked with, she was one of my counseling clients. She went to West Point, and, you know, she had one of those more non traditional majors, and she’s got, she’s graduating now, and she has saved the money, and she’s going to law school. So, so, okay, I like making that point. And to your point too, with your other two sons who are in ROTC, you know, then you’re on a traditional and we’ll do another episode in the future with you on on ROTC, and when we have one in the past two that I will link to, but I think we can do a different angle on it. But you know, then you’re at a traditional four where four year university, who might have a broader scope of the majors. But it sounds like, because you’re the superstar guest, and you did all your homework, you found that there were a more of a variety of majors, even at the service academies. And even sounds like you expected,

Phil Black 19:11

yes, indeed, that’s, I

Lisa Marker Robbins 19:13

cool. Okay, I love that. Okay, so let’s go on to the next we have that tactical student who has certainty those that’s where my heart is. It’s like, oh, teenagers, let’s do this work. You’ll have better extracurriculars, you’ll have better outcomes. But if I’ve got a listener who’s like, Well, we haven’t done the work yet. We’re already a junior, what are our other two categories?

Phil Black 19:34

The other category is what I would call strategic, which is, I like what I’m hearing about the service academies, ie the prestige, the hardcore, the camaraderie, all those things, the leadership training that you get. But I’m not sure if I want to be an engineer at Boeing. I’m not sure if I want to have that specific goal. I want to keep my options open and the the career that I like to throw in as as the unsure is like an entrepreneur. Maybe you want to be a tech entrepreneur. Maybe you want to be you want to take over your family’s home business, whatever it might be. So how do I maximize my flexibility, given that I like the idea of that interim service academy and the job after but maybe I stay in the military. Maybe I don’t maybe I go into law. Maybe I become a yoga instructor. You know, what can I do then? So the advice there is, what do you think you might want to do? And then you can, you can gage your major or the community that you go into, into basically your best guess. So for example, for somebody who says, I want to be in business, probably entrepreneurship, but I don’t know if it’s going to be on the tech side, or I want to be a professor of business in a business setting, or business school or something like that. So you could potentially go to West Point and be a finance major and go into the finance core community. In that case, it’s not super stem. You’re learning about finance and logistics and income statements and how to manage millions and millions of dollars for big organization like that. So you do your five years at West Point, you as as an Army officer. You’re in the finance core, using spreadsheets, manipulating budgets, things of that nature. And then when you get out, you still may not be sure what kind of entrepreneur is, but you’re certainly well equipped with financial terms and and just a background and experience and that type of thing, albeit in a in a government environment, in a military environment, but that gives you a good launching point to potentially go to a startup, go to a business and say, Hey, I have a lot of finance and business background, and now I’ve I’ve learned over the course of the five years being in the as an Army officer, I’ve learned that I like this direction or that direction. It basically that five year commitment, that guarantee job, it gives you more leeway to figure out what you might want to do. I mean, you and I would love it if you could figure that out in the four years of high school. Then they have the opportunity to do it four years in college, whether it’s at a service academy or not. Then once you have that job, it gives you another five years to further dig into. Do I like finance? Is this the direction I want to go into? So it extends that window of you thinking about it, doing some of the tests that you might give to some of your students, and further refining what you think your next step is.

Lisa Marker Robbins 22:17

I love that example that you just gave on the finance because you said, Okay, albeit your experience is with the military. But I make the argument all the time, like, if you’re wired, maybe on the numbers or the finance or whatever, every organization needs somebody in that role. So even if you’re you know you’re interested maybe in sports management, or you love sports, they need people in their organization on the finance side. So oftentimes that’s a way to kind of merge skills and passions, right? So you might have, and I find that you know passions are going to wane and develop and change over the years. At our ages, we know that for sure, and so what you’re passionate about right now might not be as a teenager, might not be what you’re passionate about at 30, but if you’re developing those skills, you can apply those skills in a variety of settings. So perfect example of like, okay, you did the finance thing. It’s related to the military. And now you’re going to figure out what industry you might want to apply that to. Is exactly one of the ways that I describe part of this process as well. So okay, I love that example.

Phil Black 23:30

Yeah, one other thing to jump on that Lisa is, not only is it the skills and the passion, it’s the experience. Yeah, you have five years of real world experience. You’re not guessing. At the end of four years of undergrad, maybe having having done an internship or two during the during the summers, you have five years of real work with real people, managing real issues, helping people with problems, solving different problems. So you should be accumulating more and more wisdom and more and more data points to make that leap into something that you’ve done. So it’s almost like, if you’re really unsure, like the people that we get, we get anxious about because they just don’t want to make a decision. Not only do you have those four years of undergrad, but then you have those five years afterwards to get that experience to further refine. As you said, Do I like finance or not? Even if I don’t like it. I’ve had five years of experience. I can certainly use that to figure out what I might want better.

Lisa Marker Robbins 24:26

So I want to talk about the service part in a second. But what is that third group that you teased up?

Phil Black 24:32

Yeah, the third one is the person who is the gung ho military person. And they say, I want to be the commanding officer of an air wing. I want to be a general. I want to be an admiral, and to some extent, that’s easier, because you can help them pick the service academy that maybe has the best promotional rate or the one that they can envision themselves doing. Some people will pick a service academy because they’re more familiar with it, or they’re one of the parents or grandparents have done it, or they have a friend who’s doing it, so there’s a familiar. 30 there. There’s also, of course, the geography of where you work. So if you’re in the Navy or the Coast Guard or the Merchant Marine Academy, you’re going to be on the water somewhere. Some people like that. I grew up on the coast. I’ll do anything as long as I’m attached to the water. Other people say, No, I’m from inland. I’m from the middle of the country. I don’t mind being a being an army officer and being in some landlocked place. And then, of course, the Air Force, you can go a lot of different ways. Typically the Air Force Bases aren’t close to the coast because they need a lot of space and they need a lot of area. So that’s one one other dimension. The other dimension is, what type of job do I want, potentially for those five years? Do I want to be in combat or not. I think the number for people who actually get to combat is like, 1% of the people who are military officers have to not only volunteer to be in a combat unit, but then have to be deployed in a combat status. So there may be some parents out there, my wife included, and me included, who are like, Wait a second. When I hear military I hear walking through the streets of Fallujah over IEDs, that’s you’re really your your son or daughter would really have to want to do that. In order to do that as as a military officer, there are almost infinite options to be, quote, unquote, away from combat if that’s what they want to do. Now, if you’re a seal or you’re a marine or an Army infantry officer, you’re electing to do that. You’re not being forced to do that. And that would be a whole nother issue if someone is that gung ho about it. But I want to make sure I dispel the myth it’s an automatic road to heavy combat, for example.

Lisa Marker Robbins 26:36

Yeah. I mean, the heart of us as parents and you and I are all my kids are adults. Now it’s like, oh gosh, that feels scary to us and like, and I do know a kid who ended up going into combat, but from the time he was in high school, he wanted to have a gun in his hand. He he had that passion for the military and taking action, and he was wired for that. We ran his Berkman personality assessment, because, honestly, his mom was like, Please, let’s do this work with you on the career piece so that we can get him, talk him out of this. But when we saw his wiring, it was a journey of like, kind of accepting how he was wired and whatnot and and I saw the family come together, and he’s gone on to do that, and he is safe, but he had to really want to do that. So okay, so you bring something up, and this is what I want us to kind of as our last section here that we’re going to talk about. We’ve talked a lot about your five year job, and we’ve talked as you were talking about the gung ho military person. You talked about, like, the desire to go and raise your hand and say, like, I want to do this. So we’ve gone through the four years of undergrad. What does that mean, job wise, like, do you get whatever you want? How does that work, as far as what job you’re going to get to do when you’re serving for the five years when you’re coming out of a service academy.

Phil Black 28:04

Yeah, it varies a little bit by branch, but typically it matters where you rank in your class. So if you rank number one in at the Naval Academy or West Point, you pretty much have your your choice of whatever you’d like to do. Do you want to be an aviator? Do you want to be a nuclear submarine officer? You pretty much have your pick. The person who graduates last probably does not have their number one pick. So I always, I always say, you know, I never try to fast talk somebody into doing this type of thing, but I do tell them, if you don’t get the community that you want, are you going to be okay with I don’t want to, I don’t want to disparage any of the community jobs out there. There are some. Let’s call them less favorable officer jobs in the army, in the Air Force, and put a label on them, right? But let’s just say there’s one that that are, that are less popular than others, certainly the ones that are people think about, I want to be a jet pilot in the Navy would be great or or an aviator in the Air Force, whatever the case may be, there are other ones that are not quite as glamorous. So if you’re going to be okay if for whatever reason, you don’t rank as high as you want, or you don’t rank to the point where you get to choose your ship or your air station or the part of the country that you might might work in, and you’re going to be okay with that, then that’s where you go, understanding that this is a finite job, so if a fine a finite period of time. So let’s say the worst case scenario. You’re in the army, you wind up getting one of those less favorable jobs in a less favorable geography. That’s like the worst of the worst, right? Are you going to be okay with that, and is that still going to be worth the not paying for college, all those other things, those intangibles that we talked about, the leadership experience, all the money that you could potentially have accrued, all the experience, the little more leeway and figuring out what you want to do with your life, all those things might overcome that five year stint of maybe not being in the most prestigious job. We’re exactly on the coast that you want to be in. You have to be happy with that as well.

Lisa Marker Robbins 30:04

I like that question because, you know, it’s about opportunity cost, right? So would it be worth and it’s hard for teenagers, right? I mean, five years seems like forever, and at our age, we’re like, oh, that last five years went super fast. And so I like how you phrase that question. That would be a great question for any listener whose child is seriously thinking about this to ask themselves. And the answer might still be yes. You know what? I also what came up for me as you were saying that you said at the beginning, like, this is highly competitive to even get into a service academy. So now you’re already among the best. You’ve been accepted in and then in, and we have a previous episode on just the process of applying and getting in, but you were among the best, and now those people who have the best choices are the best of the best. Because even the last person in their graduating class was still among the best, right, right? So you got to keep working hard all the way through, right? Any parting thoughts or pieces of advice for our listeners as they sort of unpack this, and we’re going to go ahead and put in like if people are interested in working with you, you’re a great Instagram file follow, by the way, I I’m a follower. I think that’s where we originally met. And so, you know, even if your family is just starting to think about this, follow Phil, he’s got so much great content and information out there, but that would be my piece of advice to them. Any last piece of advice from you? Well,

Phil Black 31:42

the biggest piece of advice over the last 12 years of helping not only students with surface Academy ambitions or ROTC. I’ve worked as a traditional college counselor for 12 years as well, and people probably heard this before, but start early and start opening up your eyes to opportunities. Not feeling like, oh, I don’t want to think about the surface academies, because that’s too scary. If you think it’s at all in the realm of possibility, meaning your son or daughter is the big three, smart, athletic and interested in leadership. If they hit any of those three things, just keeping the mind open that you no commitment has to be made early on. None of those types of things. It’s it’s a little bit earlier than the regular admissions process in terms of getting interviews and nominations and all those types of things. So it starts a little bit earlier. I’m talking about opening up their mind in ninth and 10th grade to expose themselves, to educate themselves about what is ROTC, what are the service academies, slowly but surely, opening their minds such that when they get to 11th grade, maybe they position themselves with leadership opportunities, playing sports, doing opportunities over the summer, such that if that, if that flip, that switch gets flipped. And you and I know, we never know when that’s going to happen, when it actually sets in, and they’re like, Wow, I need to make a decision. And it turns out that they like this opportunity, or the financial situation is too much to look past that they’re not regretting that. Oh, I wish I had taken this a little bit more seriously back then. You don’t have to be the gung ho. I want to be top gun in ninth grade or bust. You can be the Hey. I want to keep this as one of many options. I don’t want to close any doors. And eventually, in 10th grade and 11th grade, as I learn more and more about it, maybe I start to refine my thinking and go for it, or maybe I’ve been I’ve been interested in something else that catches my passion, and I’m off to the races, but no harm, no foul, nothing that you’re going to do in the first couple of years of high school, preparing yourself for potentially your service academy or ROTC is going to harm you in any way. It’s certainly going to be just as beneficial whether you wind up going to a community college or a gap year or some other college.

Lisa Marker Robbins 33:47

I love that advice. And you know, more and more we’re hearing like you’ve just got to start early. I mean, we recently had a an episode on and this sort of relates, if you wanted to go to a traditional four year university and the professional pilots program. That’s one that you have to start really early as well. And there’s more and more paths that are like that, which is why my heart’s just to say, like, let’s get out there. Let’s be intentional, and let’s create the space to do the work. So Phil, we, for sure, are going to have you back on I know we want to talk about ROTC in another upcoming episode. So we’re gonna do that, and it’s servewell Academy, right?

Phil Black 34:24

Yes, that’s

Lisa Marker Robbins 34:25

your follow. We’ll have all of it in the show notes. Thank you so much.

Phil Black 34:30

Thank you, Lisa. It was a pleasure.

Lisa Marker Robbins 34:37

I hope this conversation with Phil Black has opened your eyes to the diverse majors and career paths available through military service academies. These institutions offer incredible opportunities that can shape your teen’s future in ways you might not have considered to take the next step. I encourage you to visit each service Academy’s academics page. I’ve listed them in the show. Notes so you can explore the majors offered and discuss them as a family making informed decisions now can set your teen up for success and ensure they graduate on time, fully prepared for the journey ahead. As Phil mentioned, we both know it’s possible to put in the work during high school, so your teen is what he calls a tactical candidate, someone who is informed and begins with their end in mind. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who might also have an interest in service academies, sharing, following the podcast, rating and reviewing helps us support more families in navigating the college journey. Thank you for listening to the College and Career Clarity podcast, where I help your family move from overwhelmed and confused to motivated clear and confident about your teen’s future. You.