4. Don’t expect your classmates to respect your old rank, or even have any idea what it means
Sorry to say, master chief, if you tell your classmates your military rank, they are guaranteed to reply “just like Halo!” They have no idea what that means. This really isn’t as bad as it might seem. Remember how, once you woke up from the post-bootcamp haze, you realized that the work a service member does is only occasionally tied to the rank they wear? I’ll bet you’ve encountered lower enlisted members who worked miracles and higher-ranking NCOs and officers who could barely tie their shoes. In the civilian world, that means that if you can describe the work you did in the military, it goes a lot farther than explaining rank anyway. If you treated soldiers in the field, or got to steer an aircraft carrier, that means way more to a civilian than saying you were a specialist or a seaman.
Also, never tell them you were a seaman. They are 100 percent guaranteed to laugh. Heck, you probably still laugh about it too.
