I went to Harrisburg, PA for MEPS (military entrance processing station). This is the next step in joining the Army Reserves or probably any branch of the military. I went to Harrisburg solely due to the fact that it's the closest to my home. You'll be with others and they will be joining all branches of the military as well. When I went down, I joined about 30 others. Most of us were Army. I think there were 3 Marines, 4 Air Force, and 1 Navy. I do not recall meeting somebody joining the Coast Guard.
I think the processing is usually split into 2 days. On day 1, you complete your ASVAB and day 2 is for the rest of the processing. My processing was the day before Christmas Eve. Christmas fell on a Wednesday which probably meant the schedule was a bit messed up. We did everything in one day.
The night before, you'll sleep at the Radisson in Camp Hill, PA. It's just a few miles from the MEPS station which is technically in Mechanicsburg. I went down in a 12 person shuttle with 2 other recruits. Others drove themselves and others were dropped off by their recruiters. It doesn't matter what time you arrive, you have to sit in the lobby until 4:00 pm. Please don't make the mistake of putting your feet on the furniture like I did. You'll soon learn that you're yelled at as you will be in boot camp. The part that sucks is you're being yelled by an old retired jerk with small penis syndrome. He's not military, he's just the hotel liaison for the recruits. He's black and speaks in Ebonics so you'll having a lot of trouble understanding most of what comes out of his mouth. Listen carefully!
At 4:00 pm, he will take you to the basement of the hotel in a special room just for the MEPS folks. There's video games, movies, and a laptop. First, you sign a paper stating the rules of your stay. The phones to your rooms are turned off and they ask that you do not talk to anyone or receive calls. Knowing that we all have a cell phone, he asked us to use discretion. I'm not sure why. Then he made sure that we understood there was another briefing at 8:30 pm that same evening, wake up calls are 4:15 am, breakfast is done at 4:45, and the bus leaves by 5:25. It's an early morning! He gave us our meal tickets and room keys. You will be roomed with another person. For dinner and breakfasts we could go up to the buffet as many times as we wanted but we were not allowed to waste food. The food was good. However, the servers in the dining room treated us poorly like we were already in boot camp.
We have to be in our rooms by 10:00 pm and they ask that lights are out by 11:00. I'm glad we were forced to go to bed early. The next day was really long.
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