This is the world's number one Air Force. There is no other, all others flee when
the U.S. Air Force shows up. The first thing required of an Air Force officer
is leadership. Our task, our responsibility is to defend that flow. To
fight and win the nation's wars when it's required. If there is anything most
special about the Air Force beyond the responsibility to defend the country, it's
watching your people succeed. How far you go is determined by the quality of your
effort. Doesn't matter where you were born or your parents' names or how much
money you had or any of those external factors. The U.S. Air Force doesn't care
where you came from, it cares about where you're trying to go. I'm Christian Lewis,
1st Lieutenant in the United States Air Force. Hi I'm Carl Jackson. My name is
Captain Anthony Pickett. I'm Captain Lisa Wilson. I am an electric engineer. I'm
Colonel Monalisa Tucker. I'm the director of communications at headquarters Air
Education and Training Command. Major General AJ Stewart. I'm the commander of
the Air Force Personnel Center here in San Antonio, Texas. Growing up with a
single mom, I knew that one of the best ways to get out of that sense of poverty
was to excel in academics and education. That seemed to be the ticket out of that
environment. Not many of my brothers and sisters actually went to school beyond
high school and I was the first one to actually go to a four-year institution
and graduate. Some teachers and counselors realized how well I did in
math and science and they tried to kind of push me toward the hard sciences and
engineering and that's what stuck. Ever since I was
a little kid, I've dreamed of being an Air Force officer, more specifically
being in space as an Air Force officer. Because I wasn't that familiar with
military service and it wasn't you know readily apparent that I was gonna be
going to the Air Force, I just kind of thought I'd prepare myself
for going to college. There are multiple paths to becoming an officer in the Air
Force. You can come through Officer Training School, known as OTS,. You can come through
ROTC: Reserve Officer Training Corps or you can come through the United States
Air Force Academy. With a commission from any of those sources, you are an Air
Force officer. I got a world-class education. You cannot
beat the academic education that the Air Force Academy provided to me. It's an
interesting thing about the Air Force Academy, they weren't looking for
necessarily the 4.0 student or the all-American; they were looking for a
combination of both. They were looking for the whole person. Graduating from the
Academy, almost every career field in the U.S. Air Force was open to me. You
can't become an officer in our Air Force without that college degree. We expect
our people to seek education, enlisted and officer. We expect them to seek
higher education as a matter of course. I picked up a scholarship while I was
in college at Tennessee State University.
They've also paid for a master's degree, I'm pursuing a second master's and it's
all because of some of the benefits that have been afforded to me in the Air
Force. We are very selective about who gets to wear this uniform. It never
ceases to amaze me that people will want to come up to me and talk to me and to
thank me for my service and again, I'm humbled by the fact that they would do
that. And even your peers that you went to high school with and they
see you now, you know, wearing the uniform and kind of being successful and
accomplishing something, that they're thanking you and they're even telling
you how proud they are of you and you know I wish that I had maybe
consider that when I was, you know, when you were doing that at the time. So it's
just a great feeling. Today joining the Air Force and becoming an officer is highly
competitive. We take America's best and brightest.
That's who we're looking for. In order to become it, one of those officers, you need
to be a standout performer from high school and college, frankly, to be given
an opportunity to join our ranks as an Air Force officer. You have every
opportunity in the world, you just work hard and have a lot of enthusiasm about
whatever it is you're doing. There is no ceiling. Not once in my 30 years have I
ever been denied an opportunity, have I been discouraged. Work hard and
opportunities will open up to you. Pick what you want to do and go for it.