AskTOP wel­comes Kara to the edit­ing staff.

I try my best to be a bringer of good news. Fortunately for all of us, I have that fine priv­i­lege today. The AskTOP edit­ing staff has grown by one.

On board with us this Spring is the tal­ented Kara Faulk. Kara comes to us as an intern from Athens State University where she is work­ing on her English degree. She is off to New York later this year to break into the big city pub­lish­ing scene, but we have her for now and we are putting her straight to work.

What does this mean to the AskTOP com­mu­nity? More high-quality Army lead­er­ship mate­r­ial for you to ref­er­ence on the job, share with your col­leagues, and argue about at the water cooler. Welcome, Kara! We are glad to have you on board.

Hello friends. Visitors this week­end may have noticed that we had a brief inter­rup­tion in ser­vice on Sunday. It looks like our host sus­pended us because we were ham­mer­ing their data­base server. We were over­due for some data­base opti­miza­tion and we should be back up and run­ning fine now.

We will be work­ing on some script­ing and caching improve­ments that should help us avoid issues like this in the future and maybe even speed up page load times a lit­tle for you guys. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

After months in devel­op­ment, today marks the offi­cial launch of the AskTOP Arms Room. We have com­piled what we believe to be one of the largest col­lec­tions of free down­loads for U.S. Army lead­ers avail­able on the internet.

Visit the new AskTOP Arms Room and let us know what you think!

We have over 3,000 doc­u­ments avail­able for down­load right now. All of the docs are cat­e­go­rized by type of media (Forms, Manuals, Clip Art, Memoranda, etc.) and they are search­able. You can also vote doc­u­ments up or down to adjust their plac­ing in our “Best of” list­ing with­out even log­ging in to the site.

We wel­come you to come take a peek at this new cor­ner of the web­site and let us know what you think! We appre­ci­ate your feedback.

We just uploaded a new wel­come video to the site. Check it out and let us know what you think. This is our first attempt at pub­lish­ing video for AskTOP. We plan to make more videos in the future. We have been play­ing around with the idea of putting together an Army lead­er­ship inter­view series where Mark speaks with mil­i­tary lead­ers about the strug­gles they faced as they were climb­ing up the ranks and what they did to over­come those challenges.

There is more than one answer to any lead­er­ship ques­tion. That’s why we rely on an entire panel of Subject Matter Experts to help answer your ques­tions. I think an inter­view series like this would allow us to share even more view­points with Army lead­ers every­where. What do you think?

Would you like to see more video con­tent on AskTOP? How about a video inter­view series with lead­ers from across the ser­vice? Sound off and let us know how you feel!

The Army, like any orga­ni­za­tion, must react and adapt itself accord­ing to chang­ing out­side con­di­tions. We are now enter­ing a part of the cycli­cal lifes­pan of the U.S. mil­i­tary called a draw­down. What does this mean to Soldiers? Simply put, if you have com­mit­ted an unfor­giv­able sin such as: DUI, drug use, lying, cheat­ing, or steal­ing you will have to work very hard to be retained.

New Army reten­tion guidelines

The Army has laid out a series of new reten­tion rules effec­tive 1 March 2012. Soldiers who have a poor eval­u­a­tion report on file will not be eli­gi­ble to reen­list. What does poor mean? Here’s a list of all the symp­toms of a poor NCOER:

• NO entry in the val­ues section
• Senior Rater rat­ing of 4 or 5
• Relief for cause report
• Overweight
• APFT fail­ure
• AWOL 96 hours or greater
• Failure of a ser­vice school
• Use of drugs
• Alcohol related inci­dents that resulted in some form of pun­ish­ment or admin­is­tra­tive action like an Article 15 or let­ter of reprimand

How can you sur­vive the drawdown?

If you are barred to ren­lis­te­ment, were involved in a sig­nif­i­cant act of mis­con­duct, or received a poor eval­u­a­tion report chances are you will be fac­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of either denial of reen­list­ment or sep­a­ra­tion from ser­vice. So what can you do?

Find help

Step one: I highly rec­om­mend that you seek legal guid­ance from JAG. Also con­sider the pos­si­bil­ity of request­ing assis­tance from a civil­ian attor­ney who spe­cial­izes in mil­i­tary law. These con­sul­ta­tions tend to be rather inex­pen­sive but the infor­ma­tion you gain may prove price­less if it leads to sav­ing your career.

Request an excep­tion of policy

If you want to fight for your job, you can apply for an excep­tion to pol­icy for reen­list­ment. To do this you need to show your chain of com­mand you have learned from the inci­dent in ques­tion and you are a stel­lar Soldier. Even then you will most likely face dif­fi­culty as the goal is to reen­list only those Soldiers who have shown the abil­ity to per­form to stan­dard through­out their enlist­ment with­out becom­ing involved in misconduct.

Prepare for civil­ian life

If you do not secure an excep­tion of pol­icy, you will need to come to grips with your new real­ity. There is a lot of work to be done before you sep­a­rate out of mil­i­tary ser­vice. Find your sep­a­ra­tion date. If you will not be allowed to reen­list you may have one-one and half years to pre­pare for your ETS. This will allow you to be well pre­pared for tran­si­tion to civil­ian life. JAG and your local REUP NCO can help you iden­tify the ben­e­fits you will be enti­tled to accord­ing to the type of dis­charge you are being sep­a­rated under. Read more about prepar­ing for civil­ian life.

Serve your country

Remember, you must con­tinue to be a pro­fes­sional Soldier. Just because you are mov­ing away from mil­i­tary ser­vice does not mean that you are no longer the per­son you were while on active duty. If you have bumped heads with your chain of com­mand in the past, this is the time to Soldier up and be a pro­fes­sional. Your chain of com­mand can be of great assis­tance in help­ing pro­vide a pos­i­tive envi­ron­ment dur­ing your sep­a­ra­tion experience.

You will likely find that your chain of com­mand has empa­thy for your sit­u­a­tion and wants to do every­thing they can to ease your tran­si­tion. Do not spoil this oppor­tu­nity by being unpro­fes­sional and caus­ing trou­ble. This will only hurt your cause and poten­tially result in a loss of fur­ther benefits.

Keep mov­ing forward

Do not allow your sep­a­ra­tion from ser­vice to color your view of life in a neg­a­tive man­ner. I have served with numer­ous indi­vid­u­als who sim­ply amazed me by grow­ing where they were planted. They made the best of the sit­u­a­tion and achieved great things through pos­i­tive atti­tude, will­ing­ness to learn, and hard work. Separation is not the des­ti­na­tion, it is only a stop on the jour­ney of life. You choose where your final des­ti­na­tion will be… Get involved. Choose it, and work to achieve your goals.

Best of luck in your civil­ian endeav­ors. Thanks for your ser­vice to this nation.

Additional Reading

• “New Army reten­tion stan­dards take effect, more to fol­low” [link]
• Policy Message 12–02: “Reenlistment Options and Window” [link]