With clips of jets buzzing off the end of aircraft carriers, sailors smiling, and pilots saluting from the cockpit. The rock music is blaring from your TV and you are sitting on the couch thinking, “That could be me. I could go and fly jets and love going to work everyday.” You get up, hop in the car and march right into the recruiters office and tell him “I’m ready.”

Everyone knows that this is a dramatization. Life is hardly ever as good as it is on TV or in the movies. You sign a contract to enlist and go to boot camp, get transformed into a sailor, and you go through schooling for your rate (job) and all the while you are wondering when you get to start actually doing your job.

Once you get to your ship, which will be your home, work, and your life for the remainder of your enlistment, you realize why the Navy says accelerate your life. You have just spent a lot of time going through schooling and training, earning college credits, and  beginning your career. You bypassed the traditional college experience, for now at least, and you have the chance to finish your degree for free while you do your job.

The Navy accelerates your life by helping you become a mature, professional, contributing member of society. You bypass many of the traditions that most of your friends from high school experience and trade them in for a whole new set of traditions: customs and courtesies of the military. When you return home and call everyone sir and ma’am and your friends are wondering what happened to you, you can just say with a smile ”The Navy. It accelerated my life.”