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Story Time I made an AMA a couple weeks back about being an MTI in the USAF & I had someone PM me asking about my experience in the military & just asking for info on what it was like joining the military with a stutter. He seemed pretty amped up about my response, so I added a little bit of an intro & pretty much copy-pasted what I replied to him with. Hopefully others will read this & gain some inspiration, or at the very least find it relatable. I'm 29 years old & have stuttered since forever. As many of you can probably attest to, childhood wasn't exactly fun. Going through school (more so elementary & middle), getting made fun of & laughed at was pretty much par for the course. I didn't make friends very easily & felt like everyone was an asshole just waiting for me to give them an opportunity to fuck with me. So I went silent. I didn't say anything unless I absolutely had to & lived in a constant state of fear that I would be in a position where I was forced to say ANYTHING in front of anyone. As I got older, into my early to mid teens, I became a little bit more accepting of it. When I say acceptance, I mean it in more of a depressing context in which I understood that I would never leave a normal life, have a girlfriend (much less a wife haha), or have a job that could even remotely be considered decent. I was destined to suffer my own isolated, socially withdrawn company and be mute for the rest of my miserable existence. Fast forward a couple years & I decide I'm not going to just give up on myself like that. I find some people (that I can stand to be around for more than 5 minutes) who don't care that I stutter. We become pretty good friends & party & do stupid shit together. I think this is the point in my life where a little seed was planted & I start feeling like I'm not destined to be miserable. While my current situation is fun, there isn't really a future if I stay on this path. I think about what I would realistically want to do with my life. I've always loved computers, I'm a huge nerd. Going through years of college & then HOPING to get a job in the IT field isn't super appealing to me though, so I look at all of my options, even options I thought were never on the table for me. The Air Force has computer jobs available, so I look into it, go into a recruitment office & after several months of waiting get a guaranteed job as a 3C0X1, Communications-Computer Systems Operator. The plan is to do my 6 years & get the hell out with a nice resume, bachelor's degree, & IT certifications since the military was never really an appealing career to me for whatever reason. When I joined The USAF almost 10 years ago, my stutter was much worse than it is today. I didn't have the confidence in myself that I do today, & felt like I would get kicked out if they figured out I had a stutter. Much like the rest of my life up to that point, I tried to hide it. I've since learned that there is nothing worse than trying to hide it. Anyway, I was able to mostly hide it & went on to graduate BMT (general military adaptation) & tech school (your specific job's training). My job is mostly like any other typical IT job where I spend most of my time at a desk troubleshooting network & server issues, but also branching out into many other aspects of IT as well depending on the specific job. For the first year or so, I was always a little bit weary that having a stutter would somehow get me kicked out or prevent me from succeeding, but I've yet to experience that. The opposite has been the case for me in fact. I've only been in for 9 years & change, but already have a projected promotion to Master Sergeant (E-7), which is really fast. Being selected as a Military Training Instructor is also not something they give to just anybody, as the Air Force is extremely selective with who they pick for that special duty. Upon receiving notification that I was selected to become an MTI, I went back into that mindset of thinking I couldn't do it because I stutter, as I had so many times in the past. Long story short, I do all the preliminary stuff (to include a speech evaluation that I passed, which was little more than reading a long-ish paragraph) that needs to happen before I can even be authorized to move to Lackland AFB to attend MTI school. I happened to be having a good day when I read that paragraph, so it wasn't a problem & you would never have guessed I had a stutter. Throughout this whole process I have this nagging feeling in the back of my head that they're going to tell me I can't do it because I stutter & I'll have uprooted my family & wasted everyone's time & money for no reason at all. This was the most stressful point of my professional life by far, so naturally my stutter was worse than it typically is, only adding fuel to that mental fire already going on in my head. So I'm at Lackland AFB now & I'm spending time in the BMT training squadrons & just trying to become as familiar with everything as I can while I wait for my class start date to approach. At some point around here, while waiting for my class date to come, something clicks & I have a bit of a revelation if you will. I've never been an MTI. I have no idea whether I can do it or not, so why the hell am I telling myself I can't? It's the school's job to determine whether or not I've got what it takes to become a successful MTI, so I'm going to make them do their damn job instead of doing it for them. I could be the best god damn MTI in the known universe for all I know, but I never will be if I maintain my current attitude. At this point I decide I'm not going to disclose the fact that I stutter upon introducing myself like I typically do, but I'm also not going to hide it either. About 3 or 4 days into the class, I've already had to do several briefings to my classmates & instructors. After one of my briefings, my instructors come up to me & want to speak privately. I know what this is about. Here it comes, they're going to tell me this isn't going to work out & I'm going to be kicked back to my old job. They ask me if I have a speech impediment & I casually tell them that I do, as if it's no more notable than water being wet or the sky being blue. We have a conversation & it ends with them letting me know that they've never had an MTI student with a stutter, so they're going to let leadership know just so everyone is aware since this is definitely an abnormal situation. I continue progressing through the class & have some really bad days (for me) with my stutter. Despite the fact that I stutter, I display that I'm capable of completing every task & requirement that is thrown my way. I go on to complete the 6 months of training & get moved to a training squadron where I will push actual flights of trainees through BMT to become Airmen. If you take nothing else away from this, it would be not to let your stutter determine what you do or don't do in life. If there's something you want to do, but you feel like you can't because you have a stutter, fucking do it. Go after it with everything you've got. If you try & it ends up not working out, at least you tried. Look for the next big thing you want to do & go after that. If it does work out, the confidence you will gain in yourself is valuable beyond words & will stay with you forever, truly affecting your life for the better. Even 3 years ago I didn't think it was even remotely in the realm of possibility for me to be an MTI. Honestly I never really wanted to be one either, so it didn't actually bother me too much haha. By proving to myself I'm capable of doing something that I honestly thought, no KNEW, was impossible, I feel like there is nothing I can't do & my fluency & confidence have absolutely skyrocketed as a result.