Early in 2002, after returning from my second tour in Iraq I decided that a full time military career was no longer in my future. I made the decision that I could not be sent on another tour to Afghanistan or Iraq and leave my family again. I had enough of the bureaucratic society of the military, and decided that I could do better in the civilian world where I had heard that things were moving toward the old management styles. I needed some stability that I thought I could get as a civilian, and I wanted to make my own decisions about my life that would not be guided by military rules and regulations. I had become fed up with living in the military life all that attributed to that life. I thought going from the active duty to the civilian sector would be easy, but little did I know that I was totally wrong. The adjustment from active duty military life to civilian life was one of the biggest challenges that I had to overcome because of the following: the military provides structure, a steady paycheck with health benefits, and military soldiers receive perks when they live in a military town. A major contribution that the militarygives their soldiers is structure. Many decisions that had to be made in my life were guided by the military rules and regulations. The military even had a major effect on the personal decisions that I had to make. For example, if I wanted to go out of the town for the weekend I had to get approval from the military. On Friday afternoons right before we were done for the day our Commander would come down and talk to us about drinking and acting inappropriately during the weekend. If I decided to get a second job or take some continuededucation courses there was specific rules that had to be followed in order to do activities outside of the military. For many young soldiers this type of guided discipline was needed in order to keep them out of trouble and help them make good decisions. For me, the military rules helped keep me out of...