<p>What courses you take (or at least, those you can choose) depend on many factors.</p>
<p>Here are some examples:</p>
<p>1) The guy who takes the heaviest courseload of the hardest courses he can find because he wants to excel. Admirable. Also fraught with risk, but as with so many things in life, the good stuff requires risk to be attained.</p>
<p>2) The guy who goes into poli-sci in order to ensure a high GPA because he wants to go aviation, only to have his eyes go bad on him and have to go SWO anyway. Now he’s stuck with a major he can’t do anything with that he’d want to do for a living.</p>
<p>3) The guy who studies something he likes and gives it his all. Depending upon effort, he either succeeds wildly, fails miserably, or falls somewhere in between. If he gets his service selection, GREAT! If not, he still has a marketable major he can fall back on.</p>
<p>I always recommend that people go with Option 3, and that they take as many courses as they WANT without risking everything by overloading. It is also why I urge people to validate courses, but to think carefully of the possible consequences.</p>
<p>There is no set formula. Each person is different, with different career aspirations, academic ability, personal discipline, and interests. The bottom line is that they need to remember that the decisions they make now will reverberate throughout the rest of their lives (whether they stay military or not), and as such they need to be very clear on what they are doing.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>
<p>Oh! I just remembered an applicable anecdote!</p>
<p>When I was getting out, I went to a fair put on by one of the better-known headhunting firms that specialize in placing Junior Officers coming out of the military (Did you know there were such places? I didn’t at the time, but there are! Several, in fact!). </p>
<p>At the fair, this one officer (a pilot) was getting out, and went up to ask the recruiter what he could do to help him find a job in Corporate America. </p>
<p>The recruiter asked him “What did you do?”</p>
<p>“I was a pilot.”</p>
<p>“How many direct reports did you have?”</p>
<p>“Just a few.”</p>
<p>“What was your major?”</p>
<p>“Music. I wanted to fly.”</p>
<p>“Sorry. I can’t help you.”</p>
<p>Never, EVER, find yourself in that poor man’s place. He had not supervised any significant number of people, and his major was worthless. For whatever reason, he could no longer fly. Now he was in a pickle because he bet everything on a hard six and ended up with snake eyes.</p>
<p>Think about it.</p>