I love the tradition, work ethic and the good ol’ badassness the marines have. Since I am a girl it’s not like I can be a SEAL or Green Beret. So being a marine is the closest I feel like I can get. Navy is my second choice.
At first I wanted to fly but I soon found out about the no air contract thing. Lately I have been looking into being on a MEU unit. It is my understanding (but I could be wrong) that not all of them are combat units and some do disaster and humanitarian work. Just don’t want to be sitting in an office all my life.
First let me say that enlisting IOT become an Officer is an incredibly circuitous path, that has a relatively low probability of success (by this I simply mean that many of the enlisted commissioning paths are quite competitive and have pretty small overall numbers). I would suggest that you don't let your recruiter/OSO get away with just saying "I'm not sure why it is the way it is." Make him get on the phone and figure it out, and if he won't, ask him who his boss is and make the call yourself. There is an answer somewhere, sounds like you need to dig for it though. (There is no way he will let you call his boss BTW, as soon as you even ask he will be on the phone for you)
Second, I am kind of curious about your motives for joining. What do you see yourself doing? The Marine Corps will not allow you to go into some of the combat arms MOS's, and the mission of the Marine Corps in general is dissimilar to that of both Green Berets and SEALS.
Even if you were a super-badass recon ninja warrior, as an officer you wouldn't be leading the bayonet charge with night vision goggles on, you would be leading the Marines under your charge to go do that stuff.
I think you should do some research on the subject as you might be dissapointed, office is a lot of times the root word in Officer.
Third, a MEU isn't a permanent MOS assignment, it is simply a unit that you can be in, either as permament personnel for several years, or as another unit attached to the MEU for a deployment cycle. There are an Aviation, Ground, and Logistics Combat Elements as well as a Headquarters Elements (this makes up a Marine Air-Ground Task Force). The MEU will do some training on many different missions, but when you go out there, you are ready for anything. Maybe you will do humanitarian assistance or civil relief, maybe you will be conducting a heavy kinetic assault someplace, or maybe you will just bob up and down on the ocean for 6-months, argue about whether Singapore or Australia was more fun, then go home.
Bottom line, keep researching what you want so that you can vector in your thought process. This will also help you know what questions you need to ask in order to find out what you really want (as right know you probably don't know what you don't know).
Fuck that was a novel.
