User blog comment:Griever0311/Ask A Marine/@comment-1260687-20100315230253

The SATs we took used a different scoring standard; I was a 1600/1600 (I guess we tied, I just had more opportunities to fuck up) with an ACT score of 31, an ASVAB of 98, and a GT score of 130. I'm pretty sharp as well, it's not just a "classroom education." But to answer your question, I joined for a number of reasons. I signed up with a number of friends from high school (I influenced them, not the other way around), partly because I wanted a sense of challenge, and maybe I was looking to be a part of something greater than myself; I understand how terribly cliche that sounds. I guess I thought I was joining for the same reasons anyone does, but at the time I was unable to understand the true meaning of the oath I took. It took some blood and sweat in the sandbox, fighting for the people beside me, and seeing the look on peoples' faces when I came home to understand what the oath really meant I was able to see that it wasn't a misguided sense of patriotic duty, or a love of adventure, or a bloodlust that kept me in the fight It was knowing that if anything big ever happened, that my country would need people like us to survive and thrive, people that were willing to lay down their lives to protect another against "all enemies foreign and domestic." I didn't know that then, but I do know.