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Sara Pickup, who has participated in ROTC for eight years, will be commissioned in June as an ens

Sara Pickup has been participating in some form of ROTC since she was a freshman in high school.

Now, after eight years in both Junior ROTC in high school and Navy ROTC at UCLA, she is awaiting her commissioning. The ceremony, to be held on June 25, will mark Pickup’s official entrance as an ensign into the U.S. Navy.

“I always wanted to be in the Navy,” the fourth-year anthropology student said. “I got interested when I was around the age of 13 or 14, and it was mainly that I could never see myself sitting behind a desk or not doing something that would be impacting the world.”

Cory Jobst, a fifth-year history student, has no ROTC experience. But he recently applied for Officer Candidate School to enter into the U.S. Marine Corps in October in hopes of someday becoming a pilot.

He too, if accepted, will be joining the ranks of those in the armed services, and while he does not have years of experience under his belt, his future lifestyle will be similar to that of the others coming from the ROTC if he is accepted.

“When I left high school to go to college, I did not know that I would go into the military,” Jobst said. “It was only within the last few years, with the experience of working in the real world, that I figured out when and where I want to go.”

By the time Jobst said he had decided he wanted to join the military, it was too late to join the ROTC, but he is now determined to join the armed services. He said if he is not accepted into the program for this October, he will continue applying until he is able to go.

Pickup is one of the 11 students graduating and being commissioned this year from UCLA’s Navy ROTC program. In addition to the students from the Navy program, Army ROTC is commissioning 14 students this year and Air Force ROTC is commissioning eight students.

These students, upon their graduation from college and commissioning as officers in their respective military branches, will no longer be members of the civilian world. Their futures, or at least the career paths they will take for the next couple years, are written.

But these students know what is coming, at least in part. They have been participating in the ROTC program for at least two years, sometimes four or more, and they committed long ago to devote the next several years of their lives to the military.

The reasons are varied for why some students join ROTC from the beginnings of their college careers and others wait until after they graduate to apply to go into the military.

“There are some people who have always had that dream of being a pilot,” said Jason Penny, the public affairs officer for the Los Angeles Navy Recruiting District. “That is the path they pursue from the get-go, so they set out that path for themselves. Those are the folks in ROTC.”

One of the added advantages of this route is that students have already begun to adjust to the military lifestyle before they are actually commissioned into the military.

“When you go through (OCS) you do not have that exposure to the military, the leadership, the stress, the traditions, and you have to change from the civilian to the military life,” Penny said.

ROTC also gives students additional years of training in leadership skills through the courses they take and the structure of the group on the campus.

“They are arranged where they are in leadership positions,” said Maj. Matthew Parker, a Marines officer instructor in the department of naval science at UCLA. “They plan the training schedule, plan functions and athletic events. ... They get a little bit of a head start.”

But the decision not to join ROTC is usually not made on purpose. It is typically that, upon entering college, students have not yet made up their minds about what they would like to do, Penny said.

“I actually didn’t always have an idea that I would join the military,” said Gary Solyian, a fourth-year philosophy student who will be attending OCS in October next year. “I considered teaching in China, being a teacher or joining the military, and through UCLA, the hardships I’ve faced, it has led to this.”

Students who do not do ROTC are not necessarily at any real disadvantage, except perhaps for the years of experience, Penny said.

“After graduation, ROTC students are commissioned as ensigns,” Penny said. “You are also commissioned as ensigns after OCS. ... As I understand, people who get commissioned within certain dates are part of a year group ... and there is no disparity between ROTC, OCS and Academy among the people in the year group.”

Solyian said that his family has a history of military experience, but his parents always pushed him to look at other career possibilities as well.

He searched, but Solyian said he finally settled on the Marines.

Not being in ROTC did have its advantages for Solyian because it gave him an extra flexibility to explore his options.

“Without the time constraints of ROTC, I can stay up late if I want to, I can party – there are no repercussions from a commanding officer,” he said. “I can also have a job outside and spend more time at school.”

But students who have participated in ROTC said they found that the benefits have outweighed the time commitment and added responsibility. Pickup said her ROTC experience was more than worth it, especially now with the knowledge that within a couple of weeks she will be a surface warfare officer stationed with a ship in San Diego.

“My college got paid for. ... I have a job waiting for me at the end of the tunnel,” she said. “ROTC doesn’t restrict you as much as people think. You can contribute as much or as little as you want to ... and when you are getting distracted in college, it always keeps you anchored.”