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Well I'll have to tell you that military service for me was one of the very best things that ever happened to me.

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For one thing if you go through ROTC it doesn't matter whether it's Army or Navy, Marine Corps or the Air Force,

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you're going to have-.

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You will be in a program that will develop you as a leader

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and develop your leadership skills way beyond any other thing you could do in college.

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You know you can take a course on leadership and you can study it and you can discuss it in class,

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but that doesn't even come close to discussing it in class and then going out in the field and being in charge of a squad or a platoon,

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which is what you do in ROTC.

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So the primary impact on me was in development of my leadership skills

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and I like to tell people that some of the things that I do right now to this day in my job as vice chancellor

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are things that I learned in Army ROTC and that I learned on active duty.

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One of the great things about going through that program is that

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when you finish the program and you graduate from college you're going to be twenty-two, maybe twenty-three years old

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and if you go right on to active duty as a second lieutenant you're going to be given a responsibility

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that anybody else wouldn't have until they're in their late twenties, probably.

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I mean you're going to have a lot of responsibility.

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You're going to be in charge of a lot of people, a lot of equipment, and probably a good bit of money in terms of the budget.

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My point is that you'll get a higher level of responsibility at an earlier age than you ever would doing anything else,

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and that's one of the reasons why I really encourage students at NC State to look at ROTC.

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Then once you've gone on active duty then you're really going to be tested because your training is over.

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Your preparation is over and you're out there and you're in charge and you're in a real, live military environment

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and you've got to take charge and project your leadership skills.

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You've got to let the people who are in your unit know that you're the leader and you're in charge.

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Those are the main things that I learned in the Army.