This blog was written by a SkillBridge Intern at the Global SOF Foundation, SFC Dennis Moore. Dennis is retiring from Active Duty Service and working with the Foundation in his last six months of service to better prepare him for his civilian career!
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One of the great things that the Army offers when you are retiring is the chance to use the Skillbridge Internship. It’s an internship with a company that you feel will help you with transitioning out of the Military. For up to 6 months it allows you to still be on “active” duty and get paid, but do your actual work somewhere else.
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A Whole New World
Being a Skillbridge intern during a global pandemic isn’t something that I thought I would ever say I did, but here we are 6 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and I have found myself in this unique and rewarding position.
Learning an entirely new skill from the living room of my home hasn’t come without its challenges. Most mornings you can find me sitting at home in a makeshift office in my dining room — working, but also scrambling to mute calls because my newborn is crying or one of the dogs is wanting me to throw his ball (since he thinks that life is just about him all day everyday now).
Being an intern brings you back to the “FNG” stage of life. After 21 years in the Army, I felt that I somewhat knew what I was doing…then came this internship.
From day one I have been trying to read everything I can, sitting in on all the Google meetings, listening to virtual events. I’ve joined a meeting where everyone had a different type of helmet on their head and spent another figuring out all the different types of “F” words that Stu knows.
One of the difficulties of doing work virtually is that you lose a lot of reactions that come with normal, in-person communication. When you’re face to face you get to see the body language and facial expressions that really aide in effective conversation. But you can tell this team tries to do what it can to keep an open line of communication and still have fun while getting the work done.
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Growing My Network
I have already been introduced to so many people that I never thought I would meet from all different parts of the world–from France to Poland to Denmark. The amount of people in other countries that speak great English is amazing. I’m convinced now that everyone in the world learns English and then thinks their English isn’t that good…but it is.
With that being said, I’m grateful GSOF has brought me into their little family to let me learn, while also finishing up with the stuff that the Military still needs me to do.
Over the next three weeks I get the great opportunity to go to Hawaii to do one last Military mission. Hawaii sounds great, I know. And it is–I lived there for 8 years!
But right now there is a 14-day quarantine requirement…so for the first 14 days I will be sequestered in a hotel room. And I think I might spend that time trying to figure out what colleges Steve Jones really went to…
Thanks for reading, and I’ll be sharing more soon!