Pros
Coming out of fostercare I didn't really have the life skills necessary to be able to support myself the guard has more then helped me grow up and given me an opportunity to learn how to take care of myself... that doesn't sound like much unless you consider that 1/3 of u.s. homeless are post foster kids and as are 80% of the u.s. prison population... any way glad I joined wish I could have gone active but I had a extensive juvenile criminal record... the guard mellowed me out I've been to Iraq once completed my first year of college and am about to deploy to Afghanistan after witch I'll be out for good and head back into college to get my aerospace engineering degree...
Cons
Possibility of deploying if you don't want to. Also its hard... but not impossible, to use the national guard as a career
