LoveLife5 said:
Dear good members,
So my application is already submitted and cannot be edited online, and I am schedule for my CFAT in three weeks. I already sat down with the person and had him go through the entire application with me while confirming everything on it, just before he submitted it.
The question asked how many times I went to the USA, out of sheer laziness I put only once because I did not want to remember and write down every single time. During the in-person appointment, as he was going through my application, he asked me "You have been only once?" and I said yes.
I regret this horribly and want to be 100% honest. I do not know why I lied over such a stupid and trivial thing. One of the reasons I decided to join the military is to improve integrity and gain leadership skills. I have learned my lesson and will never do such a thing again.
What should i do? Is it too late to fix my mistake without getting penalized? I have not even submitted my Medical questionnaire or had a reliability screening. Should I just keep it to myself until I am asked about it, then come clean during then?
Thanks.
If your recruiting process is successful you'll quickly learn that the military is full of people who can smell BS a mile away. You'll get called on it pretty quickly and there's no shortage of people wanting to share their opinions with you, whether you want to hear them or not. Any number of mistakes in the workplace are expected and tolerated to a degree, provided they don't reoccur. But lying is its own bag entirely, regardless of how inconsequential the lie may seem. Then lying more to try and cover up the initial lie? Not a terrific start.
I'm not here to judge you in any way. I have no clue who you are or what your story is--And we
all have a story. But the general rule of thumb in many instances is that if someone is going to lie about something small, then they're going to lie about something big. You said it yourself--there was no reason to lie. Would you have looked stupid for a second after the individual confirmed "...only once?..." and then you told the truth? Yes, you would have. And the individual may have even quickly formed their own opinion about the matter and/or about you. But then the situation would've been over. Instead, you're now obviously suffering from a guilty conscience and asking strangers on the internet if you've screwed the pooch and what to do about it. (And so, be prepared to maybe read some things that are upsetting.)
Do I think you're done and can't continue on with the process any further? No I don't, but it's not up to me. Do I think you're going to lie about something inconsequential again in the future, application or otherwise? Yup, I do. And this is why--If you can't identify
why you told such a silly fib in the first place, something you knew at the time could affect outcomes negatively, and/or you simply weren't expecting to be called on it and/or thought it wasn't a big deal, and clammed up?--then it's going to happen again until you can address and correct the root cause. As you mentioned, there was absolutely zero reason to lie on the application about something so trivial. Laziness isn't an excuse. The initial lie was one thing, but it's the lie again afterwards that I have reason to question.
Take Jarnhamar's advice, and in the mean time figure out how mature you are and how you want to be viewed going forward. Is placing your ego, or possibly being judged negatively above the worth of how you want to be viewed as an individual in the long run? I hope not, because trust is paramount to your relationship with your military counterparts. You won't like everyone and not everyone will like you--But you have to be able to trust each other.