“I looked at everything. I looked at colleges, trade and technical schools, and all the branches of the military and decided the Marine Corps was my way to go,” Polaski said of his decision.

Polaski is currently in the Marine Corps’ Delayed Enlistment Program and is designated as a “Poolee.” This status means that he will be in the pool of new recruits that will attend one of the two United States Marine Corps boot camps this fall. He will attend boot camp in October at the Marine Corps’ Paris Island, S.C. facility. He anticipates graduating from basic training in January 2011. According to Polaski, individuals are only designated as a Marine once they graduate from basic training.

While basic training will be challenging, Polaski said he is looking forward to it. He also mentioned that there are a series of requirements than an individual must meet prior to even becoming accepted into the Delayed Enlistment Program. 

“To even become part of the Delayed Enlistment Program you have to do at least three to four pull-ups, 65 crunches, and a mile and a half run in 12 minutes and 30 seconds. It is really not that hard,” Polaski said.

To ensure that he is in the top physical condition, Polaski has been traveling to DuBois each Thursday to work out with Marine Corps recruiters.

“It is a program that I’ve seen almost exclusively with the Marines, but I’m not sure if the other [branches of the military] do it on a different night or not,” Polaski said. “Every Thursday all of the people in the Delayed Enlistment Program under that recruiting station go there and work out with the recruiters so the recruiters make sure they’re in the physical shape they need to be in to go to basics.”

He added that the recruiters also teach them Marine Corps knowledge that they will be required to know in boot camp.

Polaski added that he hopes to have a military occupational specialty (MOS) in either intelligence or counter-intelligence.

“I’m hoping to go for intel, but I haven’t made my final contract yet,” Polaski said. “We get three choices and they try to put us in our first. If they can’t then they try for the second and then the third. In the Marine Corps there is no guarantee that you’re going to get the MOS that you want.”

Polaski noted that he will be part of a long line of family members who have served in various branches in the United States military. One grandfather was in the Army while the other was in the Navy, his father served in the Coast Guard, and he has uncles who served in the Navy and Marine Corps. He credits the fact that military service runs in his family as one of the driving factors for his decision to join the Marine Corps.

“I sort of felt like I need to,” Polaski said. “In the generations before us there was always military people and then in our generation hardly anyone seems to want to join.”

In addition to finishing his senior year of high school, Polaski is also employed part-time as a cook at Merlins.