What’s is like to be a 46R, 46Q, or 46S? Active and Reserves?

I've done both sides. I was 8th Army PAO in Korea and now DC Guard M-day. Active side you still PT and have motor motorpool and all that good stuff. You get asked out the mundane like promotion ceremonies to the extreme like DMZ exercises or best warrior competition. It is fun, but I worked a lot of weekends and long days. We coverage the event, then gotta go back and edit photos and video, review that stuff, post it.

The Guard is a lot the same...46S I think do more on a drill than other units...we do pretty much what I did on active.

It is fun because you see every job, you experience every job, and you make your fellow soldiers feel good by highlighting them. It can be a lot of work...we definitely work long hours if you do the job right.

I have many friends who have those MOSs, they enjoy it a lot. But I am also curious to hear from some 46 series

I was a 46R with the Idaho National Guard from 2012 til 2016. I technically have the 46S as a secondary MOS now, but as a signal officer I don’t have any public affairs duties. I can’t speak to the Active workday, but reserve component will largely depend on whether you are assigned to a public affairs office for say a brigade, vs being assigned to an MPAD.

First let me say I’ve always been a proponent for the idea that public affairs is the best and coolest job in the military. I had the opportunity to do more things than any junior enlisted soldier had any business to do, from sitting on a tank turret during live fire exercises, to following brigade leadership around the AO on black hawks, to spending a day with combat engineers, or mortar teams, or sniper teams, or Field Artillery Paladins.

I was assigned to a brigade public affairs shop so my work was centered around the units under my brigade. My average drill usually comprised of catching up on events from units across the brigade, coordinating with UPARs in those units and occasionally working with brigade leadership to produce and publish messages to the troops. (Think holiday messages).

Annual training was usually a sprint rotating between different units to capture the events and back to the brigade TOC to churn out reporter packages and produce a brigade newsletter. This changed slightly for AT that involved some sort of exercise like NTC as we had a “game” mission to actually coordinate press releases to the role playing media, and other duties typically assigned to PAO in a deployed environment.

I’m kind of word vomiting here so I’d invite you to connect with me or another 46 series offline and ask any questions you might have. All I can say is I loved every second of my time as a 46. The people I worked with were incredible, quirky, hilarious, and I would absolutely do it all over again if given the choice.