Hey guys,
I have passed my PAST test, and I am just waiting for my shipout date. I am going PJ, but I am having some second thoughts. The more i read about CCT, the more I think i want to go that route. Can anyone give me some insight into both of these careers, to help me make my final decision. I know I can make it through both of these careers..I am physically and mentally ready for the challenge. I just want to make sure I'm going into the correct field. Your thoughts/comments are appreciated.

There is a ton of info on both of the carrier fields on these forums and around the net from reliable sites.

Maybe ask your recruiter or your ST liaison for a phone number to contact both a CCT and a PJ so you can have an actual conversation with them. Maybe that will help. When it gets right down to it only you can make the choice. For me its simple I want to be a PJ, but if SOWT comes up first I would be more then happy for it. Maybe do something like that, Have your first choice but then have a Second choice too, then what ever one comes up first go for it.

Best of luck
Wil

BigD21,
I'm not at all sure why you think you "Know" that you can make it in either of these career fields considering that 75% or more of the guys who try out for these jobs DON'T make it, and you don't even know enough about the jobs to determine which suits you. However, it doesn't really matter what you know before hand, only how much heart you have when you are in the training.
Do a search of the forums. Read the job descriptions on the home page. And ask yourself if you want to save lives and enjoy medical stuff or if you would rather work with radios and airplanes and blow stuff up. They are both great jobs but only you can figure out which is right for you.

You are asking a personality/behaviorism question rather than a difference of performance of duties question.

A person being both rational and intuitive-motional in both performance and behavior (attitude, commitment, conviction, tenacity, determination, steadfastness, flexibility, courage, hardiness). This is the characteristic way a person thinks and behaves in adjustment to his or her environment. This includes the person’s visible being there performance contribution to efforts to get something done and the unconscious characteristics that puts quality of effort and both reliability and dependability behind performance. Thus high level of performance is expressed by application of the following formula: Performance = Ability X Motivation. Pararescue expresses this formula with the Indoc mission statement of “Quality not Quantity”.

The aspiring Pararescue applicant soon learns it is not the number of sloppily performed pushup that count, but the number of in proper form push ups that count. Proper form of high numbers comes with practice, practice and practice. Once through all required training and operational mission ready to perform duties, readiness to be there includes practice, practice and more practice is not so optimal training conditions. It means you go into the field when the weather is nasty or do full equipment parachute jumps on the darkest nights with not so gentle winds and perhaps into the ocean with not so gentle sea state and not so warm waters.

These character traits are difficult to train into a person and although people can be trained in a specific skills, there is a quality of performance not everybody has that is required to be there performing when morally and ethically nobody in authority has the authority to order duties to be accomplished. This is part of the reasoning Pararescue and CCT requires members holding these AFSCS and performing duties of these AFSCs to be volunteers.

Recent Air Force Times article discloses picking airmen who can survive the demands of the training would be hard enough if level of physical capability (PAST) was the only performance requirement. It further mentions “The biggest challenge is not something we can fix here”. This is indirectly stating the Air Force lacks the time and money to train people who are lacking character traits to do the job. This same article discloses an imminent added testing that will provide an Emotional Quotient Indicator that will give recruiters a sense of how well those seeking a GTEP for Pararescue or CCT will do quality wise in training (least prone to self eliminate).

Considering your second thoughts and the quality similarities CCT and PJ AFSCs share as a requirement to perform duties, I suggest if you are having second thought of one, you are expressing second thoughts of the other.

The diffidence to be there prticipating in the full line of duty is what distinguishes PJ/CCT/CRO/STO from the typical enlisted and commissioned airman.