This Week We Feature Young Professional Jaimez A. J. Stoutt
While growing up, our Young Professional for this week Mr Jaimez A. J. Stoutt was just the typical boy who lived a life of not giving too much thought of the serious things that matter. One wouldn't be wrong to say he was just ‘care free’.
But deep down in his heart Jaimez knew that he had to take his life in a positive direction as he didn’t want to be associated in the category of a society’s ‘bad eggs’.
“I was a young kid, I did some community college but I wasn’t mature enough or had the discipline to sit down in a classroom and listen to people because in High School you know they push you. If you don’t work they push you and when I came out of school I didn’t have that discipline. I wouldn’t do extra unless I was pushed at that stage of my youth life.
“I was the type of guy that was easily distracted so, before I went to the army school and college, it wasn’t really working for me,” he added.
Serving in Afghanistan
Jaimez then joined the US Army in 2009 having been recruited in the sister territory of St Thomas, USVI and was sent for training at Port Benning in Atlanta, Georgia. “That’s where I completed the basic training and my initial job training which was as a multi-signal transition specialist and from those two training facilities I went to Jump School where I learnt how to jump off planes to become a para-trooper.”
Following para-trooping school, Jaimez went off to his unit in Fort Brag 82nd Airborne. “It’s actually a really popular unit. It’s an American Guard. It’s the top para-trooping unit in the US army, it is well known and there I served the rest of my time. I did three and a half years.”
Our Young Professional was deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 where he spent over eight months bringing his contract period to an end. That was the time he made the decision not to continue in the army but rather to return home and enjoy working in a less restricted environment.
“I just wasn’t really into making the army a career. I wanted to do something different. I had so badly missed home and being among my people, being free to live. I didn’t like the limitations that the army had, it was a very good opportunity but I like a wind in the breeze because I like to be spontaneous and do my own thing when I have ideas. In the army you cannot do that,” he said.
Nevertheless, Jaimez is extremely grateful for what the US Army did for him as a person. “It actually taught me a lot about myself, physically it got me at the best shape I have ever been in my life and it has given me a lot of military bearings that I carry today and has made life a lot easier for me.”
He recalled one of the many benefits, “Now when I have to do things like surveying it’s like nothing because there were days in the army when I worked, there were days that I worked until I literally had nothing in me.”
“There I have also developed a high standard of discipline. In there, I learnt and dealt with a lot of people, learnt of different personalities and how to relate to those personalities, it has really made me a better person today.”
Employed at CCT
Today, Jaimez is one of the key men employed at the local telecommunications company CCT. He is currently employed as an Engineer but actually started off as a Customer Service Representative. “And that was last year February. Between then and now I was promoted about three times.”
Jaimez A. J. Stoutt has a strong love for the game of basketball. Almost every corner of the Virgin Islands (VI) would testify that they are familiar with him as he said that he would play on any team at any given time. Today he is a player on the Bayside Blazers, the champions of the Hon Julian Fraser Save the Seed League. He is expected to blaze the trail in this year’s edition of the tournament in August.
Jaimez is also very skillful with his fingers and, as an artist ‘on the side’, he designs and also loves doing drawings for tattooing.
Asked who his heroes were, Jaimez said he looks up to people who fight for what they believe in and for their rights, people the likes of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
“I have my mom and my dad. They might be different because of their personalities but one characteristic they both have, they have a real high drive. They set their goals and standards for themselves and they do whatever it takes to accomplish anything they put their minds to, which is a really good example for me, so I would always look up to mom and dad.
Advice to youth
In giving advice to the youth population of today’s society, Jaimez said it’s very important to listen to the older folks. “It may seem like they talking things that you might not want to hear but it’s always for the best and when you get older and you experience things you’ll see exactly what they meant or what they were implying to you. It’s always good to listen to somebody who has been through it before than just trying to win things. Experiences would teach you but it’s a long road when you learn before you understand.”
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