The night of the lottery, my fiance and I were in my student office at McArdle laboratories on the Wisconsin campus. When I realized that I had a draft number of 8, we burst into tears and sobbed.
My first reaction was that I needed to do something other than be in the Army. I was not a conscientious objector but was so opposed to the Vietnam War that I could not see myself in any role that involved killing. I applied to the Naval Weather Service since I was a meteorology major, and became excited about that as a possible career. The lottery also pushed me to apply to graduate school, something I had not considered before. In the interim, I was called for a draft physical, a very humiliating experience. I took the bus to Milwaukee and spent the night in the YMCA before reporting for the physical. I had a heart murmur but no Army doctor was going to hear it in the few seconds allocated for each candidate.
I then began the long process of appealing my physical using that as a way to stall my draft and either be accepted into the Navy or get to graduate school. I eventually did in fact flunk the physical just when I was beginning to like the idea of being a Naval officer and meteorologist. So this whole experience pushed me into graduate school which resulted in a Ph.D and eventually jobs in research and teaching.