Tailspinner said:
Still not sure how all this works. Start with one term as noble, followed by a number as academic, and end with a number as professional. Do I need to come up with general or specific areas of study/work. How specific? Possibly end with a term in the military. Military research if that works.
That much switching around might work to your disadvantage. You can have up to seven terms of service, which each last four years, and your start those terms at age 18.
Military classes(Except scouts), by rule, have to come first, although after you gain a class level and serve one term of military service, you could take your next class level as a noble or professional or academic, while still carrying on in the military as your profession.
The most technical of the services (which would allow you to begin accumulating ranks in Technical skills) are Scout and Navy, although marines and Army have access to a couple technical skills.
If you want to be a pure researcher, you may do better by attending University (and getting a bachelor's, master's or doctoral degree), and then a couple terms and class levels as an Academic.
If you want to be active, doing military research in the field, start off in the military(and university still might be a good choice afterwards), but you'd follow it with a couple terms and class levels in Professional.
With your 14 SOC ability, Noble isn't as much of an option as I'd thought - 16 SOC is generally required to multiclass into it. You could start out as a noble, but that would preclude both military service, and fully effective university attendance
If you want a military researcher, I'd start off by going as far in whicever service you want, maxing out your technical skills, and then start a professional career, taking levels in professional at the same time. Whether you want to attend university somewhere in there after leaving the military is up to you.