Interesting, hadn’t thought of that!

Also I’ll take any reason to eat greasy food.

I was on a giant aircraft carrier. Seriously, it didn’t move enough for me to get seasick! The only time we really had significant movement was going around the horn down under South America. And carriers don’t even do that very often. I still didn’t even get sick.

I get seasick and motion sick sometimes too, but on small craft or jerky things or reading in cars. That aircraft carrier never triggered it. I guess the smaller boats might have, definitely not a submarine since it was underwater…I think IF I’d had to deal with that, I would have invested in some dramamine at first and tried to ween myself off it over time.

Sometimes the gentle way the Reagan swayed would just rock me to sleep though. It was so nice!

georgy-konstantinovich-zhukov:

 ”Lt.(jg.) Harriet Ida Pickens and Ens. Frances Wills, first Negro Waves to be commissioned. They were members of the final graduating class at Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School (WR) Northampton, MA.”, 12/21/1944

There was one thing that I did that really helped me succeed in the Navy. And I’m passing this secret on to you…

Find the biggest hard-ass with the scariest reputation (who by the way most likely hates you) and align yourself with them.

In prototype, my advisor had the worst reputation for failing people, discouraging everyone, and probably crushing souls. But I went to him at every opportunity. I had my practice final board with him (you know, to see if I’d pass the final final board), and you know, the final board on nuclear power was SO easy after him, I just rattled off nuclear procedures and system specifications like nobody’s business.

Seriously, it makes your life easier later on to get a little ass-kicking at first!

So you want to “Join the Navy! See the world!”? If you joined the Navy, you would be deployed. Probably a lot. Even a shore duty post might be overseas! Most people considering joining would enjoy that, but seems to be the opposite of what you’re looking for…

Your best bet might be reaching out to a Marine spouse group or organization and see what they recommend—my limited understanding is that they try to help spouses with jobs, career paths, and other aspects of everyday life. There might even be facebook groups and whatnot to answer questions better than I can!

Interesting! Saw this article online today which featured a blurb about a new fall drama:

WILD BLUE. ER, The West Wing and Top Gun collide in this young ensemble about the working men and women on board a US Aircraft Carrier. Equipped with a 500 foot landing strip, a nuclear reactor and 6000 souls on board, Wild Blue is an upstairs/downstairs look at pressure-cooker lives of the US Navy. Will Rothhaar stars.

A few thoughts:

It’s TWO reactors, Entertainment Weekly writers, SHEESH! (Hmm unless they’re taking artistic liberties I suppose. Who am I kidding, it’s not like they’re going to have a nuke main character, it’s gonna be freaking airdales and pilots.)

I think it would work better as a comedy.

Last Navy show they tried to make got cancelled but we’ll see how this one goes.

As long as it doesn’t feature women wearing pony tails in uniform I’ll give it a chance!

Below: UNSAT HAIR IN UNIFORM.

No really. Nuke qualified electrician = Cleaner who knows a fair bit about nuclear power and electricity.

angwe:

(via Grace Hopper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Dammit! How is it that playing around with CodeAcademy (have you tried it yet? you should.) is the only way I’ve heard about Grace Hopper?!? And I fancy myself a computer person and particularly interested in women in computer history, and yet here’s the popularizer of the term “debug” - because she literally removed a moth from a relay in the computer - and the inventor of COBOL and standardized programming for COBOL and FORTRAN…and I didn’t know a thing about her.

“In 1952 she had an operational compiler. “Nobody believed that,” she said. “I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic.”^[15]”

A compiler. On UNIVAC. That no one said was possible.

Here’s the moth she debugged, by the by:

I salute you Rear Admiral “Amazing Grace” Murray Hopper!

One badass US Navy vet!

Are YOU in luck, I wanted to be a filmmaker when I went in, and I did nuclear electricianing which was PERFECT!

Haha I still enjoy writing and I’d like to…oh say sell a screenplay by the time I’m 50, but it’s not what I want to do full time. And actually neither is nuclear power.

Anyway enough about me. TV Production sounds pretty technical, and with like equipment and stuff, and you’re obviously bright, so you could do some interesting technical field: electronics or something with equipment…

Yeah stupid answer I know. In my opinion though, learning something technical as quickly as we do in the Navy makes you valuable to any field you’re interested in. Maybe look in to the kind of training companies expect of TV production people. Halfway through my enlistment, me and a friend of mine bought our way into a screenwriting conference and had a blast learning SO much about something we’re passionate about. A friend of mine took leave to intern on a film set, so there you go!

I don’t think there’s any right way to get where you want to go, and the journey is the cool part that you get to brag about later.

Twelve years! I wasn’t quite in the Navy at this point, still a couple months away from shipping off to boot camp, a glimmer in the Reagan’s eye!

RELAX!!! NOW!!

What are you worried about, that you make the wrong choice and hate the job you chose to spend at least four years in?

If you ask me, any rate is worth it and will help you down the road. I’m not a nuke electrician anymore, like I was in the Navy. Currently I’m an admin assistant. I love what I do. But two years ago, I didn’t know this is the job I wanted. I’m 30 and I only recently figured out how to put together all my random-ass skills into a career I’m passionate about. But it was really fun trying different things, like being a Navy Nuke and getting an English degree (summa cum laude, by the way)!

And you know, I was pretty damn happy being a nuke electrician—I even sometimes get former Navy supervisors say they would hire me in a second. My advice is pick something that sounds fun, or interesting, or challenging, and go for it! I told myself if I could make it through six years of being a nuke, I could do anything I wanted.

One compliment I often get from supervisors is that I’m a fast learner. I’d say everyone in the Navy acquires that skill and THAT is what has taken me where I want to go.

Good luck and BREATHE.

I get that question a lot.

I shaved my head about 4 years into my enlistment, while on deployment. I joke that I shaved my head to JUST stop all the guys from hitting on me so much, but it just changed their pickup line to “So, why’d you shave your head?” (I explored the social effects of a haircut in a previous post) I was just curious what it would look like and deployment seemed like a great place to experiment when I didn’t care what ANYONE thought of me. Some guys would say “I liked you better with hair.” Guess how much I cared. Yeah that much. Lame comment on their part!

You’re really concerned what a bunch of noob recruits just like you are going to think? Because I think you’re too badass to care, especially if you’re thinking about joining the coolest Navy ever. And honestly, in boot camp, you become SO close, you’re like family. We had one girl who I judged the crap out of when I first saw her. But really that first week you’re so exhausted that you couldn’t care less about the existance of another person. At all. (Her story in boot camp: she struggled a lot, got punished a lot, but she worked her ass off and THAT’S what everyone responded to. We pushed her, we cheered her on, and we were proud of her.)

Anyway, my biggest point is, you’re far too awesome to care what anyone thinks. If you want to try it, go for it! HAIR GROWS BACK!

OBVIOUSLY.

The Navy likes their women fat.

Okay maybe not fat but it’s not physically demanding to be in the Navy. Here’s a list of physical requirements, I mean really you just NEED to pass, not get outstanding!

The website I got this from also has other age groups if you’re curious. By the way, you do EITHER the run OR the swim.

My DEP group worked out a couple times, of course I was freaking out about boot camp and I got my pushups and situps better and ran…I don’t know, a bit.

Boot camp isn’t too hard, but that’s the most I worked out in the Navy. The more physical rates (such as rescue diver) obviously work out more, but as a nuke the worst physical test was being in a machinery room in the middle of the Persian Gulf where it felt like being inside a giant hairdryer. Sounded like it too.  I was a disgusting sweaty mess by the end of a 5 hour watch. That’s a kind of PT…

In my four years on the ship we had the PRT test 4…possibly 3 times. Never did it when we were on deployment. Hope that helps!