Career Class

I stopped by my old high school today to see some of my teachers. It was an excellent trip. Mrs. Razer asked me to come back and talk to her career class about my career in the Navy. I agreed, whole-heartedly to do it. For some reason, I enjoy that stuff. I just wish that I would've brought a uniform with me to wear. Since I didn't, I'll do like most good sailors and wear the same thing I always wear on liberty. I talked to Mrs. Lamb for a little while, too--okay, for about 45 minutes. We were talking politics and the Navy, and the state of the current world. It was very stimulating conversation. There's nothing I enjoy more than talking about the state of the current world, especially since I have my own theories and love to share them with people.

Okay, the main topic of this post is going to be about what I'm going to say tomorrow when I talk to Mrs. Razer's class. If you're reading this, Mrs. Razer, forgive me. Most people prepare by taking notes and gathering their thoughts. I prepare by babbling inanely until my brain pieces what it wants to together into coherent thoughts. Those thoughts I then take with me.

Let me start by thinking back to my time in the Navy. I first enlisted in the Navy in October of 1991. I went to bootcamp in Orlando, FL, one of the few winters that it actually snowed in Orlando--if you can believe that. I tried to hide out in the background at bootcamp, but it didn't quite work that way. I ended up becoming the Educational Petty Officer (EPO)--if you can believe that. My whole job was to help the sailors in my company learn what they needed to learn so they could pass the written exams we had to take in bootcamp. I worked really hard and did everything short of giving them the A B C answers. Some of them were just beyond help. WWWAAAAYYYYY beyond help! There was one kid in the class who couldn't pass a test to save his life. It made me question if he had even graduated high school--until I realized that it wasn't a requirement at the time. I taught him every single answer to every single question on the test. I worked with him from taps (10pm) until 2 or 3 in the morning for weeks. He could recite the answers to me backwards and forwards, even when I jumbled up the questions (which ruled out rote memorization). However, when he went to take his test, he still failed it. I never did quite figure out what you did with people like that. I guess they make good deck swabbers. If that's cruel, I'm sorry, but most jobs in the Navy require some technical acumen--a ship is a modern technological marvel. Now if we could just get NMCI to function the same way.... Nevertheless, there are still menial jobs that need to be done (I guess they would be the "burger flippers" of the Navy). During bootcamp we had what was called Work Week. It was the next to last week of bootcamp (week 7 of 8) and we were assigned jobs to do instead of the routine brainwashing that occured in bootcamp. I was assigned to be the Divisional Yoeman. For those of you who don't know what a yoeman is--a yoeman is essentially a secretary of sorts who does paperwork. In the case of being the Divisional Yoeman in bootcamp, 4-8 companies made up a division, and that division shared one barracks (each company had it's own wing, one of four per floor, in a 3 story building). The divisional yoeman's job was to process the paperwork for the division officer who oversaw the barracks. It was a thankless job that required me to work from 0600 (I had to eat breakfast early so I could be there at reville) until taps. Yeah, right, I never left the office after taps, there was too much paperwork to catch up on. That was the time when I actually got to get the paperwork done without some random company commander coming in and making me do pushups or situps because his wife or girlfriend pissed him off and he needed someone to take it out on--sitting right in front of the main entrance made me a prime target. I'm surprised my biceps didn't grow to about 25 inches while I was the yoeman. But, it was only one week though. Once that was all over and we graduated from bootcamp, I was on my way home for leave and then right back to sunny Orlando, FL (summertime this time, thank god) for Nuclear Field "A" School for my training as an Electronics Technician (ET)--funny story with that, ET's in the Navy are the most intelligent people in the Navy (I won't comment on the common sense part of that, though ;) and have earned the title Everything Technicians because there is nothing they supposedly can't fix. So, I went through 6 months of "A" School (A school is an accession level school used to give a sailor the basic groudings in whatever field the sailor is going into), learning various things such as Basic Electronics and Electricity, Physics (beyond HS physics), Electronic Theory, Digital Theory, Communications Theory and Repair (I never knew there was so much to know about antennas and wave propogation), and finally Radar Fundamentals and Theory (where we actually got to work on real life radar units, 9000Volts and all). It was during radar class that it was suggested to me that I apply for the position of Lab Assistant for Basic Electricity and Electronics (BE&E). I thought, what the heck, it gave me six extra months before I had to go Nuclear Power School, so I applied and was accepted. It was an interesting 6 months, too. My whole job was to prepare labs and work with students in the labs for Basic Electricity and Electronics fundamentals. I liked all parts of the lab except for having to stand in front of everyone and talk. For some reason my knees would start to shake and my voice would crack. That was my first experience in public speaking--a completely frightening one, at that. But I managed my way through it, did my 6 months as a lab assistant and then transferred to Naval Nuclear Power School.

Naval Nuclear Power School was the continuation of Nuclear Field "A" School. It was here that the fundamentals we learned in "A" School were expanded upon. Here we learned more advanced physics (nuclear physics), Reactor Principles, Chemistry (methods for controlling corrosion in both the primary reactor plant and the secondary steam plant), and Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow (supposedly you can work on a reactor better if you know how the heat gets from point a to point b). This was another 6 month long course, a crashcourse, essentially, in nuclear engineering. If I were to pursue it, I could receive an associates degree in Nuclear Engineering Technology just from what I learned in that school. Unfortunately, most of it was classified. We did, however, spend most of our day in class (0800 to 1630) and then we had to stay for study hours. You weren't given a choice in this. Even if you were recommended for voluntary study hours (as opposed to suggested or mandatory) you were still expected to be there. If you didn't show up for those study hours, stand by, they were about to become mandatory. I managed to work my way through Power School graduating with a 3.57 GPA. I was then transferred to the Nuclear Power Training Unit in Idaho Falls, ID on the S5G reactor (commonly referred to as prototype, because prototype reactors used to design reactors for ships were what we trained on for our hands-on experience).

It was at prototype that I received my first introduction to the Navy qualification process. Endless questions and line items that had to be signed off by someone once you demonstrated to them your knowledge of whatever it was they were signing. It was an almost mundane task, considering the instructors seemed to be more concerned with furthering themselves than they did with the students. Still, I busted my butt to get qualified as quickly as I could (which meant I went from 12 hour days to 8 hour days). It took me--and my whole class--a while to qualify due to a shutdown of the plant for repair of a valve. That was fine. It gave me more time to study. The whole process was to stand watches on the plant and to be graded on our performance. The instructors would simulate casualties and transients and we would have to respond to them from the casualty procedures. The requirements were that casualty response procedures had to be learned verbatim and we had to learn to respond to them automatically (for those of you who don't know, there ARE computer systems that do this for us, more quickly than we can, but we are expected to do the actions, nonetheless, even if the computer has taken action before we can see a casuatly arising). I was befriended by the civilian Nuclear Engineers who worked there (most of them Ph.D.'s) and one of my friends was befriended by the military instructors. We ended up competing to see who would be the first to qualify. The final piece of the qualification was the final board where you were in front of a panel of 3 instructors (both civilian and military) with only a whiteboard and markers. They asked you questions and you had to answer them. Once you finished this, you were qualified. The other guy ended up qualifying about 2 minutes before me (we had our boards both at the same time). Nevertheless, I was qualified and was only on 8 hour days--WAHOO! Let me paint a picture of prototype for you, though, before I continue on. To get to prototype, we had to catch a bus in the morning. The site was located at INEL (Idaho National Engineering Laboratories) in the desert of Idaho. It was an hour busride, unless there was snow, then it was 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours. When we arrived at the site, we had to place our bags on a conveyor, walk through a metal detector, swipe our access badge through a turnstile, show our badge to a federal security guard (holy crap were they HUGE!). Then we had to grab our TLD (Thermo-Luminiscent Dosimeter) out of our tray in the storage box, and then proceed to our reactor site (there were two separate ones: S5G and A1W--I was at S5G). Once we arrived there, we had to swipe our badge through another turnstile to enter the building. Once inside, the building was, essentially, a gigantic warehouse that had a submarine hull (just the engineering section) inside of it, sitting inside of a 14 million gallon pool (the water was drained out, it was originally used to test the reactor under at sea situations). The building contained classrooms, a large study area and little booths for getting checkouts and practicing for your boards on the second deck. The first deck was the primary control areas for the actual prototype (plus the break-room where we ate lunch and vending machines--vending machines which were a godsend because most instructors could be bribed into taking the time to give you a signature by giving them their favorite drink--which you quickly learned what each instructors favorite was). Underneath the building, on the same level as the tank (about 50 or so feet underground) were our locker rooms where we could store books, etc. Most people would ride in in civilian clothes and change into their uniforms there. The entire site was surrounded by double fences with razor wire at the top. The fences were about 8 ft feet high, except for the area where trucks entered the facility, where it was about 15 ft high. In between the two fences were motion detectors and infrared detectors. Needless to say we were quite secure inside the facility. We used to take walks around the facility (we called them "site tours") at night to take a break from studying. We would walk to the fence and then proceed to walk around the entire facility following the fenceline. The entire fence line was lit with sodium lights, and occasionally you would see a pack of coyotes on the other side of the fence staring at you as though you could be their next meal. Thank god for those fences!

Once I had completed prototype, I was transferred to the PCU JOHN C STENNIS (CVN 74) (PCU meaning Pre-Commissioning Unit, before she was commissioned into service and received the title USS) out of Norfolk, VA. I went there as a reactor operator and once again had to sit through many more classes at the shipyard who built her learning about the intracacies of her engineering design and function. It was tedious, but somewhat fun. It was here that I applied for an NROTC scholarship and received it. I was tranferred out of reactor department and sent to transportation department where I finished my time until I transferred to NROTC. It was in transportation that I began to learn the true nature of most of my fellow sailors (shipmates, as we call them). Most of them were lazy and didn't want to be bothered with anything. So lazy, in fact, that I, as an E-4, ended up supervising people as high ranked as an E-6 (my E-7 went home everyday and left me in charge). It was also here that I learned that aviators were the most clueless people one could ever run into. My division officer was an aviator LT. After running transportation runs for Reactor department (the most demanding department on the ship for transportation) I began to keep statistics on our runs in both the vans and the buses. From this data I developed what I thought to be a more effective plan for providing quality transportation services to our customers. To say that it was met with resistance from my division officer would be like saying that the soldiers who landed on the beaches of Normandy at D-Day met with no resistance. He did everything but tell me I was the most stupid person on the face of the planet. Even at this time I had learned the benefits of covering your a** by putting everything in writing. I had submitted my proposals in writing to our department head (my division officer's boss). He reviewed my suggestions and fell in love with them instantly. The next thing I knew he had issued a policy statement changing our services to exactly what I had proposed in my memo. It worked, too. (Amazing what you can learn if you take the time to look at your processes.) Reactor Department was much happier with the schedule, as were all of our other customers. My department head ended up receiving the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for my proposal. But, it couldn't last forever and I ended up transferring to college.

I attended college at The University of Memphis. I was originally going to get my degree in Engineering, but by this time my passions had changed and I wanted out of the engineering field (there's a sick twist here, you'll see it later). I ended up getting my Bachelor's degree in Philosophy as pre-law. I ended up crunching my 4-year degree into just over 2 years, staying on the Dean's list every semester and graduation Magna Cum Laude with Honors. It felt really nice, until it came time for me to leave college and go to my next school (yep, ANOTHER school). I went to Newport, RI to attend Surface Warfare Officer's School Command (SWOSCOLCOM), where I would receive my training in how to be a division officer. The school was 6 months long, but what I learned from being with all of the friends I made at school was much more valuable than what I actually learned in the school. I graduated from the school, already burned out on being a division officer, and then attended follow on training in Undersea Warfare Evaluator's course. It was here that we learned how to be evaluators prosecuting submarines. For some reason, I really took to it and enjoyed it. We learned something called TMA-Target Motion Analysis. Just by listening passively in the water with a huge acoustic array towed behind the ship, we could determine where a submarine was located and what its course and speed was. That was cool, and I enjoyed it. I ended up graduating as the honor student from the course. I also met one of my very best friends at this school, Constance Renee Spotts--Conni. I have only one other friend that is closer to me than Conni (Greg), but Conni's friendship is one of those that transcends time and space.

Once I had completed school, I was assigned to the USS ELROD (FFG 55). It was already on deployment in the Persian Gulf when I received my orders, so I had to fly out and meet it. Twenty-six hours, six cities, a boatride on a rickety boat, six days on the USS SEATLE and a helicopter ride finally found me on ELROD reporting from duty. I finished out the deployment in the Persian Gulf, with a brief stop in Aquaba, Jordan. Wow! My first experience there was an amazing one. I toured the ruins at Petra, a most beautiful place. You've probably seen it and don't even know you have, if you've seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The building carved into the mountain they enter to find the grail is the main building at Petra. While we were there, I was "volunteered" to go on a diplomatic visit with the Captain and the U.S. Ambassador to Jordan. We were driven to a hotel restaurant where we were ushered in to the bar and told to order anything we wanted to drink, compliments of the Jordanian government. The only thing that looked good was a Fosters beer. So I ordered one. After we drank our beers, we were taken into a dining room that had tables set up in a U shape. I ended up sitting on the end of one of the arms of the U beside a Marine Corps Major who was a diplomatic attache. The meal started with hummus, bread, wine and water. To this day I still don't know how much wine I drank, my glass was perpetually refilled before I had even drank it half empty! It was the same for my water glass. The main course ended up being fish with some vegetables. It was actually pretty good, you just had to watch out for the bones. The Jordanians provided a singer to entertain us, a Czechoslovakian woman who had fled to Jordan after the fall of communism. She sang songs for us and ended up grabbing my hand to pull me to the floor to dance some traditional Jordanian dances. Not wanting to be the center of attention, I grabbed the hand of the Marine Major beside me and drug him with me. He followed suit, and we eventually had a conga line on the dancefloor, everyone trying to learn the nuances of traditional Jordanian dance. All in all, it was a good trip. After we left Aqaba, we stopped in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and picked up 4 Saudi ships to train them on ASW. I had the privelege of teaching several Saudi officers the principles of Target Motion Analysis and basic procedures for prosecuting submarines in an exercise dubbed "Exercise Indigo Serpent." I don't know who makes up the names, but they are creative! Once completed, we transited through the Suez Canal and into the Med. We were in transit for Christmas Eve and Christmas on our way to Naples, Italy. Once we arrived at Naples, I signed myself up for a trip to Rome. If you've never seen the Vatican around Christmas time, you are missing one of the most magnificent sights human eyes could ever behold! St. Peters was decorated most beautifully. The Nativity scene in front was larger than life size. The Christmas tree was enourmous! It literally took my breath away being able to see Christmas in the Vatican. We toured all the ruins in Rome, and I got to see the ruins of the original Roman Senate. I always had a vision in my head of going and sitting on the steps of the Senate and writing in my journal. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to do that, so I had to look at the building from a distance and write in my journal. It was maginificent to see the ruins of the Roman Empire. Once we left Naples, we transited through the Straits of Gibraltar where I saw the Rock of Gibraltar. We stopped for fuel in Madiera, Portugal. It was supposed to be only a brief stop to refuel and then get back underway, but the whole island was so beautiful that our Captain called our Commodore and got permission to stay overnight. It was a stay that was very well worth it. I'm sure you've heard of Madeira wine? If not, you're missing out on some of the best wine in the world. I'm sure you've also heard of Port? Some of the finest Port in the world is made there, too. It was a magnificent stay, even if it was only overnight. I saw many wonderful things and sent postcards to several of my friends. When we finally left Madeira, we transited the Atlantic and stopped again in Bermuda for fuel. This time, it was just a brief stop for fuel, we were only there for 8 hours. I, unfortunately, had duty, so I couldn't go explore the island. I did, however, get to see part of the island and the most beautiful color blue water you could ever lay eyes on. Once we departed Bermuda, we returned to Norfolk and went into the shipyard. During that time I was promoted and transferred to Engineering to become the Main Propulsion Assistant (MPA). Our next deployment actually found us in the Med, and then in the Black Sea to perform duties under NATO's Partnership for Peace program. We pulled into Varna, Bulgaria, a resort city used by the VIP's in the Old Soviet Union. The port was somewhat run down, but the people were as nice and friendly as they could be. You could eat like a king on such a small amount of money. The exchange rate was about 3600:1. I took 6 people out to lunch on my birthday. Appetizers, beer, full meal, dessert, and brandy chasers for everyone cost me a grand total of $12 American. I handed the waiter a $20 bill and told him to keep the change. I thought he was going to pass out at the table! I toured many monuments to the socialist revolution (leninism) there, but most were in disprepair, as though the people no longer cared about them. Perhaps they didn't, but it was a shame to see such grand pieces of human history being slowly deteriorated away, not only phycially, but in the hearts and minds of the people. We were in the Black Sea for a month conducting Partnership for Peace operations, and then we transited into the med. There we visited Malaga Spain, Dubrovnik Croatia, Genoa Italy (think Columbus), Trieste Italy (where I went to Venice and stayed overnight), Antalya Turkey, and Crete, Greece. It was one of the most wonderful deployments, being able to see part of the wonders of the world.

Anyway, I could continue on, but I have to get some sleep tonight before tomorrow. I'll try to log back on tomorrow and complete some more of this.