Navy boot camp didn’t exactly fit the images I had before I came in. There’s really not much to the physical aspect, just before you leave you have to be able to pass the minimum physical readiness test. For 20-29 that’s 29 pushups, 42 sit-ups, & 1 ½ mile in like 11 minutes or something (I’m not sure exactly, but I’m sure I can speed walk it.) Any yelling stuff is easily avoided by doing what your told, none of which is that hard. (I got screamed at once. Said yes Petty Officer, no Petty Officer; and never was again. Of course he might’ve just decided he looked silly standing there shouting at my chest.J) Anyway. Basically it was 9 weeks of folding clothes. Some divisions may have had to do a lot of exercise stuff as punishment, but our RDC (recruit division commander, ASC(AW/SW) Bartlett) played head games instead or he dropped individuals; which, like I said, was easy to avoid. I got dropped once and that was because he tricked me. I think because he decided I needed the exercise after I barely passed the preliminary PRT.
The biggest problem I had with boot camp was actually my fellow recruits. They could not shut up. That’s one of the things in boot camp, at least at the beginning, is a lot of times you’re not allowed to talk. I assume it eventually would have eased up, except for the fact that it appeared absolutely impossible for everyone to be quiet for 10 seconds. And it would be the dumbest things too. One person would say something –OK. He was clearly an idiot.- but then three more people would feel the need to tell him to shut up. Now where the one would’ve gone unnoticed, four people running their traps always got us in trouble. Everyone just drove me nuts, making an incredibly simple thing tough. It was a combination of my not dealing with a lot of people very well and having quite a bit of maturity and life experience on ‘em all. I thought about packing up a leaving a couple times, especially when Chief kept saying things about how important teamwork was in the Navy, and I felt like just telling him “I guess I better go then, ‘cause I’m just not a team player.” But I didn’t. Number one: it was only nine weeks. It was supposed to be aggravating. That’s the point. Now that they can’t threaten or abuse recruits the whole process is a head game. Then number two: every time I felt like throwing in the towel we would have just done something that was supposed to be tough. It never was, but I kept not wanting people to think that was why I quit. I said it was a head game. I didn’t deny it’s a good one.
Anyway that was basically boot camp. It wasn’t a picnic. Everyone gets sick. That’s what happens when you take 80 people from all over the country and force them to live in the same room together. Everyone catch everyone else’s bugs. I had a cough so nasty, my fellow recruits begged me to go to medical so they could get some sleep. And I think I pulled an abdominal muscle, whether from coughing or to rambunctious on some sit-ups, I’m not sure. But it wasn’t that hard either. A lot of folding clothes, like I said –it was supposed to teach us “attention to detail”. There was a precise way you were supposed to do it and they picked on every possible tiny thing.- and there was some class work on basic military training. I actually got a little competitive. I was in the lead for the most points in the division right up ‘til the last few weeks. This story isn’t actually about boot camp though. It really had no effect on how I came to stay in the Navy while disliking it. That was just background filler.
About halfway through boot camp everyone goes to “classification”. This is where they tell you about some of the different jobs in the Navy and most people pick out what they’ll be doing, limited of course by their aptitude scores when they came in. This procedure, I thought was just going to be a formality for me. I already knew what I was doing. I had a written contract spelling it out and the paperwork was all done. I was going into the nuclear program. I was getting the max enlistment bonus, E-3 pay from the day I enlisted, automatic advancement to E-4 as soon as I finished A-school, and I was going subs. The only not set for sure was whether I would be a Machinist Mate, Electricians Mate, or an Electronics Technician; but that was to be determined by my aptitude scores. Since I got my usual test scores on them I was sure I could be whatever I chose. That was the only thing I figured to be doing at classification, which would take all of 5 minutes. Well. They separated out all of us going to nuke from the rest of the division, then one at a time we went in to talk to one of two classifiers. MMCM(SS/SW) Ogle was the one I talked to. We went over my whole record and he asked some questions about a few things. We did rank which of the three rates we wanted, to actually be determined from that according to the needs of the Navy. –They only need like 8% ET, 16% EM, and the rest MM; or something around those percentages.- Then he started asking about any drugs or criminal record or stuff like that. Everything we’d already been asked over and over: at the recruiters, at MEPS, at Moment of Truth. He explained that he wasn’t trying to get us disqualified or anything, they just needed to know about anything we didn’t already have down in case it came up when they did our background clearance check. I told him I didn’t have anything. I already told everyone everything, on top of which I have a pretty boring life. I had some traffic tickets and a couple car wrecks. Actually right at the max amount I could have on my record without having to get a waiver, but that was all already in my record. He kept pushing though. “Anything. Anything at all, because if it’s attached to your social security number they’ll find it.” “No. Seriously there’s nothing. Unless you want to count parking tickets?” I replied jokingly. I know they show up, because I’ve seen them scroll past when I went in for one of my traffic tickets. He asked how many I had. I had to sit and figure for a while. I got a whole bunch when I was living downtown in Rapid. It’s all two hour parking or leased lots. The nearest free parking is 5 blocks away. I got in the habit of just going down at payday and paying off my tickets, it wasn’t too much more than the leased spot. I came up with a number of about 40, making sure to overshoot, I wouldn’t want them to check and decide I was trying to slide anything past. He said I should put in a waiver for that. I explained that they were all paid off. That’s one of the questions they keep asking when you first come in: if you have any unpaid parking tickets or fines. He said I needed to put in for a waiver anyhow. I had to write out a letter explaining the circumstances and why I thought I should get a waiver. Then he said I should also put in there why it was I had to take so many of my college courses multiple times.
Now, boot camp is mostly about doing what you’re told, and I got very good at that. I pretty much shut down most of my brain the day I arrived in Great Lakes. I really wasn’t up to thinking and writing an essay defending myself. Especially one done in block printing that I didn’t want to do. I don’t understand what my problems in college had to do with anything. All the Navy’s looking for is a high school diploma, it should have counted for me, that I had some college not against me that I had to do a few retakes. That doesn’t even count if I transfer to another college, long as I got a good grade in the class eventually. I explained about the downtown Rapid City parking thing. I explained that I had some problems in college, but I was past that. I was motivated and ready to tackle school head on now. But it wasn’t quality writing. It basically boiled down to “shit happens”, but that was in the past and I’ve matured now.
That was it for that day. One of the other guys in our division had to apply for a waiver also. His guy tricked him into admitting he’d experimented with pot once. Since he hadn’t previously gotten a waiver for it that was a problem. He got his waiver denied after a few weeks. I never heard anything on mine. We got our notices which rate we’d gotten: I got ET, which was my first choice. I t got to the end of boot camp and I still hadn’t gotten any response back. I got all the paperwork and stuff to stay on hold until it done come in. Then the last day before our division left I got a message to report to the Admin building. Great! It was in. I rushed over there. Oh yeah, it cam in… Denied. You need to go talk to the classifiers and pick a new rate.
I was totally flattened. They’d just destroyed the plans I’d made for the next 6 years of my life. I mean I had it worked out to the weeks exactly already. That’s not exaggerating: I had plans for how my leave would work out so I could attend my brother’s graduation & my sister’s college graduation. Thermodynamics was one of the classes for nuke A school and was the next course I needed for my Electronics Engineering degree. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think straight. The only thing I kept my head on was when he told me I also needed to go to disbursing and get my pay changed since I wasn’t supposed to get E-3 pay for nuke anymore. I did set him straight on that. I had made sure my recruiters put in that I got E-3 for having 2 years of college even though they tried to say it was unnecessary since I was already going to get it for the nuclear field.
So I went over to the normal classifiers and he asked me what I wanted to do. I was just trying not to break down in tears. I already had what I was doing. I hadn’t looked into any of the other programs because I was already set. I told him I still wanted electronics in some form. It did cross my mind to do Search and Rescue swimmer, but like pro sports there’s a limited time span on that for a career. He, of course, immediately popped out with the Navy’s Advanced Electronics and Computer Field. I’d already looked over that when I first went to the recruiters because it was a five-year commitment rather than the six for nuke. But I didn’t like it because they couldn’t guarantee me ET. The Navy would decide whether it was Electronics Technician, Fire Control man, or Data Systems technician, and I didn’t want either of the other two. Part of my problem before I joined was that I don’t write a very good resume and I didn’t want to try and explain to a prospective employer how me being trained on weapons systems was supposed to pertain to the job I wanted. The DS rate sounds good at first because it working with computers but the wording of the job description mad me nervous. I’m not sure I’d have gotten real in depth training, it almost sounded as if I could get stuck doing data entry for five years. So then he came up with ETS, Electronics Technician Submarine. Great, that sounds almost just like where I was going, but without the nuclear stuff; which, honestly, I was only interested in for the money. I have no desire to have anything to do with nuclear energy as a civilian. The catcher was that I would have to get a security clearance from the same people that just turned me down. Guess that nixed that. I went along with AECF. That rate thing related to our academic performance and I should still be fine with being able to pick ET. I still got a bonus, but not quite as big, ¾ the nuke one, supposedly the biggest you could get in any other field. (I’ve since found that’s BS, but that was later.) It was a six-year commitment though, my recruiter was using obsolete information with the five-year claim.
I signed the first two papers all right, but then the third included some phrase to the effect “I agree this fulfills the terms of my original contract…” NO. The Navy violated my original contract. I’m not helping them snowball me into some other crap and say it’s the same. I refused to sign it. He pulled out my contract and pointed the part in it where it says something like “…if I become ineligible for any reason, my options are to choose a different A school or to go to the fleet undesignated...” and it went further to say that they could discharge if they wanted to; but nowhere did it give me the option to get out due to the contract not being fulfilled. My argument then was that I didn’t become ineligible. I always had these tickets. It’s just that no one ever in the whole process asked me; or gave me any implication that I needed to reveal that. They asked about unpaid parking tickets, but I keep my business squared away. They were paid. They were just parking tickets. Even if they were a lot: who cares? He told me I could go talk to the Moment of Truth people if I felt that way. I went down there. They were closed for the day. This was late Friday afternoon. So I went back up to his office. By now I was alert and thinking. They violated my contract: I want out of the Navy. He got his back up then. He told me I could go talk to legal, but if I did, when I came back to him I’d only be going out undesignated. Now nobody threatens me with repercussions for seeking legal advice. So, I went straight over to the legal offices. They had me talk to some YNSN (Seaman Yeoman, E-3). All he could do was point to the same small print on my contract. Whether it was right or not, it was legal. My only option if I wanted to dispute it was to request Captain’s Mast. If she thought I was right she could let me out on a void-contract null-enlistment. The catch there is that the average waiting period was 3-6 months. Meanwhile I’d still be on hold, still in boot camp. Now, I said boot camp wasn’t that bad, but that was a factor to take into consideration. That 9 weeks was completely shut off from the world. Still no civilian clothes, curfew, incredibly uptight rules. (Did I ever mention I got an infraction chit for smiling.) I had at least the weekend to think about it.
I thought about it. Talked it over with some people. One girl in particle, she was going nuke, had some husband in the Air Force or something. Too bad. I was still getting training in electronics, something to put on paper at least. I was still getting a bonus, just not as big a one. I never was too particularly crazy about subs, that was just a money choice. Most of all though, what else was I going to do. Far from improving my situation, so far I was farther in the hole. Without being able to contact anyone my credit card debt had to hold for that two more months. I kind've burned bridges by not giving any notice at my jobs. The one I liked, life guarding at the air base was doubly out. They’d certainly found someone to replace me, plus I probably couldn’t go back to work for any government agency unless I got an actual honorable discharge. So I went ahead and signed their damn papers.
The Navy’s setup for AECF is anything but smooth. First thing I did was wait. I was put on hold for 1 to 2 ½ months until there was an opening at the Tech Core school. Meanwhile they kept us doing pure busy work cleaning. We weren’t allowed to take leave because supposedly we might class up at any time. I don’t know how, but that’s what we were told. I ended up getting in after 1 month and 1 week, when they sent the 2 months of people ahead of me TAD (temporary active duty) to the fleet. Tech Core started with the very basics, all the Navy expects is you have a high school diploma, and for AECF you got a halfway decent score on your ASFAB, so you should be able to catch on. It ended up I was already in 6 months when I realized the entire program was going to teach me nothing I didn’t already know. If I had gotten the opportunity to take Electronics II in high school I’d have the exact same education. As is, I took Electronics in high school, I had two years done on my Electrical Engineering bachelors, and my friends in college were all into ham radio. I got a slightly more complete picture by having it all presented formally, but I would have gotten the same by reading a book on it all the way through. The only things I learned beyond that were aspects of the Navy’s specific radios, which isn’t going to apply anywhere else. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great program for anyone starting from zero, but it had nothing to offer me. Unfortunately anytime before 6 months if you get out, it just goes down as a null-enlistment (you were never in basically), but after that your discharge has to have some classification. I won’t accept anything other than honorable discharge, which means I have to complete my obligation.
People often ask why I joined the Navy. I had many reasons. I didn’t decide lightly. But I listed off all those reasons in Tech Core one day; and then how many still held: there were like 18 or 21 reasons, three are still good. Dental care (btw, that one is excellent), training on paper, and something else which I don’t remember are the only ones that panned out. Medical care is scary. I’d often rather suffer than let some E-1 practice unsupervised for his first time on me. Even food and shelter don’t hold up. You don’t get enough money to support living off the ship until E-5, and on the ship ranks below a sturdy cardboard box in my book (Horror stories available in person.) Navy food may be supposedly the best of all the branches, I don’t know, but I do know its pretty bad. Mess Specialist is one of the two lowest qualifications of any job in the Navy, and the one’s Bos’n Mates, who actually work. I got away from Janet and stayed away, but that didn’t make me any happier, and since she refused to ever talk to me I don’t know if it made her happier. I’ve outlined how training and schools haven’t worked out, thinking they would was based on the nuclear program I planned on doing. School outside the Navy doesn’t work with an underway schedule. Reliable pay is a laughing matter. There’s more. I just don’t know where that list is. Some things on there were admittedly naïve, some just haven’t worked out, and then some reflect me getting screwed.
I’ll do my time. I abide by
the contracts I signed, even if the Navy doesn’t. But you won’t see me around
any longer than what I’m already obligated to. At the end of my 6, when it
comes time to re-enlist: I’ll probably still be pissed at how I got jacked over
at the very beginning.