What advice should I give her? Anything I should know about the precess that she might want to talk about. General info would be helpful.






 

Get EVERYTHING in writing.

You get out of your service what you put into it.

Get an MOS that has a high potential for future employment when a civilian again.

Have thick skin BUT as a female know where the line is between being one of the guys and serious harassment.

more importantly...join the Marines!

Word of mouth that is promised is worth nothing.

Try to steer her to the IT side of things if you can. Those guys live in nice climate controlled environments, and have very marketable skills on the outside.

"Needs of the service" will trump anything in writing!

Good luck to her

stay away from the Seamen

Get Uncle Sam to pay for as much training and certification as she can get from them.

KEEP COPIES OF ALL RECORDS!

Yes, I was shouting on that one....

Navy girl? Tell her not to just start stuffing her face after boot camp. I'm not sure why, but the Navy girls had a tendency to balloon up.

She is going for a rescue swimmer but I dont think she will have the physical strength to do this job she is maybe 105lb soaking wet.

Get a job that keeps her off ships or she'll become a receptacle.

Make sure she gets a rate(mos) in writing.  When I joined, the Navy had apprenticeships and you were basically without a job for several years.  This really means you get all of the shit jobs and generally have a shitty life for a couple of years.  Then after awhile you'll get a job that may or may not be anything you actually want to do.

I once saw (no shit) an E-2 female in the Navy with the last name of Guzzler.
You do the math.

I am quoting this shit hoping for a ban





 

Don't go on an Aircraft Carrier (She will be pregnant in no time if she does ...)

I love the high opinion some seem to have of females serving in the military.

That is uncalled for....

please keep this to the original topic. I don't need to know about the social life in that aspect of her life.

I'm Air Force but I work with a bunch of sailors who are CTNs (Cryptologic Technician-Networks).  If she has an interest in IT, CTNs get lots of training that is marketable in the civilian world and they have a good job while in the Navy.

But true. Same goes for tenders. I think I can count on one hand the # of tender chicks I saw that weren't knocked up.

Others have said the rest of the important stuff. Get everything in writing. I dropped out of the nuke program because they wouldn't put it in writing. However, they put my conventional rate in writing.

The Truth (Especially when I mention it ) seems to piss a lot of folks off here at ar15.com ...

Unfortunately these kinds of threads bring out the people that hate female service members.....

 

Get everything in writing is the big one, but also keep everything.  Don't throw away your evals just cause they're a few years old.  That save my ass when getting frocked for second.  They had down that I didn't have a frocking eval for third class and so couldn't get second.  I went to my rack and got my copy of my eval.  Problem solved.  Also tell her that she will be a nub for the first long while.  This isn't bad, it's just so people get aclamated to what's going on around them.  You don't start doing you accual job until your fully qualified, which depending on your job could take a few years.  I was a nuke on a sub so it took me 14 months after I got there.  Other than that, basic .mil stuff. JO's are idiots unless prior enlisted.  Chiefs are all good old boys.  Second classes run the navy.  CO's want to be admirals, XO's want to be COs.  And of course have a thick skin.

Don't blow off taking the advancement exam. You might learn too late they were going to command advance you but changed their mind.    

Ask her how many rescue swimmers are needed in the civilian sector.

Then ask a former Navy nuke how many job offers they had before they left the service.

"Choose your rate, choose your fate."





(And yes, although the comments above seem unkind, they are true for the most part...)

Stay away from the nuclear power field. I say again, stay the hell out of nuclear power. Worst job in the Navy.





She should figure out what job she wants before going into the process, if possible.





If she knows what job she wants and has the ASVAB scores to qualify then don't take 'no' for an answer.





The guy filling billets at MEPS may pull "I don't have any billets for THAT, but I can offer you THIS." Ask me how I know. You can always walk off and tell them to call you when they do have an open billet, or simply say you are willing to wait. Some jobs there is a waiting list for, and it may be well worth it to get a job that you want. Taking whatever is open in order to ship sooner can be a recipe for several years of heartache.





I would not worry too much about picking a rating that directly transfers to a civilian skill, as long as she plans on going to school afterward. Some of the coolest things you will ever experience are pretty much military-only. If it lines up that way then great, but if not then she has the GI bill and some unique experiences.



 

WOW.  I think you have the phrase "Hardest but most rewarding" and "Worst" confused.

You must be fresh out of the Nuclear Navy to have that opinion.  As you progress through life, you will forget all the bad things, and realize how much further ahead you are in life than others your age.

My niece joined up almost 2 years ago. Medical Corpsman. I gave here the best advice I could offer. So far, she has ignored every bit of it. I told her, don't get hooked up with a sailor. Don't chase your sailor boyfriend to his base. Don't get married, don't get knocked up. Get orders over seas, Italy or Japan, see some of the world. Enroll in college courses as soon as you settle in with your unit.
She had a sailor boyfriend as soon as she got to A school. She had another before she graduated from A school. She followed him to Cherry Point. They moved in together, they got engaged. She got pregnant (miscarriage). All within her first two years of a 5 year hitch. She is an idiot and not worthy of my advice. I hope yours is brighter.

I left the nuclear side in 1991, did 3 more years on conventional ships, and am on my 9th year as a reserve Seabee (twice mobilized for Iraq).



I am a computer geek & EMT on the outside.



Perspective: I haz it



If you enjoy the nuke field then more power to you.



 

Sad and tragic shenanigans.  Unfortunately it's very common.

how exactly did you "leave" the nuke field, it isn't like they are willing to let their investment in training go because you would prefer a different job? no offense but when someone is de-nuked it is usually on bad terms (performance or otherwise) unless it is a medical issue.

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back on topic though... I personally would encourage her to seek crypto/IT jobs, the N2/O2 guys (I dont know what their actual rating is)  or the nuke field if she tests out for it, the nuke field will be a very difficult career path and she will have approximately 1/2 the watch sections as the rest of the ship out to sea and twice the duty days in port not to mention shift work and fast cruises that are reactor only are very common. but it will set her up for life after her 6 years are up if she decides it is not for her.  I know some medical guys who were pretty happy as well but they are usually the hard chargers who go FMF etc. many of the rest just bitch a lot.  any of those jobs will set her up for careers down the line

I guess the big thing is what would she like to do outside of the Navy? there is a job to prep you for just about anything.  

also if she is not in "a" school or in quals on the ship she should be knocking out college.  there is no excuse for not getting your degree within her first enlistment, if she doesn't she should go do a shore tour and finish it then before moving on to the civilian world, the Navy makes it VERY easy and all it takes is a little motivation and the ability to ignore the dipshits around you telling you it will be too hard and you wont have the time.

The guys harping on pregnancy are doing so in poor form but they do have a point.  A female in the Navy will get more attention than she ever has before especially at sea and it is important that she keep her eye on the ball those first couple years so she doesn't fall into the trap of focusing on the social aspect and let her job performance suffer.  This is unfortunately common of the 11 females I had in my division on my first ship (9 enlisted 2 officers) 9 got pregnant before their PRD (8 enlisted and 1 officer).  all of them missed out on a chance to really gain experience and set themselves up for future careers because of experience they missed, except maybe the officer since she was already a watch officer and got out shortly after getting pregnant.

-Mike

Make sure she avoids the 'apprenticeship' programs.  The recruiters talk it up like 'you can pick the job you want and then go to the A school'.  What they fail to mention is "you are cheap untrained labor for 2 years until we get you into a school'.

+1 they will most likely have her cleaning, painting, or sorting trash if she goes to sea without a rating... she still will be doing this as a NUB with a rating but not nearly as much

-Mike

I was never de-nuked, I just worked in a conventional shop on my next tender. I still have my various NECs to this day, although they don't do a Seabee any good.



When I showed up I gave my orders to the OOD and said "Here, I'm supposed to go to the high-pressure (non-nuke) weld shop." and that's where he sent me to check in.



A year later when they finally got around to checking for nuke coded welders to dragoon into the R-10 shop I was well situated and had a chain of command from my LPO up to my DivO that went to bat for me. The nuclear repair officer threatened to yank my NEC, to which I said, "Go ahead, I obviously don't want it." He also threatened to yank my pro-pay, which is pretty funny because I didn't get pro-pay and he had no idea. None of his many threats ever materialized, but they reinforced the impression of the nuclear environment that I had gained during my 27 months of fixing sub reactors. He told me, "I don't care what your chain-of-command tells you, you belong to me now," and khaki-colored pissing contest ensued, and the side that wasn't full of it won.



When I was in nuke repair on the USS Proteus I checked in with a guy who had gotten entirely out of the Navy long enough for his NEC to drop, came back in as a conventional MM, and then he still ended up in nuke hell with me. Oh boy was he pissed.
 

tell her to stock up on slim fast and birth control

There will be no shortage of guys lining up to try and do bad things to her. Just telling it how it is.

Since my experience is over 20 years old, I'll try to keep this in the general area as oppose to any particular rate. To what I saw, advised my enlisted on, the errors that I saw. I probably also won't cover what others already have.

Being on a ship is tough work, especially if that ship deploys, but this is the Navy and it is what we do. Someone who never goes to sea (or is with a deployable/deployed command) is likely to have those that have look down at them. it may not be just but it is often the way it is.

First of all, on ship, one is in a damn if you do, don't situation about eating. On ship, it is very easy to gain weight because one eats without necessarily available exercise.......but having food in the stomach is a defense against sea sickness. Be aware of that, find a physical activity that doesn't take much room, especially if the ship doesn't have a weight room. Maybe learn to jump rope (running around a steel deck on a ship that is pitch up and down is murder on the knees and feet).

On sea sickness, eating is not the only defense, but one has to find what works for them.

Avoid the bad people of the command; they will bring you down. These include those late for muster, on restriction, who bad mouth their leaders (such as how much the Captain shafted them the last time). There will probably be those who grill you for doing things properally as oppose to taking the easy way on things but going the easy way will cost someone, maybe you. It may cost someone their life. (a constant one in my time were people who certified kapoks beacons as ready because the light would flash if the button was continually pressed down as oppose to the switch (broken) being slid into place .....and a chief telling the sailor, "Son, you are going to get awfully tired if you are in the drink and have to hold that button down.") Safety regulations are there for a reason.  Navy technical manuals will tell the proper way for things to be done and if you follow those, you will hardly ever be at fault. (seen at least two cases of line snap back because people didn't follow those procedures and with one, the destroyer had to limp into Mayport for divers to free one of its screws while the Commodore had to shift his flag)

Learn, learn, learn. Know as much as you can, be as visible as you can, so you are a face and name in mind when your superiors want to advance one of their own when tasks need to be done around the command. Even if you are not part of the inport fire party, as an example, but they are holding training, go and learn as you can. Keep a record of everything you do so when they ask you at eval time to remind them, you can.

You may have more money than you ever did before in your life, but watch it carefully. Don't spend it all in one place. Safe guard it such as having a bank account. Save so if you miss a pay check, you aren't desperate. If you are on comrats (or whatever the  current term is), know right off that you can't eat fast food all the time for a month; you will run out of money, quick! Use the commissary, you can buy more food or save money with raw goods or sandwich makings over tv dinners, and there may be an advantage from pooling with others (depends on the others). If you are missing meals in the mess hall because of duties and are paying out of your own pocket to eat, that is wrong and should not be happening (hence comrats).

Be very careful that you do not mess up your reputation, your creditbility. Loss of that may prevent you from getting jobs you want later. This can come through by being a burden and not a credit to the command, financial irresponsibility, major offenses, or even too many speeding tickets.

Never do drugs, never associate with those who do; that can wreck the rest of your life real quick. The Navy will know, they will find out, and it will be OVER!

You are an United States Navy Sailor and an adult. You will be treated and held responsible as an adult. Do not engage in those things you might have done in high school that are wrong (joyriding in someone else's car, unsafe driving such chasing another, taking lawn ornaments from another, using false ID's, etc.. (various things I had to handle with my enlisted)). Recognize that ultimately, you are always that, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, that even on liberty (or off duty), you are still that. You are on the Navy's time always. If you are thinking about moonlighting, get a special chit for permission (this particular one is 20 years ago stuff and may not apply now, but it was something back then that I found out that a great deal of enlisted and officers did not know).

If you have a job, a task to do, do it. Show your superiors that you can work without supervision.

Things may get bad or stressful at times but remember, you signed on for a job and you need to complete that job. Don't dwell on how much better it would be if only because that, at best, leads nowhere and can lead, worse, to unwise actions that can only make the situation worse.

Be wary of "wild and crazy" thoughts especially if they lead to risky actions. The Navy may watch out for you to save you from such endevours but will punish you after wards for using their resources that way (thinking of a sailor who decided he was going to swim from the beach to the ship swinging at anchor off shore).

Beware of athletic clubs for it is not an uncommon trick for one to set up outside a military base, get service members into contracts, sell their contracts to another buyer, and then close up their doors. Even if they don't close up their doors, people have been known to buy contracts and to stop going after a few weeks even though they are still paying for the contract for another year or two.

If you can, take lots of pictures for these will be your memories.
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there are probably lots of other things I can suggest from my time in, but that's a good start after an hour of thinking about it

Tell her good luck, to do the job, and to have fun.
_____________________________________________________
("Some people say they joined the Navy to see the world; I joined the Navy to the world could see me!"––Half Hitch to his girlfriend, (w,stte), "Half Hitch")

20 year Navy Chief here.  Still going in the Reserves.  My biggest career mistake was leaving active duty.  Aside from that, I don't regret one second of my 20 years.  

There's some good advice here and some .  PM me if you want.  I'd be happy to talk to you or her.

Beware of the first 1 to 3 people who want to be your friends at your new duty station.

This is the absolute truth. Never join up un-designated (un-dez as its known). Even though you know what you want to do 4 months in they will have you doing the worst of the worst jobs for 2 years minimum as you "wait for a slot to open" in schools. Slots that are being filled with sailors that had the brains to get the contract up front. Also if she is joining for the education bennys tell her to ask for a 40k Navy collage fund. Not to hard to get if you are going for a technical (med to hard to fill) rate. Tell her to have a plan for if she doesn't make the rescue swimmer cut. I would hate to see her get rolled up as undesignated in that case.



I can give you more details (boot camp ect...) if you want them. PM me if interested. It was 10 years ago though...



-LTC- (The Lt. Is just a name on ARFCOM btw, I was actually enlisted navy)





 

I don't know about that.  The nuke field has done me pretty good - 6 figure income with no college degree.  I will admit though, a rate that gets you in a workspace that has AC beats sweating your ass off in the engine room while doing circles in the Persian Gulf.

I say get the most advanced training she can on the .mil's dime - nuke field included.

Tell her to watch her ass around those dirty nasty squids.  I'm not kidding.  There's a bunch of em in my office that confirm my earlier observations that the navy recruits horn-dog players with specifically.  A sense of humor that concentrates on illegal sex acts is also apparently a plus.  

This coming from an Army vet whose grandfather was a squid.  Those fuckers are SICK.

They do have the funniest jokes though.  I suppose that counts for something.  


On a serious note, tell her to pack sunscreen, cause unless she's a specifically seaborne type, she'll be either here or in AFG in a year or two.

This thread derailed in a matter of minutes.

I'm sure that not every female that walks on a boat walks off with a baby on the way.

Yes it did and no they don't.

Here to offer more suggestions but got to run now.

Even if it's one in 20 it's a prollem ...

Tell her to use the TSP.

Maybe so......but that's not the question here.

What else can I suggest? Well, and this is mostly in viewing to many of the responses here,  watch your back, emotionally and otherwise. It's a teamwork organization and you have to be part of the team, but as you are protecting yourself from those who want to hot rack with you, you can't be so aloof, so arrogant that you perturb people "unjustly" (for lack of a better term). In the merchant marine, they warned us of deck hands who, if angry enough, would wait high in cargo holds for their "tormenter" to walk through and then drop a spanner over their head. They might yell "watch out!" just as the spanner got there, so the person would look up, catch the spanner squarely in the face, and have a glimpse of who did it to them.

Has it happened in the Navy? Well, I know of at least one case, decades ago, where an angry sailor knifed his "jerk officer" and tried to drop him over the side mid ocean, but I'd say, hope it was much more  of a rarity.

Me, I only had other officers to worry about and that was a small group, but I will admit that my past of being able to mesh with a group is probably not the best example to follow. But then again, we are rather talking apples and oranges here as that I was an officer. Looking out for your troops, such as pushing the limits to make sure everyone gets their flight deck pay for a month, is a way to have team work.......but it probably does not apply to her case right now.

This isn't Star Trek or any other TV/movie out of Hollywood about the military........and you shouldn't expect it to be anything like it.

Get some kind of note book,  even if it is a $.50 flip pad, to take notes, write down your tasks, what they expect of you, day to day and long term.

Have enough money to keep your uniforms available, ready to go. This includes a set of the working uniform that will be used for nothing but inspections. the day when the Commodore wants to come aboard one of his ships for a haircut.

Try to have spare sets of crucial items such as shoes, work shoes. Stow your stuff only in the places where it is suppose to be stowed. "Saw" a lot of stuff go overboard because the Captain, department heads were furious about finding gear not in their proper place all over the ship. This included the shoes of a hot suit flight deck man who had changed out of his work shoes and left them at the flight gear storage. Someone came by, found them out of place, and threw them overboard. Looking back on it, probably an unjust situation, but it still came down to that in mid ocean, he was suddenly minus a set of work shoes. So anticipate losses, plan for immediate replacements.

You are the low person on the totem pole, the manpower resource of the command. They will task you and your like for many different jobs, sometimes according to the philosphy of the Captain, things that you may not have expected when you signed up, so be ready for it. Seen a number of commands where new E-3's and below, unrated, rated.....spent the first couple of months as mess cooks. You will probably be the "below" when they call for an "E-# and below" working party.

Understand that you are entering a world where things will happen........that probably won't make any sense to why they happen, might even seem like insanity. It will aggravate you, it will gall the heck out of you, but you will have to do it and just keep on going. A ship may be sent to a port to support a seemingly useless civilian ceremony. Plans and anticipations may be canceled due to a failed inspection, the needs of an inspection visit, the work necessary to meet operational commitments despite what was said before or "promised", the apparent vanity of superiors (this is a business where no one wants to look bad to their boss), or even the failed estimations of a situation by someone else. Ie,ship comes into port, expecting to plug into the tender for shore power and  to put down liberty call at 1700. Tender's seaward side power connections are out of order (they didn't ask? no one told them? unknown), so power cables have to be connected at the dock, pulled over the top of the tender, and liberty doesn't start till 0100 the next morning. Things like this will happen. It is not a 9-5 job.

It is rather easy to get isolated in one's work area, such as due to their speciality or to "you do not have a need to know". For example, I knew a first class engine mate who had never been in the forward part of the ship. The most forward he had been were the messdecks. Everything else to him, workspace, berthing, sick bay, chief engineer, were located aft of that.......so when he found himself in that forward space inside the ship, he was rather lost. Try to avoid such a situation.

Stay fit. It's no fun trying to work it off.....especially when you have to do it right after reveille (saw a lot of "cheerful faces" being in charge of that program).

If your superior approves of your plan, you do not have the option to cancel it without a darn good reason.

One hopes that this situation will not come up, but the only way to leave the Navy is with an honorable discharge. Any other kind should be view as extremely bad news and avoided at all costs. I've seen situations where the Captain has offered people a chance to work to make it right and they've said, "No, Sir, I want out,"......................and they don't know what they are doing to themselves.

Finally for today, The Chief is your god; they are the most knowledgeable people around.
_______________________________________________________________
("I expect the best and I give the best. Here's the beer. Here's the entertainment. Now have fun. That's an order!"––Lt. Jean Rasczak, (w,stte), "Starship Troopers")

You couldn't turn that Nuke experience into something good on the outside?? None of it translated to power plant work?

I spent 10 years in the U.S. Navy.  Most of the females end up knocked up.  Not trying to be mean, thats just the way it is.  I can't stress this enough, make sure whatever she signs up for is in writing.  Recruiters have a quota to fill.  She is just another number to them.  Make sure she picks a decent rating that translates to the civilian world after she gets out.  Wendy's, McD's, Target doesn't want bomb tech's.  Tell her to get all the free schooling and training she can while she is in the service.

FIFY



I knew a guy that had to get (again) every damn shot that he ever had because they lost his medical records.

That's painting with a broad brush. My senior chief was a retard and my chief was a nutjob. Seriously, the walking around in the loony bin kind.

A good Chief is worth his weight in gold. A bad Chief is a clusterfuck of biblical proportions.



 

Oh, they can be interesting up and down the scale. Known some great ones like my police senior chief, good ones, bad ones, medocre ones. Known some that made warrant or LDO. Knew a BMC that was the illustration of "Deck Ape"; he knew his stuff and was a heck of a powerful motivation for the troops, but drunk and mad, he might kill you. Some who were ROAD.

But I wanted to say that because, if what I say gets to the niece, I wanted her to know that it is the Chief that she turns to, not the officer, whether it's the Lieutenant, the LCDR, or the Captain. She may have examples in those officers who she can turn to, but time in, time out, it will be the Chief.
_______________________________
("Sorry about that, Chief!"––Agent 86, (wtte), "Get Smart")