You're on a website that consists of primarily very successful nukes. The odds are one of us will be your boss someday. Yes we care.
Mike
"We?" I, for one don't care about Internet Forum spell checking. How one writes in an Internet forum, email, IRC, chat, SMS, etc has NOTHING to do with their professional technical writing skills. More importantly, technical accuracy is more important (to me) than grammatical accuracy (which can always be fixed during final proofing). The culture in the 21st century that launches "kids" into the professional world with bad email habits is not going to be fixed here.
I've met several officers/managers that can compile a 100 page report that says absolutely nothing, but is grammatically correct. Sometimes, they would even kick it off with a fancy 20 page PowerPoint that also said nothing, but had a lot of fancy animations for show. All a complete waste of time if the issues are not clearly presented (or worse yet...not valid). For example, have you ever seen a root cause analysis report with perfect grammar...yet fixes nothing? Worthless!
So for starters, the "kid" needs to have a solid WORKING knowledge of algebra. (Also needed for Calculus and higher engineering studies). If not, I'm not going to care what his writing skills are since he won't be a nuke. Otherwise, I'll be happy to train him him how to write when the time comes. In the end, if he's not a clear thinker, than perhaps "we" can explain how that will limit his Navy and Commercial Nuclear career? "Technical writing" is not a class taught at NPS or in any Commercial Nuclear Training curriculum. OJT after initial quals? OJT after a few tours?
Separately, I want to have a Nuke working for me that speaks his/her mind...especially to challenge me regardless of any rank or title. For that, the poster is commended; however, he'll get "smacked down" enough while he's a "NUB" at Prototype to figure out what many people were illustrating in response to his "disrespect". Perhaps then, he (et al) will figure out why so many of his predecessors entered the Navy with such a great attitude, only to have it squashed by instances of poor/uncaring leadership. Should we "spoonfeed?" Definitely not, and the NNPP and Commercial training programs will see to that.
If he's an exceptional operator, clear thinker, writer, and overall "nuke leader"...perhaps it's one of US that will be working for HIM one day. (Yes, I've seen that a few times in 20+ years). No exposure to higher math, physics, chemistry, trig...but was able to pass the NNPP entrance exam? That raised my curiosity about his intellectual ability. I guessed that the original poster knows what to do to address his weaknesses and was simply looking for some reassurance. He didn't need any answer, in my opinion. He knows what to do and it's all a matter of how badly he wants to be a nuke.
Co60
