Let me offer a few very candid points.
Being underway, for the most part, sucks. Period. You are away from your family and non-Navy friends. Making a port call is cool, but after 5 visits to Dubai in the previous 5 months, you would probably rather stay at sea.
That annoying guy in your division that nobody likes? Yeah, you not only do you see him nonstop, you LIVE with him (or her, for our sisters in the Navy).
In the civilian sector, when your boss gets on your nerves you know you are going home at the end of the workday and won’t see them till tomorrow. Underway? Ha ha, your LPO probably sleeps in the rack across from or under yours.
After a long, hard day you like to sit down and have a cold one to celebrate a good honest day’s work. Underway you get to finish your 5 (6 on a sub) hours of watch with another 5-6 hours of maintenance, paperwork, training, etc. All without the benefit of cold beer.
You get one place of semi-privacy onboard; your rack. The racks on the carriers measure roughly 7 feet long, 2 ½ feet wide and about 2 ½ feet tall. A set of fabric curtains are your barrier against everyone else. You will learn to sleep through anything or you will not get any sleep.
So what does all this have to do with being an officer? You get all that with the added bonus of being responsible for whatever your guys and gals (on the carriers only, for the time being) do. Plus, on a boat, there are only 11 or 12 officers total (been awhile since I talked to my sub brothers). Each of them is a Nuke, with the exception of the Chop (Supply Officer). The CO (Commanding Officer) knows you by name and will want to know why you aren’t depriving yourself of sleep to get qualified something (quals NEVER end) or watching over something or managing some huge pile of paperwork. Your boss is VERY close quarters to you, 24 hours a day for weeks on end. He sees virtually everything.
The last part of this is simple. If you are on Active Duty, you should be able to answer this question without thought. “Why do I serve?”. I joined the Navy 20 years ago partially because I couldn’t afford college, but I also joined to serve my country. I still to this day, as a retiree, don’t feel 100% comfortable when people tell me ”Thank you for your service.”. We don’t serve to get praise or glory. We don’t serve as Nukes because it gets the majority of the attention or gets you time off. Here is a phrase about engineers (it applies to both Nuke and conventional). “First on, last off.”. We are onboard before everyone else when we get underway and we are the last ones off when we pull in.
This wall of text isn’t meant to dissuade you or paint the Navy in a negative light. I loved my time and have only one regret, which is a story for another day or post. As a young man or woman, the world stands before you. However, it is now time to grow up and become independent. The decisions you make in life now become REAL important and tend to be longer lived than the crap we pull in high school or college.
That’s all for today, time to put away the soapbox.