Using My Time Wisely

[wyatt]

Hello,

I am going to be pursuing a career as a Nuclear Operator in the future and I want to ensure that I am hired. For background, I am graduating with a degree in physics this June, and I am planning on enrolling in a community college's NLO associates degree program that starts in the Summer. Becoming a nuclear operator has been sort of a dream job of mine for a while, and I want to maximize my potential at getting hired on at any level. To do this I have been using my independent time to study and take notes on the DoE Fundamentals textbooks, but I also have access to many nuclear simulators that I do not yet understand. As I don't have navy experience, I planned on using my detailed independent study notes as a sort of portfolio to show that I'm willing to put in a lot of extra time to leverage the experience difference between myself and potentially more experienced job candidates.

I understand that there isn't some magic solution that will allow me to instantly understand nuclear plants, but I was wondering if anyone here had insight into what order I should tackle the DoE textbooks in order to get to a point where I can more readily understand what is going on in the CTI BWR simulator faster, or even if I should focus my attention on some other source of information. I am through the math and physics texts and already halfway through the chemistry text and I am learning a lot of information that I did not know before and hope will be useful, so if there isn't anything recommended I can do to optimize the time I will still feel great about what I'm doing. Even so, the time before I move and attend the NLO program is decreasing and between work and school I don't have a ton of free time so I want to make the most of it.
Thank you!