Yes, nukes wind up chipping and painting. We make coffee and definately wax floors (every patrol stripping and waxing our area!). We generally don't clean toilets unless we are talking about our own in the barracks, or if the engine room has one. All of us clean equipment for PMS and dive into a bilge on field days (or when LL pukes the purifiers).
There are gonna be what you consider to be 'crap jobs' to do. Eventually you might get to start like being put on paint team rather than being in 3 section duty. Suck it up. Even with crap duty, most nukes have a lot less of it to deal with than our non-nuclear brethren, even though there are other balances in that equation.
Think you might fail out? Every morning when I was in 'A' school some damn senior chief would chant the same words at me. Attitude is life. He then went on to describe how if you have a good attitude you'd be able to succeed in life, but if you have a piss poor attitude then you are destined to fail at everything you do. And he would say this while he was running circles around us in florida morning weather.
Getting on level 1 PT is perhaps the worst thing that ever happened to my attitude, and it almost cost me nuke school. It all started when I passed the PRT, but only with a Sat. Shortly after I was waking up with the early birds and running that path with stops for various exercises. Every day I was losing more and more sleep and standing up in the back for all my classes. Test scores went from great to average to wtf am I doing? Suddenly stress is at an all time high and something needs to be done. Some smoked, others walked down Orange Blossom Trail, and I found comfort in food. All of these activities will have adverse effects on your PRT score. I passed my dash for cash, and barely passed A school.
Power school was in the summer. Black flag days gave me enough sleep that I could actually do well in class. I completed power school with a 3.5 and felt a lot better about myself. Unfortunately I never got rid of those eating habits and have always had a loathing for running and squats.
What can I really say to somebody who needs advice? Learn to manage your time. Sleep is not a bank, you can't just make a big deposit one day and ignore the rest. Attitude IS life, but don't let those bastards give you a bad attitude and ruin your life. Fight tooth and nail every step and NEVER EVER let them put you on remedial PT, IT RUINS LIVES!!!! Relieve stress by going to the beach or something constructive, not hookers/booze/food/smokes.
Oh yeah, I knew quite a few guys who got kicked out of the nuke pipeline and found it to be the best thing that ever happened to them. I loved being a nuke (hated what they did to me in the pipeline, but the fleet was great) but some people are better off out in the conventional navy. Don't worry too much about it and just give it your all. The pipeline will be over before you know it and you will be learning how you REALLY do your job.