Thank you for the reply! There were a few short hand words you used that im going to have to look up the the information was very understood. So to get it straight I am looking at the same amount of time on a boat and a ship? Because I was reading on the website the boat goes to school then out for a tour back for two years on shore duty then out again? But I couldn't find information on how long the ship was out and docked.
Now the specifics....
There is a difference between being on a 'sea tour' which means being attached to a ship, and being out to sea. Ships aren't out to sea 100% of the time. They need to come back to replenish stores, conduct repairs, etc. You can reasonably expect that somewhere around 35-60% of your time assigned to the ship/boat will be spent underway. There are exceptions to this and some people get less time underway because they are assigned to a unit in extended overhaul, and some people are assigned to ships who get bonus deployments to make up for other ships/subs that have material issues that prevent meeting deployment schedules.
As a concrete example, the Springfield went on a 6 month deployment, 5 month repair period, 6 month deployment toward the end of my tour (I wasn't on the Springfield, but was aware of this). That's not 'normal,' but it can happen. Keep in mind that a large majority of the 6 months preceding deployment is spent at sea doing pre-deployment training and inspections, so if you were assigned to that boat during that time you would have spent about 80% of your time at sea. There's really no way to predict your tempo until you are assigned a boat. I also hear that carrier deployments are now nominally 10 months vice 6, and that ships like the Stennis had ridiculously high operational tempos lately. In other words, they've had it worse than most submariners.
When you are inport you don't just take an easy vacation, though. You stand duty, which on a sub will be 3- or 4- section to start (every 3rd or 4th day you stay on the ship for 24 hours and you get about 4-5 hours of sleep). With 3-section, you never get a weekend off (I don't count the Saturday where you spend your first 8 hours at work a 'day off'), with 4 section you get 1 weekend a month off. On non-duty days you will attend various meetings and do whatever random administration/planning/training needs to be done prior to the ship's next underway evolution, be it inspections, deployment, whatever. And studying for quals and getting checkouts...as a non-qual, you'll be on the boat until at least 1700 everyday if you are a quick learner and can avoid random tasking from the Nav/Weps/XO, and 2000 everyday if not.
My goals are fairly simple I believe. I want to gain the best experience I can. I know I can make it through the program. I have the drive and the mentality to always do the very best I can. And when i finish my term I want to be someone that people line up to offer jobs. My drive is to do the best I can and prove to others and to myself I can keep up with anyone else out there in the field. I love to learn but I also love hands on work. And my goals one day is to work in the civilian sector as a leader and mentor to the other engineers I work with.
The recruiter is going to tell you how the Navy nuke program makes employers line up to hand you 6-figure jobs. That's not true. The nuke program can help you get a foot into the door for utility ops jobs, but outside of that no one is going to differentiate a nuke officer from a pilot from a SWO. They will say 'oh, you were in the Navy, that's cool' unless the guy you are interviewing with also happened to be in the Navy.
It's also going to make you 5 years behind your peers who just graduated from engineering programs and have the theoretical knowledge fresh in their brains. You can offset this by using the GI bill to go to grad school when you get out, which covers $18,700 in tuition to a private university, books up to a certain amount, and you collect BAH. Google the 9/11 GI bill for more details.