The Stuff I Wish I'd Known

[Auridan]

When I was in DEP and a new graduate came back to answer questions, I usually asked them, "What do you know now that you wish you'd asked when you were in my position?" Rarely did anyone come up with much of an answer for that, so I'm posting my own.

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork!

Practically everything you do needs to be on paper, or nobody will know. (They still won't know even if it is, but you'll be able to show them.) This crap takes a lot of time, and YOU have to keep track of all of it.

Want to do X kind of work? You need a qualification, which usually means a long hunt for signatures on your PQS (personnel qualification standards) packet, at least one of which will probably have to be from a Chief (good luck finding him with free time), and then you need to make sure that completed qual gets to the people who need to see it, and that it does NOT get lost, stolen, or destroyed. Oh, and you'd better hope it's the right series. PQS packets get updated a lot, and twice already I've wasted time getting one signed off only to find that it's been superseded by the next version, which is almost identical anyway.

Just did your PRT? You'd better hope your yeoman actually transfers that data from paper to the electronic system so you can get the advancement you've been waiting on. And of course if that doesn't happen, you're the one who has to go light fires under asses and make it right, otherwise your lack of score might just mean you're graded as a Fail. This problem is compounded when you did your PRT with a different division you're assigned TAD (temporary additional duty) to, like S-2. (See point #2.)

Want to drive to Canada for a weekend? Route a request chit all the way up to the XO, on my ship. This'll probably take at least a month to get back to you, and plans made a month in advance are often (read: practically always) disrupted.

You're an Operations Specialist, eh? Tell me more about how you've never touched a radar repeater...

This one is probably worse for me than most people since my ship hasn't been underway yet, meaning I don't even have a job to do, but TAD is something I really can't believe I never heard much about.

Supply department, particularly S-2 (foodservice) always needs bodies. At some point when you're new (and even, irritatingly, when you're very not new) you will be assigned TAD to Supply, commonly referred to as "cranking", and you will probably work in the galley. (Some work for other divisions, doing maintenance, laundry, and moving deliveries, but the majority slings chow.) Security department takes voluntolds as well, though not as many. These periods are a standard 120 days long (90 for E-4 and up), but you better make sure your parent division sends a relief for you, because you'll be there until they do no matter how long it is.

This is one major reason to be indispensable within your own shop: Everyone goes cranking, but dirtbags are much more likely to go twice. Make sure your LPO likes what you're doing enough that he doesn't want to lose you again, and get that crow so if you do have to go twice, it won't be for as long and you'll probably be supervising.

Of course, this doesn't appear to end no matter how long you're in. I've heard of 2nd and 1st classes, and even chiefs and higher being TAD for various things. (Not cranking, obviously, but the Navy always seems to want people moving around doing other stuff.)

On the bright side, TAD can also be used as a sort of mercy. A shipmate of mine went on paternity leave, but hasn't yet come back after quite some time. I learned that his child had some complications, so rather than call the father back, the command assigned him TAD to the hospital so he could stay near his family all day.

tl;dr: What I wish I'd known about TAD is that it was so damn common, and not necessarily a one-time thing. Being away from your home division can make a newbie feel pretty unmotivated. Fight it by using your off time to visit them, or to make progress on your quals, particularly your primary warfare pin.

It ain't all bad in the barracks.

I don't know how common this is, but in my case, my barracks room belongs to me for as long as I'm with my ship. Even once we deploy, I can leave everything I'm not taking in this room and expect it to be exactly as I left it when I return. This is really a huge deal when it comes to feeling at home here for the next 4.5 years. Yes, I get inspected on occasion, but that just gives me a reason to keep things organized and clean. And really, I've only had three inspections in nearly 4 months here. Two of them happened while I was at work. When they came in for the third, I was wearing a bathrobe. All have been satisfactory.

It's not all good either, obviously. I have an irritating roommate, I have to haul my cooking and laundry down to communal facilities when I want to do either, I've been trapped in the elevators twice already, and the neighbors often suck in many and various ways. Every other week or so, someone opens one of the emergency doors at the bottom of the exterior stairs, setting off the alarm, which is literally right under my window. One jackass likes to blow an air horn out his window when lots of people are starting to think about sleep. Several people play loud music, others leave nasty-smelling trash around. But really, for the ability to call this place my own for free, that's not a lot to pay. Especially considering that when I wake up for work in the morning, I don't have to get in a car, fight traffic, stab someone for decent parking, and THEN walk to the ship. I just skip to the last step.

Sweepers, sweepers! Man your brooms!

You are going to clean. All. The. Freaking. Time. I know this isn't exactly secret knowledge, but if you want a taste of what it feels like, set aside an hour of every day you're waiting for boot camp and clean your room. It's already clean, you say? Clean it again. No, seriously, it's super clean, I even dusted the ceiling fan blades and the top of the closet door. Well, I bet there's some bit of dust you haven't found...*white glove swipe on the one place you missed* WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? CLEAN FOR ANOTHER HOUR! *grumble, wipe bulkhead idly for 30 minutes, sweep for 10, stare into space for 20*

That's what MCH (material condition hour) is like, and it happens EVERY SINGLE DAY. I keep myself sane by looking for the places I know nobody's looked in ages, preferably way up in the overheads where I have to climb, and deep-cleaning the centimeter of dust I usually find. It's a lot easier to deal with when you can actually see a difference between what you've cleaned and what you haven't gotten to yet. Even so, it's gonna wear on you, so be warned.

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany...

Congratulations, you're a Sailor! You've got more brothers and sisters than you can shake a stick at, which is a damn shame, because some of them really need to be beaten with that stick repeatedly and often. Assuming A school didn't drag you down with them, you're going to get to your ship full of pep and regs and a sense of duty, and everyone's going to crap all over it. You'll see people openly disregarding orders, like bringing phones with cameras into the closed area where cameras are explicitly forbidden, even when you're hearing about people going to mast for the same thing every single week. You'll hear disgruntled yeomen talking about losing a shipmate's critical paperwork as petty revenge for some long-past fault. You'll hear about people finding an unattended ESWS PQS packet, opening it up, seeing it's basically complete, and stripping off the front page (with the owner's name on it), so they can replace it with a new one showing their own name. You'll see people smoking in front of non-smoking signs, drinking in non-drinking areas, leaving nasty dip bottles EVERYWHERE, and generally acting as if the Navy is just something that gets in the way of their regular selfish civilian lives. Anyone who isn't right there with them is Joe Navy, object of ridicule, naive, "snitch", brown-noser, et cetera. And worst, when enough of your shipmates behave like children, the command treats everyone like children, which inevitably breeds more of the same.

I can already see a massive difference between my outlook when I was in DEP and now. It's a hell of a fight not to let it slip further, and I've only been here a few months, on shore no less. So prepare to be disappointed in a lot of ways, and do your best to raise the average a little. When your RDCs tell you to be careful about who you hang out with, take that advice on board and remember it always. And if there's something in your shop you know you're going to need frequently, lock it up. Don't hide it, because no matter how good you think your hiding spot is, someone else knows it, and is probably using it.

More to come as I think it up...